No More Learning

Let the People think they govern, and they will be governed.
The Humble, Meek, Merciful, Just, Pious, and Devout souls, are every-
where of one religion; and when death has taken off the mask they will
know one another, though the diverse liveries they wear here makes them
strangers.
Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for
the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.
This is the comfort of friends, that, though they may be said to die, yet
their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because
immortal.
Of poetry, in the writings of the early quakers, there is nothing
that deserves the name. Such versification as we find is, for the
most part, prosaic disquisition on moral and spiritual themes,
marked by piety without inspiration, and facility without imagina-
tion. Thomas Ellwood, in addition to the 'poems' which are
scattered through his autobiography, issued A Collection of Poems
on Various Subjects, from which we extract the following:
He's a true lover, not who can subdue
Monsters and giants for his mistress' sake,
And sighs perhaps, and weeps, with much ado
For fear she should some other happy make;
But who so far her happiness prefers
Before his own, that he can be content
To sacrifice his own to purchase hers,
Though with the price of his own banishment.
The quakers, as is well known, gave to women an equal place
with men in the ministries of the spiritual life; and perhaps the
only approach to poetry in their literary output, before the days
of Barton and Whittier, is to be found in a little volume of letters
1 See A Quaker Post Bag, 1910, p. 27.
E. L. VIII.
CH. IV.
8


## p. 114 (#136) ############################################

114
The Early Quakers
and poems entitled Fruits of Retirement, by Mary Mollineux
(born Southworth), published shortly after her death in 1695.
It includes the following Meditations in Trouble:
0 Whither is he gone? Or where
Shall I go mourn, till he appear,
Who is my life, my love?
Alas, how shall I move
Him to return, that's secretly retired
Like unto one displeased,
Who, till he be appeased,
My heart cannot be eased ?
He is one lovely, and to be admired!
It might have been expected that the deep inward experiences
of these quaker mystics would have found spontaneous expression
in lyrical verse, but so it was not to be. Very early, their spiritual
life became confined in bonds, and freedom and spontaneity were
largely lost in a rigour of thought and life that left little scope for
originality of inspired expression. With the eighteenth century,
the glow of the first experience faded, and the third genera-
tion of the quakers, while retaining much of the purity and
unworldliness and spirituality of their predecessors, became, for
the most part, the children of a tradition. Quietism settled down
upon them, a quietism which, while it produced noble fruit in a
John Woolman and an Elizabeth Fry, left the majority more
concerned to maintain the discipline of a 'peculiar people' than
to make known a spiritual Gospel to the world.


## p. 115 (#137) ############################################

CHAPTER V
THE RESTORATION DRAMA
Ι
With the ordinance of 2 September 1642, commanding the
closing of the theatres and the total suppression of stage plays,
the long and brilliant chapter of the drama that had known the
triumphs of the days of Elizabeth and her two successors came to
an abrupt and dismal end. Although declared rogues by a later
act and threatened with the whipping-post for pursuing their
calling, the actors did not at once obey these stringent laws'.
We hear of performances 'three or four miles, or more, out of
town,' and of plays acted at the Cockpit, for example in 1648,
when 'a party of soldiers beset the house and carried the actors
away in their habits to Hatton House, then a prison. During the
commonwealth, occasional performances were connived at, 'some-
times in noblemen's houses. . . where the nobility and gentry met,
but in no great numbers'; at others, in seasons of festivals such
as Christmas or Bartholomew fair, even at the old playhouses,
among them the Red Bull. But, even with bribes to the guard
at Whitehall, immunity against arrest and safety from rough
handling for auditor and actor were not to be assured. It is not
wonderful that, during the rebellion, the players declared them-
selves, almost to a man, on the side of the king. Several of them
served with distinction on the royalist side; but the end of the
war found most of them in exile with their betters or reduced to
poverty
1 For the texts of the most important of these laws, see Hazlitt, W. C. , The
English Drama and Stage, 1543—1664, Roxburghe Library, 1869, pp. 63–70.
? On this topic, see Wright's Historia Histrionica, first published in 1699, reprinted
in Dodsley, vol. xv.
82


