No More Learning

There are no 'lesser
dramatists' of this date. The lesser dramatist is the result of the
extraordinary interest in the drama which these authors created,
and the assiduous effort made by patrons, managers and players
to produce plays in the new style which took the town. Moreover,
we have to wait some years before the work of lesser writers
survives sufficiently to enable us to appraise it. As a consequence,
the lesser Elizabethan dramatists, as a group, belong to the last
years of Elizabeth's reign; and we owe it to the lucky chance of
the survival of Henslowe's diary that we can eke out our know-
ledge of a few extant plays by the notices in that diary of the
large mass of work done by the writers of them. It'is important
that the student of Elizabethan drama should appreciate justly the
meaning and the value of Henslowe's record. We have no such
light upon the proceedings of the company for which Shakespeare
wrote and played. But it seems quite clear that Shakespeare
was never under the harrow of a Henslowe.
The players of his company obtained the control of their own
affairs and managed their business on cooperative principles. The
system of the Chamberlain's men tended to produce a limited
number of dramatists of proved ability, who were encouraged to
write plays of a quality that would ensure a run at their first
production and justify reproduction afterwards. The system of
Henslowe's company, on the contrary, tended to produce quantity
rather than quality. The public was attracted by variety and
novelty rather than by excellence, and, in order that new plays
might be produced quickly, very imperfect revision of old plays
was allowed to pass, and the system of collaboration between three


## p. 310 (#334) ############################################

310
Lesser Elizabethan Dramatists
or four writers was freely encouraged. For these reasons, we may
feel some confidence that the group of lesser dramatists who wrote
for Henslowe during the years covered by his diary is representa-
tive of the body of lesser dramatists writing during those years
for the London stage.
But, before we fix our attention upon individual writers whose
plays have come down to us, two facts must be noticed which
affect them as a body. In the first place, because they were
lesser dramatists, and because the printing of a play, in those
days, was an altogether secondary matter to the acting of it,
their work can hardly be said to have survived. The fragments
that have come down to us are so few and so mutilated that, in
many cases, we are not justified in regarding them as character-
istic. It is impossible, for instance, to decide whether The
Tragedy of Hoffman is truly representative of the large dramatic
output of Henry Chettle. We may feel reasonably sure that no
important play of Shakespeare has been lost. We cannot be sure
that the substance of Chettle's or Munday's work has survived.
What we have of it may not be in any sense characteristic. The
second fact that has to be reckoned with by the critic of the
lesser dramatists in Henslowe's employ is the system of collabora-
tion under which they wrote. Not the least of the fascinations of
the Elizabethan era is that it affords remarkable instances of a
collaboration by which two writers of genius stimulate and supple-
ment each other's powers. But the collaboration which is possible
because the minds of those taking part in it are commonplace is a
different matter altogether. Among lesser writers, collaboration
tends to suppress individuality and distinction of style, and makes
still more confusing and difficult the task of ascribing to individual
writers any qualities truly their own. Moreover, all Elizabethan
dramatists may be said to have collaborated in a special sense
with their predecessors. Broadly speaking, the Elizabethan drama
was a process of re-writing and re-constructing old plays. The
Elizabethan author stood in much closer relation to his 'origins'
and sources than did later English writers. But this, again, tended
to suppress the individuality of second-rate poets. The lesser
dramatist does not set his own stamp on the old play' as Shake-
speare does. There is no vital connection between King Lear and
The True Chronicle History of King Leir : Shakespeare's play is a
new thing. But, in reading Munday's Downfall of Robert, Earle
of Huntington, the question continually suggests itself whether
the play is much more than an alteration-an alteration which