## p. 116 (#138) ############################################

116
The Restoration Drama
9
Amusements of the dramatic kind being now under the ban,
various devices were employed to evade the letter of the lawl.
Interesting among these were the 'drolls' or 'droll-humours,' as
they were called-farces or humorous scenes adapted from current
plays and staged, for the most part, on extemporised scaffolds, at
taverns and fairs, and sometimes, even, at regular theatres? . Thus,
a 'droll,' entitled Merry Conceits of Bottom the Weaver, was
printed as early as 1646, and a dozen or so by Robert Cox, notable
for his performance in them. A large collection entitled The Wits,
or Sport upon Sport, collected by Francis Kirkman the book-
seller, appeared in the early seventies, when the acting of these
things had been superseded by the revival of the more regular
drama. It may be remarked, in passing, that the application
of the term 'droll' to stage recitals in commonwealth days is alike
distinguishable from its earlier employment to signify a puppet or
a puppet-show and from the use of the word 'drollery' which was
applied to any piece of humour or ribaldry in verse3. Among
'drolls' derived from well known plays may be named The Grave
Diggers' Colloquy from Hamlet; Falstaff, The Bouncing Knight
from Henry IV; and The Buckbasket Mishap from The Merry
Wives. Other scenes, like Cox's Humours of Simpleton the
Smith and John Swabber were inventions of the actors. All were
contrived to please the vulgar and appeal to the least refined.
Towards the close of Cromwell's rule, the laws against dramatic
entertainments appear to have been somewhat relaxed, and Sir
William D'Avenant, who had been governor of the king and
queen's company of players, acting at the Cockpit, and had held a
patent, dated 1639, empowering him to erect a new playhouse, was
obviously the man first to provide for a returning interest in plays.
D'Avenant's earlier plays and masques* have already been men-
tioned in a previous volume of this work. The son of an Oxford
tavern keeper, and, if the story be authentic, Shakespeare's godson,
D'Avenant had been taken up by the court; he had staged plays
in the manner of Fletcher as early as 1630; had succeeded Ben
Jonson as poet laureate in 1638, and, later, had served the royal
1 Such was the masque of the Inner Temple, November 1651, Gardiner, History of
the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, vol. 11, pp. 11, 12.
2 Ward, History of English Dramatic Literature, vol. II, p. 280.
3 J. W. Ebsworth’s reprint of Westminster Drolleries, 1672, is a collection of
humorous verse and non-dramatic. His introduction, sometimes cited in this con.
nection, little concerns the dramatic droll. ' Halliwell-Phillipps reprinted several
Shakespearean drolls'in 1859.
• See ante, vol. vi, p. 240.
6
<


## p. 117 (#139) ############################################

Sir William D'Avenant
117
6
party through many vicissitudes afield and in intrigue abroad and
at home, suffering imprisonment for several years and narrowly
escaping the gallows. In the later years of the commonwealth,
he had lived more quietly in London and, at length, chiefly through
the influence of the lord-keeper, Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke, obtained
authority for the production of a species of quasi-dramatic enter-
-
tainment which, though given at private houses, was public in so
far as money was taken for entrance. D'Avenant's earliest venture
in this kind was entitled The First Day's Entertainment at Rut-
land House, 'by declamation and music, after the manner of the
ancients, printed in 1657, and staged 21 May of the previous year.
By some, this venture has been called 'an opera'; and, strangely
enough, D'Avenant refers to it by this title in his prologue and
elsewhere. The First Day's Entertainment is really made up
of two pairs of speeches, the first by Diogenes and Aristophanes
successively "against and for, public entertainment, by moral pre-
sentation,' the second, in lighter vein, between a Parisian and a
Londoner on the respective merits of the two cities. The whole
was diversified with music by Coleman, Lawes (composer of the
music of Comus) and other musicians of repute in their day.
D'Avenant had made provision for four hundred auditors, but
only a hundred and fifty appeared. Emboldened, however, by this
qualified success, he projected a more ambitious entertainment.
This was the celebrated Siege of Rhodes, 'made a representation
by the art of prospective in scenes and the story sung in recitative
music,' presented in August 1656. In an address . To the Reader,'
which appears in the first edition of that year, but was not after-
wards reprinted, D'Avenant points out that
the story as represented. . . is heroical, and notwithstanding the continual
hurry and busy agitations of a hot siege, is (I hope) intelligibly conveyed to
advance the characters of virtue in the shapes of valour and conjugal love.
The author was too close to triumphant puritanisn not to feel it
necessary to justify the moral aspects of his art. Of the recitative
music, an 'unpracticed' novelty in England, the author tells us
U
that it was composed and exercised by the most transcendent
of England in that art’; and it is clear that the cast was chosen
with reference to this important operatic feature. As to the five
changes of scene, he regrets that all is confined to eleven foot in
height and about fifteen in depth including the places of passage
reserved for the music': a 'narrow allowance,' he continues, 'for
the fleet of Solyman the Magnificent, his army, the Island of
Rhodes and the varieties attending the siege of the city. The


## p. 118 (#140) ############################################

118
The Restoration Drama
Siege of Rhodes, on the dramatic side, is an amplified situation,
laying no claim to plot, characterisation or variety save such as
arises from change of scene, appropriate costume and attendant
music. The Rehearsal ridicules a battle' performed in recitative
music by seven persons only'; and it must be confessed that this
‘first English opera' is dramatically as absurd as its species has
continued, with certain exceptions, ever since. The Siege of
Rhodes is often described as the first English play to employ
scenery and the first in which an actress appeared on the English
stage. Neither of these statements is correct. Changes of scenery
and even 'perspective in scene' were in vogue, if not common,
long before 1656 As to women on the stage, not to mention
some earlier examples, Mrs Coleman, who 'played' the part of
Ianthe in The Siege, had already sung in The First Day's Enter-
tainment and was chosen, doubtless, in both instances for her voice
rather than for her acting® In 1658, D'Avenant opened the
.
Cockpit theatre in Drury lane, producing there two similar
operas, The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru and The History
of Sir Francis Draket. Their ‘historical' intent and scenic
novelty may well have disarmed puritan suspicion, though Richard
Cromwell is said to have ordered an enquiry into the performance
at the Cockpit, of which, however, nothing came.
Affairs were now moving rapidly towards the restoration of
king Charles. General Monck arrived in London in the first days
of February 1659/60, and one John Rhodes, a bookseller and
sometime keeper of the wardrobe of the king's company at Black-
friars, obtained a licence from the existing authorities for the
formation of a dramatic company. A second company gathered
at the Red Bull, a third at Salisbury court in Whitefriars, and
Sir Henry Herbert, master of the revels, awoke to the duties
(and prospective emoluments) of an office for long years held by
him in hope and abeyance. Upon his restoration, king Charles
issued a patent to Thomas Killigrew and Sir William D'Avenant,
1 Act v, sc. 1.
? In the performance of Cartwright's Royall Slave at Oxford, in August 1686, the
scene was changed eight times. See the quarto of this play of 1639. Jonson alluded
to 'a piece of perspective' in 1600, Cynthia's Revels, induction, Gifford-Cunningham's
Jonson, vol. II, p. 210.
8 French actresses appeared in London as early as 1629 and were very unfavourably
received ; in masques and like entertainments ladies had long taken prominent part.
On this topic, see Lawrence, W. J. , 'Early French Players in England,' Anglia, vol.
XXXII, p. 61.
• Incorporated in The Playhouse to be Let, printed in the folio of 1673.


## p. 119 (#141) ############################################

Thomas Killigrew
119
empowering them to 'erect' two companies of players'. This
raised a storm of protest, especially from Herbert, who imme-
diately petitioned the king and council and brought action in the
courts, singling out D'Avenant as his peculiar foe and describing
him as one who had 'obtained leave of Oliver and Richard Crom-
well to vent his operas at a time when your petitioner owned not
their authority? ' In the first instance, combination, and then a
second division, of the two companies followed; but, before long,
the claims of Herbert were adjusted and the two royal patentees
were upheld. Their troupes soon became known, Killigrew's as
the king's, and D'Avenant's as the duke of York's, company of
players. In 1661, the latter company removed to a new playhouse
built for them in Lincoln's inn fields, Portugal row, and, later, in
1673, after the death of D'Avenant, to the sumptuous theatre in
Salisbury court, Fleet street, a site previously known as Dorset
garden. D'Avenant's house was commonly called 'the opera' from
the performance of musical plays there. But D'Avenant by no
means gave an undivided attention to such productions. The
king's company (Killigrew's), variously housed before 1663, re-
moved in that year to the Theatre Royal in Drury lane, Covent
garden.
Thomas Killigrew, a member of a loyal Cornish family, had
been reared a page in the court of Charles I, and continued a
favourite companion of that monarch's son and successor. As
groom of his majesty's bedchamber, Killigrew remained a privi-
leged servant in the royal household and was reputed, from his
ready colloquial wit, the king's jester. His earlier plays were
written abroad and acted before the closing of the theatres.
Among them are The Prisoners, Claracilla and The Princess,
tragicomedies of approved adventurous romantic type. They
mark, in their extravagance of adventure, exaggerated character
and inflated rhetoric, a step from the immediate imitators of
Fletcher to the restoration heroic play, and group naturally with
the like efforts of Sir William Lower and Lodowick Carlell.
A later tragicomedy by Killigrew, Cecilia and Clorinda, borrowed
its subject, in part, from Le Grand Cyrus, a sufficient indication,
perhaps, of the general nature of the poet's sources for serious
plays Among several comedies that appear in the collected
1 This patent bears date 21 August 1660, and is issued to the two patentees jointly.
It is printed entire by Malone in the prolegomena to his edition of Shakespeare, 1821,
vol. I, pp. 249–251.
2 See the same, p. 247, where the petition of Sir Henry Herbert and other papers
in this controversy are reprinted.