## p. 311 (#335) ############################################

Dependence of Lesser Elizabethan Dramatists 31 1
6
remains at the same artistic and imaginative level as the thing
altered. The conclusion is that the student must not expect
to distinguish lesser dramatists from each other as greater
dramatists are distinguished. The attempt to characterise them
involves the use of a critical microscope which magnifies their
merits.
At the same time, it must be allowed that the lesser dramatist
whose main work belongs to the last years of Elizabeth's reign
has an individuality of his own which he loses after Shakespeare
and Ben Jonson have impressed their age. A lesser dramatist,
however rough, formless and incoherent, is more interesting when
he is himself, or when he is the product of the general mind of
his time, than when he is a 'son' of Ben Jonson or, palpably,
a student of some particular aspect of the art of Shakespeare.
The lesser Jacobean dramatist nearly always derives from some
acknowledged master, and is an echo as well as an inferior. The
Elizabethan lesser dramatist, on the contrary, does not interest us
as an echo, but very much more deeply as the commonplace com-
panion of the great master, his surrounding and background. It
is much more interesting to find in Munday's John a Kent and
John a Cumber clumsy work on a theme which, in Shakespeare's
hands, is magically effective, than to notice how patiently and even
skilfully 'Dick' Brome follows the manner of Jonson. And, there-
fore, it is disappointing to the student that, because of the con-
ditions under which they respectively worked, much more of
Brome should be extant than of Munday.
Henslowe’s diary begins to record payments made to authors for
writing plays at the end of 1597. The entries come to an end, for
the most part, in 1603. During this time, twenty-seven authors
are named as composers of plays or parts of plays. The work of
ten of these is trifling. Of the remaining seventeen, six are writers
of force and distinction, not to be reckoned as 'lesser. ' These are
Chapman, Dekker, Heywood, Jonson, Middleton, Webster? We
may note that, of these six, only Chapman refuses to collaborate
with inferior men ; that none of Jonson's work done in collabo-
ration is extant, except his additions to Jeronimo; and that
Middleton and Webster do not occur in the diary till 1602.
Eleven writers are left whom we may describe as the main group
of Elizabethan lesser dramatists. These, in alphabetical order, are
Henry Chettle, John Day, Michael Drayton, Richard Hathwaye,
William Haughton, Anthony Munday, Henry Porter, William
1 Perhaps Maxton, 'the new poete,' is John Marston.
6


## p. 312 (#336) ############################################

312
Lesser Elizabethan Dramatists
Rankins, Samuel Rowley, Wentworth Smith, Robert Wilson.
Rowley and Smith begin writing in 1601 ; Rankins is mentioned
only in 1599 and 1601; the remaining eight constitute the main
group of lesser men who were writing for the Elizabethan stage
between the end of 1597 and the beginning of 1603.
The comments of Francis Meres, in 1598, upon English con-
temporary writers, give us some means of checking the results of
an examination of Henslowe's records. Of Henslowe's men, Meres
names, among our best for tragedy,' Drayton, Chapman, Dekker,
Jonson; among the best for comedy,' Heywood, Munday, Chap-
man, Porter, Wilson, Hathwaye, Chettle. From his place in the
list, we conjecture that Wilson-son of the more famous Robert
Wilson, the elder-is the writer for Henslowe. One writer,
Chapman, shares with Shakespeare the honour of occurring in
both lists. All the writers whom we have noted as doing a
substantial amount of work for Henslowe's companies are men-
tioned by Meres, except Day and Haughton.
In considering the work of these men, upon whose output
for six years a sudden light is thrown by Henslowe's papers, we
propose to follow a chronological order so far as may be, and
to begin with the older men who were practised hands at the date
when Henslowe's payments are first recorded. Fortunately, there
is one whom we may safely look upon as the senior of our group, and
choose as a natural centre round which the work of the rest may be
grouped, or from which it may be derived. This is the comedian
Anthony Munday, spoken of by Meres as 'our best plotter,' per-
haps because of his seniority and experience as a hewer and
trimmer of plays rather than with any reference to his faculty for
conducting a plot in the modern sense of the term. Of the lesser
Elizabethan dramatists, Munday is the most considerable, interest-
ing and typical. In his general versatility, his copiousness and
his reliance upon himself and upon life for his learning and
culture, he corresponds, on his own level, to Shakespeare and
Ben Jonson on the heights. His long life, moreover, of eighty
years (1553-1633) covers the whole of the Elizabethan and Jaco-
bean era of dramatic activity. He was born before Shakespeare ;
Jonson survived him only by four years. He was a Londoner, and
had some experience as an actor before his apprenticeship, in 1576,
to John Allde, stationer and printer. In 1578, he undertook a
journey to Rome, to see foreign countries and to learn their
languages, according to his own account; but, also, with the less
creditable object of spying upon English Catholics abroad, and