## p. 120 (#142) ############################################

I 20 The Restoration Drama
edition of Killigrew's works, 1664, The Parson's Wedding, like-
wise a pre-restoration play, is the most conspicuous. This is a
comedy of almost unexampled coarseness, a quality which the
author had not found in his source, Calderon's Dama Duende.
Many of Killigrew's plays were acted after the reopening of
the theatres and The Parson's Wedding enjoyed unusual popu-
larity. Two other Killigrews, brothers of Thomas, brought their
contributions to the stage? Sir William Killigrew published, in
1664, three plays, Selindra, Pandora and Ormasdes, or Love and
Friendship. The last was subsequently rewritten under the
influence of the new heroic drama. A fourth dramatic work of
this author, The Siege of Urbin, has been with justice described
as 'a capable and sympathetic play. Not all of these were acted.
Henry Killigrew, a younger brother, wrote but one play, so far
as is known. It was published first in 1638 under the title The
Conspiracy, and, rewritten, in 1653, as Pallantus and Eudora.
Thomas Killigrew the younger, also a writer of plays, belongs to
a later generation.
The works of Sir William D'Avenant, posthumously collected,
bear date 1683. D'Avenant staged most of his plays and some of
them were not undeservedly successful. Several of his rewritten
plays, such as Love and Honour, The Wits and The Platonick
Lovers, long remained popular favourites; but his work sub-
sequent to the restoration is made up largely of older dramas
refashioned to meet new conditions. Thus, we hear of Macbeth,
staged with 'alterations, amendments, additions and new songs'
besides a divertissement, and of Beatrice and Benedick thrust into
Measure for Measure and the result renamed The Law Against
Lovers. Romeo and Juliet was transformed into a comedy and
acted alternately with the Shakespearean version? .
The répertoire of the first years of the restoration exhibits an
active revival of the masterpieces of the earlier drama. Between
the opening of the new theatres and April 1663, Pepys saw Othello,
Henry IV, A Midsummer Nighťs Dream, Jonson's Silent Woman
1 See bibliography.
? As to James Howard's Romeo and Juliet, see ante, p. 20 note 3. As to D'Avenant
and Dryden's version of The Tempest, and Shadwell's alterations see ante, p. 28 and
note 2. Other like adaptations are Shadwell's Timon of Athens, Ravenscroft's Titus
Andronicus, Tate's King Lear, and Betterton's Henry IV. D'Avenant rewrote The
Two Noble Kinsmen as The Rivals, Waller transmuted The Maides Tragedy into a
comedy by a new fifth act, Betterton adapted The Prophetesse, Vanbragh The Pilgrim,
D'Urfey The Sea Voyage, Tate The Island Princesse, all of them originally Fletcher's.
Farquhar's Inconstant is an adaptation of The Wild-Goose Chase.


## p. 121 (#143) ############################################

Comedies on the Political Reaction I
121
and Bartholomew Fayre, Fletcher's Tamer Tamed, The Beggars
Bush and Beaumont's Knight of the Burning Pestle, Middleton's
Changeling, Shirley's Cardinall, Massinger's Bond-Man and several
more! Hamlet was among the first plays revived, and it furnished
one of Betterton's most signal triumphs. A taste for the heroic in
drama, a heritage from Fletcher and his imitators in the previous
age, is noticeable in D'Avenant's own Siege of Rhodes and, more
especially, in his really fine tragicomedy, Love and Honour.
How this was to spring into full flower in the heroic plays of
Dryden, Orrery and others, has been already shown in an earlier
chapter? The beginnings of opera, also, may be postponed for
the moment.
A distinctive feature of the earlier drama of the restoration is
its reflection of the current political reaction. The playwrights, to
a man, extolled absolute monarchy and branded as disloyal any.
one who failed obsequiously to observe and follow the lead and
the wishes of the king. As to the puritan, while he was in power,
few had dared openly to lampoon him; but, with the swing of
popular loyalty back to the monarchy, the church and the old
established order of things, the puritan became fair game for
the satire of his foes. General Monck was still in the north, and
Lambert, sent to oppose him, had been but recently deserted by
his troops, when John Tatham staged his satirical piece of dramatic
journalism, The Rump. Tatham had been a contriver of pageants
for the city and had written a pastoral, Love Crowns the End, so
far back as 1632, a tragedy of no great merit, ominously called
The Distracted State, and a piece of bitter satire against the
Scots, whom the author appears especially to have hated, entitled
The Scotch Figgaries. In The Rump, or the Mirrour of the Late
Times, Tatham boldly lampoons Lambert, Fleetwood, Hewson and
other notabilities of the moment, representing the widow of Crom-
well as an undignified scold and lady Lambert as preposterously
and irrationally eager to thrust her husband into the succession to
the protectorate, so that she may be addressed 'your highness. '
Several scenes of this comedy are not without a certain comic
effectiveness; and the final reduction of these lofty personages to
street vendors, peddling their wares, displays the popular humour
and temper of the moment. Another typical comedy of the type
is Sir Robert Howard's The Committee, produced in 1665 and long
A list of the plays of Rhodes's company is made up largely of works of Fletcher,
See Genest, vol. 1, p. 31.
? See ante, chap. I.


## p. 122 (#144) ############################################

I 22
The Restoration Drama
a
popular? It tells directly and not without force the story of a
hypocritical puritan committee of sequestration, made up of such
personages as Nehemiah Catch, Jonathan Headstrong and Ezekiel
Scrape, and how they and a dishonest guardian were outwitted by
two clever maidens and their cavalier lovers. A better written
comedy, though it was less successful in its day, is Cowley's Cutter
of Coleman Street, brought out by D'Avenant among his earliest
ventures? . While such characters as 'merry, sharking' Cutter,
who turns puritan for his worldly welfare and has visions of the
downfall of Babylon, are amusing, and the dialogue abounds in
clever thrusts at the cant and weaknesses of fallen puritanism,
Cowley's comedy cannot be pronounced a dramatic success. Never-
theless, the truthfulness of his portraiture of colonel Jolly, the
drunken cavalier, reeling on the edge of dishonesty, and driven in
his need to composition with the saints,' brought down on the
poet's head the displeasure of some who know no vices excepting
those that flourish among their enemies. Comedies satirising the
puritans continued popular throughout the reign of Charles II, as
is seen from such productions as Lacy's The Old Troop (before
1665), Crowne's City Politics, 1673, and Mrs Behn’s The Round-
heads, 1682, a shameless appropriation of Tatham's The Rump.
Turning now to individual playwrights of the restoration not
incidentally treated in the paragraphs above, we find some that
preserved untouched the older traditions of English comedy.
Foremost among them was John Wilson, a native of Plymouth,
and a student of the law, called to the bar in 1646. Through the
good offices of the duke of York, whose secretary he had been in
Ireland, Wilson became recorder of Londonderry and, throwing
himself into the Jacobite cause, remained in Dublin after the
accession of king William. He died in London in 1696. Wilson
is the author of four plays, the earliest of which, The Cheats, was
written in 1662 and enjoyed an extraordinary popularity on the
stage. It is a prose comedy frankly following the manner of
Jonson. Mopus, the quack astrologer, the sharking bravoes, Bilboe
and Titere Tu, the nonconformist minister Scruple who finds the
light that leads to conformity on £300 a year, but is steadied in
protest against the wiles of Babylon by an offer of 400—all are
pure Jonson, but rung to new changes that defy the suggestions
of plagiarism. Not less Jonsonian is Wilson's second comedy, The
1 Cf. ante, chap. 1, p. 20 note 3.
Cowley's play was originally called The Guardian.
It was acted at Cambridge in
1641, and published under this earlier title in 1650. Cf. ante, vol. vii, p. 62,


## p. 123 (#145) ############################################

John Wilson
123
Projectors, 1664. Here, a group of these sharks (a favourite
subject for ridicule with Jonson himself) are represented, busy with
their victim, Sir Gudgeon Credulous, and the long line of usurers
on the stage is bettered in Suckdry and his servant and foil, Lean-
chops! Wilson's comedy is vigorous, full of effective and good-
humoured caricature, and successfully imitative of the better
features of his master's art. Besides these excellent comedies,
Wilson is the author of a tragedy, Andronicus Comnenius, of
admirable conduct and vigour, and written in blank verse of a
freedom compacted with firmness that recalls the better work
of the previous age. The actual story of Andronicus Comnenus,
hypocritical, treacherous and pitiless in his murderous path of
devastation to a throne, strangely parallels the story of the hunch-
back Richard of historical and dramatic fable. Such, however,
seems to have been the author's literary conscience that, save for
one scene, which closely resembles the courtship of lady Anne by
Richard, he has treated his theme originally and with inventive
variety. The date of Andronicus Comnenius is noticeable; for,
in 1664, the stage was ringing with Dryden's Rival-Ladies, and
his and Sir Robert Howard's Indian Queen. Wilson's fourth
play, Belphegor, or the Marriage of the Devil, printed in 1691,
is less interesting, though elaborated with much detail. The story,
referable to Machiavelli's well known novella, had been treated
before in English drama and may have been suggested to Wilson
by Jonson's unsuccessful play of similar theme, The Divell is an
Asse.
Among other names which occur in the dramatic annals of the
years immediately following the return of king Charles is that
of Sir Robert Stapylton, the author of a comedy, The Slighted
Maid, described by Genest as 'a pretty good comedy' and as 'not
acted for the first time in 16634. ' Stapylton's tragicomedy, The
Stepmother, followed in the same year. He is the author, too,
of a tragedy on Hero and Leander. Stapylton was a translator
from French and the classics, and of some repute in his day. His
post as gentleman-usher to king Charles doubtless disposed him,
like other royal servants, to an interest in the drama. Whether
the trivial but witty comedy, Mr Anthony, printed in 1690, be the
1 This play was likewise influenced by the Aulularia of Plautus.
2 Compare Richard III, act I, sc. 2, and Andronicus Comnenius, act iv, sc. 3. Wilson
invariably writes Comnenius for Comnenus.
: Compare Haughton's The Devil and his Dame, mentioned in Henslowo's diary,
and especially Dekker's If It Be Not Good, the Divel is in it.
* Genest, Some Account of the English Stage, vol. I, p. 46.
3


## p. 124 (#146) ############################################

I 24
The Restoration Drama
work of Roger Boyle, earl of Orrery, or not, its clear following
of the models of earlier comedy is sufficient to place it here!
Orrery is memorable for lis heroic dramas, which have been already
noted? The duke of Newcastle, too, and his clever duchess had
both long been dabblers in the drama. But, neither the tutorship
of Ben Jonson, nor that of Shirley later, contrived to produce in
either of the pair results deserving serious attention from the
student of literature. Two comedies by the duke-The Humorous
Lovers and The Triumphant Widow-were acted 'after the re-
storation' and printed in 1673. Twenty-one plays by the duchess
were published in a folio volume of 1662. They have been described
as 'fertile in invention and as tending to extravaganza and an
excess of unrefined fun' Thus, in the midst of a steady revival
of the plays of the old drama, extending, in accordance with the
gross taste of the court, to comedies of Middleton and Brome, the
first years of the restoration passed by.
But comedy, on the revival of the stage, was not to be confined
to the satire of contemporary allusion and a following of the
humours of Jonson. In a striking passage of his Life of Dryden,
Sir Walter Scott declares that the English audience of the re-
storation
had not the patience for the regular comedy depending upon delicate turns
of expression and nicer delineations of character. The Spanish comedy,
with its bustle, machinery, disguise and complicated intrigue, was much more
agreeable to their taste 4,
And this is true, although French models were drawn upon far
more frequently than Spanish, in whatever degree the finer lines
of the former were, at times, obscured in the process. The degree
and character of the influence of Spanish literature on the drama
of England has been much misunderstood. The position taken by
Ward, many years ago, to the effect that the connection between
the Spanish and the English drama is far from intimate and that
among the elements peculiar to the Spanish drama none can be
shown to have been taken over by our own and assimilated to its
growth,' may be declared to be a position substantially correct".
The earliest English play directly traceable to a Spanish source is
6
Genest, Sonie Account of the English Stage, vol. 1, p. 129, dates the acting of this
play, 1671–72. Pepys described another comedy of Orrery, Guzman, as . as mean
a thing . . . as hath been upon the stage a great while. ' Pepys's Diary, ed. Wheatley,
vol. VIII, p. 296.
* See ante, p. 21 note 1.
8 Ward, vol. II, p. 335.
* Dryden, ed. Scott-Saintsbury, vol. I, p. 62.
6 Ward, vol. II, p. 267.
3
8


## p. 125 (#147) ############################################

Early Spanish Influences
125
Calisto and Melebea, an adaptation to the stage of the dramatic
novel, Celestina, the work, chiefly if not wholly, of Fernando de
Rojas, and published about 1530. This work has already been
described, together with the violent didactic conclusion with which
the unknown English adapter made amends for his choice of so
romantic a story? As is well known, the Spanish scholar, Juan
Luis Vives, friend of Sir Thomas More, visited England on the
invitation of Henry VIII, who placed him as a reader on rhetoric
at Corpus Christi college, Oxford. It has been thought that the
English dramatic version of Celestina may have had some relation
to Vives and his visit, although he anathematised the Spanish
production as a work of infamy in his treatise De Institutione
Christianae Feminae. It is somewhat strange that Calisto and
Melebea had no successor. However, it played its part in relieving
the old moral drama of abstractions by the substitution of living
human figures in a story of actual life. It was to Italy, not to
Spain, that the predecessors of Shakespeare, as well as most of
his contemporaries, turned instinctively for romantic material.
Spain was an enemy and, as such, was maligned and misunder-
stood? Yet the figure of Philip, once a sovereign of England,
was represented in at least one chronicle history with dignity;
and a number of dramas, strictly Elizabethan, laid their scene in
the peninsula and affected to follow annals of Spain. Kyd's
Spanish Tragedie and its imitation or burlesque, The First
Part of Jeronimo, remain of undiscovered source; and Greene's
Alphonsus King of Arragon is a composite of the biography of
more than one sovereign of that name, as his queen Eleanor
of Edward I is an outrageous distortion of one of the most
estimable and charitable women that ever sat on the throne of
England. The same playwright's Battell of Alcazar and the
anonymous Captain Stukeley, which deals in part with the same
topic, drew on material more nearly approaching the historical.
Yet neither of these, nor Lusts Dominion (although details of
the death of the king in that piece have been thought to have
been suggested by the death of Pbilip II), can be traced to any
definite Spanish source, much less to anything bearing the title
of Spanish literature. Nor need we surmise that such lost
i See ante, vol. 7, pp. 99, 100.
? On the mutual repugnance of the two nations in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, see some excellent paragraphs by Schevill, R. , in Romanische Forschungen,
XX, 1907, pp. 626–634.
Philip II appears as a character in Thomas Heywood's If you know not me,
You know no bodie. A Philip of Spain, now lost, is mentioned by Henslowe in 1602.
3


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126
The Restoration Drama
productions as Wadeson's Humorous Earle of Gloster with his
Conquest of Portingall (1600), The Conqueste of Spayne by
John a Gaunt, in which Day, Hathway and Haughton conspired,
or Chettle and Dekker's Kinge Sebastiane of Portingalle (these
last two in 1601), were any more closely associated with actual
literature of the peninsula, however this last may have touched
on a topic of some contemporary historical interest. Indeed, the
number of English dramas up to the death of Elizabeth which
can be traced even remotely to a source ultimately Spanish is
surprisingly small. Marlowe's Tamburlaine was partially drawn
from Pedro Mexia's Silva de varia lección; but this last had
been translated into Italian, French and English (by Thomas
Fortescue in his Foreste or Collection of Histories) long before
Marlowe came to write. And, in Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen
of Verona, the story of Julia and Proteus was suggested by that
of Felix and Felismena in the second book of the Diana of the
Portuguese Spaniard Montemayor. But the probable intervention
of the now lost play, The History of Felix and Philiomena, acted
3 January 1585, should dispose of any theory of a direct Shake-
spearean contact with this much-exploited Spanish source. Other
Shakespearean examples of 'Spanish influence' have been affirmed.
Such are the correspondences between Twelfth Night and the
Comedia de los Engaños of Lope de Rueda; but both could have
found a common source in Bandello or, possibly, in a dramatised
version by an academy at Siena called Gl Ingannati'; and such,
too, is the notion that Shakespeare drew on Conde Lucanor for
his Taming of the Shrew, a comedy obviously recast from the
earlier anonymous Taming of a Shrew, combined with a plot of
Italian extraction, immediately derived from Gascoigne's comedy,
Supposes. A more interesting suggestion is that which traces the
sources of The Tempest to the fourth chapter of 'a collection of
mediocre tales,' entitled Noches de Invierno, the work of one
Antonio de Eslava and first published at Pamplona in 16091.
Fitzmaurice-Kelly has given the weight of his authority to a
respectful treatment of this source, adding:
This provenance may be thought to lend colour to the tradition that
Shakespeare dramatised an episode from Don Quixote-a book that he might
1 For this and much else in these paragraphs, the writer is indebted to Fitzmaurice-
Kelly's most valuable paper, The Relations between Spanish and English Literature,
1910. See, also, two notes by Perott, J. de, on this topic and a Spanish parallel to
Love's Labour's Lost in the Shakespeare-Jahrbuch, vol. XLV, 1908, pp. 151–4; and
the valuable paper by Schevill, R. , 'On the Influence of Spanish Literature on English
in the Early Seventeenth Century' in Romanische Forschungen, u. s.


## p. 127 (#149) ############################################

Spanish Personages in English Plays 127
a
easily have read in Shelton's translation published in 1612, or, perhaps, even
in the manuscript which Shelton had kept by him for some four or five years.
At any rate, the following entry occurs under the date 1633 in the register
of the Stationers' company:-'The History of Cardenio by Mr. Fletcher and
Shakespeare, 208. '1
As to Spanish personages interspersed through Elizabethan drama,
it has been well said: “They were either arrogant, boastful,
pompously affected or cruel,' sheer caricatures, in a word, drawn
with an unfriendly pen? Middleton's Lazarillo in Blurt Master-
.
Constable (a sad perversion of that delightful rascal, his namesake
of Tormes), and Jonson's ridiculous caricature in the pretended
Don Diego of The Alchemist are sufficient illustrations of this.
As to the boasters and bullies of the playwrights, Bobadill, Captain
Tucca, Ancient Pistol and the rest, there was no need to bespeak
them in Spain. For such traits of the kind as were not derived
from observation can show a clear literary descent from the Miles
Gloriosus of Plautus. That Shakespeare contrived to keep his
Don Armado human, as well as absurdly lofty and vainglorious,
is partly due to the fact that Armado is the portrait of an actual
mad Spaniard, known as 'fantastical Monarcho,' who haunted the
London of his day. And Armado, too, had had his immediate
literary model in Lyly's contribution, Sir Thopas in Endimion,
to the Plautine line of descent just mentioned.
Towards the end of the reign of king James I, Spanish litera-
ture became better known in England, and we naturally look for
the effect of this on English drama. But this relation was still
general and established largely through French and Italian trans-
lation; and it is easy to make too much of it. The plays of
Beaumont and Fletcher have been alleged to disclose more
especially that contact between the dramas of the two nations
which some scholars have striven anxiously to establish ; and
this, notwithstanding the accurate statement of Dryden as to
dramatic plots that 'Beaumont and Fletcher had most of theirs
from Spanish novels. ' Some seventeen of the fifty-two plays
commonly attributed to Beaumont and Fletcher have been traced,
in a greater or less measure of indebtedness, to Spanish literature.
? U. s. pp. 21, 22.
2 Underhill, J. G. , Spanish Literature in the England of the Tudors, 1899, p. 357.
3 Middleton might have had his Lazarillo in English, long since translated by
David Rowland and printed in 1576. There is no reason for assuming that Ben
Jonson knew Spanish ; his few allusions to Don Quixote and the Spanish phrases of
The Alchemist to the contrary notwithstanding. See Schevill, R. , U. s. pp. 612, 613.
* Preface to An Evening's Love, Works of Dryden, ed. Scott-Saintsbury, vol. in,
p. 252.


## p. 128 (#150) ############################################

128
The Restoration Drama
Eighteen others remain unidentified as to source, and some of these
disclose a content and a manner not unlike the ruling traits of the
drama of Spain. If, then, we consider the almost incredible mass
of the writings of Lope de Vega (to mention him only), unread by
English and even by Spanish scholars, and further keep in mind
that those conversant with Spanish drama are not always con-
versant with English and vice versa, it would be rash to affirm
that the last word has been said on a topic as yet not seriously
opened. Our present information, however, may be set forth as
follows, although, with regard to the plays on Spanish subjects
attributed to Beaumont and Fletcher, it should be premised that
most of them were composed at a date precluding the possibility
that Beaumont had a hand in them! Cervantes was Fletcher's
favourite Spanish author; and he seems to have been acquainted
solely with his prose. From the Novelas Exemplares, the English
poet drew the major plots of The Chances, The Queene of Corinth,
The Faire Maide of the Inne and Loves Pilgrimage, with the
underplot of Rule a Wife And have a Wife as well. The Custome
of the Countrey is derived from the romance of Persiles y Sigis-
munda, the last work to come from the great Spaniard's hand.
As to Don Quixote, apart from possible suggestions for certain
episodes of Beaumont's Knight of the Burning Pestle, the plot
of The Coxcombe, an episode of The Double Marriage and a
personage of The Prophetesse have been traced by various critics
to the same immortal romances. Besides Cervantes, Fletcher
drew on Lope de Vega for his Pilgrim, on Juan de Flores for
Women pleas'd and on Gonzalo de Cespedes for The Spanish
Curate and The Maid in the Mill; and not one of these originals
is a play, nor need Fletcher have read a word of Spanish to have
become acquainted with them; for all had been translated into
French or English and were readily accessible to his hand4.
About two only of the Fletcherian plays has any question on
these points arisen. Loves Cure, first printed in the folio of
1647, but commonly dated back to the early years of king James,
has been referred to a comedy by Guillen de Castro, written at
>
a
1 Cf. ante, appendix to vol. vi, chap. v.
? On this topic, see the sane words of Schevill, U. 8. pp. 617—624; and the intro-
duction, by Murch, H. S. , in his ed. of this play, Yale Studies in English, 1908.
3 See, on this topic, Fitzmaurice-Kelly, preface to Shelton's Don Quixote, Koeppel,
Quellenstudien,' Münchener Beiträge, 1895, and Rapp, Studien über das englische
Theater, 1892.
4
* See the résumé of this subject in the present writer's Elizabethan Drama, vol. 11,
p. 215.


## p. 129 (#151) ############################################

Later Spanish Influences
129
so late a date as to make it quite impossible that Fletcher could
have seen it? . Again, Fletcher's Island Princesse has been re-
ferred to a source in the writings of the younger Argensola, not
translated out of Spanish at such a date that Fletcher could have
seen it? But these matters are still under discussion, and, on
this particular subject, we may take refuge in the judgment of
Fitzmaurice-Kelly who writes: 'Suffice it to say that, at the
present stage, the balance of probabilities is against the view that
Fletcher knew Spanish. '
If we turn to other dramatists, we find an occasional contempo-
rary of Fletcher following in his footsteps. The Spanish Gipsie, a
tragicomedy by Middleton and William Rowley, is made up of an
effective combination of two stories of Cervantes, La Fuerza de
la Sangre and La Gitanilla. Rowley collaborated, too, with
Fletcher in The Maid in the Mill, a comedy based on a story
of Gonzalo de Cespedes, translated by Leonard Digges and called
Gerardo, the Unfortunate Spaniard. Rowley's own powerful
tragedy Alls Lost by Lust, draws on Spanish story, though his
precise source remains problematic4. Once more, A Very Woman,
by Massinger, is derived from a story of the Novelas Exemplares.
The same dramatist's Renegado is said to be based on Cervantes's
Los Baños de Argel, and similarities have been traced between
the same two authors in The Fatall Dowry and the interlude,
El Viejo celoso. Moreover, it is said that neither of these Spanish
pieces was translated in Massinger's lifetime, although this is not
to be considered certain. We may not feel sure that a Spanish
play has actually influenced an English play by direct borrowing,
until we reach Shirley, who, on credible authority, is reported to
have utilised El Castigo del Pensèque of Tirso de Molina in The
Opportunitie and Lope de Vega's Don Lope de Cardona in The
Young Admirall. Fitzmaurice-Kelly sceptically observes, even as
to these examples : 'a minute demonstration of the extent of
Shirley's borrowings would be still more satisfactory. '
The last two volumes of Dodsley's Old Plays contain several
dramas of the restoration which are Spanish in scene. Of these,
The Rebellion by Thomas Rawlins seems wholly fanciful with its
hero disguised as a tailor and its crowded and improbable in-
· Stiefel in Herrig's Archiv, vol. xcix, p. 271.
2 See the same in vol. II, pp. 277 ff.
: The Relations between Spanish and English Literature, pp. 22, 23.
* On the topic, see the edition of the play by Stork, C. W. , Publications of the
University of Pennsylvania, 1910, vol. XII, p. 70.
5 The Relations, as above, p. 23.
9
E. L. VIII.
CH. V.


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130
The Restoration Drama
cident.