## p. 313 (#337) ############################################

9
Anthony Munday's Early Life 313
getting together materials for popular pamphlets against them on
his return to England. After interesting adventures on the way,
he reached Rome, and was entertained at the English college,
so that he came to describe himself as 'sometime the Pope's
scholar. His experiences were detailed in a pamphlet published
'
in 1582, with the title The English Romayne Life. This was a
rejoinder to a tract, printed in 1581, in the Catholic interest, from
which we get some interesting lights upon Munday's early con-
nection with the stage. He was ‘first a stage player,' says the
pamphlet, “after' (i. e. afterwards) 'an apprentice. ' On his return
from Italy, 'this scholar did play extempore' and was ‘hissed from
his stage,' 'Then being thereby discouraged he set forth a ballad
against plays; but yet (0 constant youth) he now again begins to
ruffle upon the stage? '
This is to say that Munday attempted to achieve fame in that
special department of the Elizabethan player's art of which Robert
Wilson and Richard Tarlton ? were the most distinguished orna-
ments. The extemporising clown not only supplied the humorous
element of the interlude, but, also, he was frequently called for
after the play was over, when he performed a jig, accompanied
by some kind of recitative of his own composing in prose or
The audience might challenge him to rime on any subject,
and Tarlton's facility was so remarkable that 'Tarletonising is
used as equivalent to extemporising. There is extant a 'platt' or
programme of the second part of The Seven Deadly Sins, which is
said to have been the composition of Tarlton; and, probably,
such skeleton plays, in which actors were expected to fill in their
parts extempore, were not uncommon in the early days of the Eliza-
bethan drama. Tarlton's successor in the esteem of the public as
a clown actor was William Kemp. It is easy to see from 'Kemp's
applauded Merriments of the Men of Gotham,' which is inserted in
A Knack to Know a Knave, how inevitably the improvising clown,
with his licence to introduce his own additions, was a discordant
2
verse.
>
1 Consult 'A Caveat to the Reader touching A. M. his discovery,' printed at the
end of the pamphlet. The interesting theory (cf. post, vol. vi, chap. XIV) attributing to
Munday the anonymous authorship of The Third Blast of Retreat from Plays and
Theatres (1560) has to meet the difficulty that its author declares himself to bave
'bene a great affecter of that vaine art of Plaie-making, insomuch that I have thought
no time so wel bestowed, as when exercised in the invention of these follies. ' The
writer of the preface, Anglo-phile Eutheo, quotes these words and confirms them-
‘yea, which I ad, as excellent an Autor of these vanities, as who was best. ' We must
revise existing opinion on the subject altogether, if we are to treat Munday as a well
known writer of plays so early as 1580.
? As to Tarlton, cf. ante, vol. iv, p. 360, and ibid. , bibl. , p. 531.
9


## p. 314 (#338) ############################################

314
Lesser Elizabethan Dramatists
career.
and incalculable element in the play, and hindered the develop-
ment of artistic drama. The extempore clown of real genius
usually failed as an author; but Robert Wilson was a remarkable
exception. His two interludes, The Three Ladies of London, and
The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London, are specimens of
belated interludes modified in the direction of true drama by
the life and the reality imported into the interlude by the ex-
tempore actor. It is from these interludes that Munday's work
derives.
Munday's ballad writing is an important part of his earlier
It put him into contact with the folklore of England, and
had an appreciable influence on his dramatic work. It was so
energetic that, by 1592, he looked upon himself as having some
sort of monopoly of the art. Another of his activities, which was
not without its influence upon the dramatists of the age, was his
diligent translation of French romances, such as Amadis de Gaule
and Palmerin of England. When Ben Jonson satirises him as
Balladino, there is a double allusion to his ballad writing and to
his Palladino of England, translated from the French.
A translation from the Italian may be given as the beginning
of Munday's work as a dramatist, although it must be borne in
mind that his authorship is not more than highly probable. This
is Fedele and Fortunio, The Deceits in Love discoursed in a
Comedy of two Italian Gentlemen : translated into English,
printed in 1584? This play must have had some vogue, for one of
the characters, captain Crackstone, is alluded to by Nashe as
well known in a tract printed in 15962; and its influence as an
admirably translated example of Italian comedy must have been
considerable upon English drama. It is annoying, therefore, that
the piece, which both Collier and Halliwell-Phillipps saw and quoted,
has disappeared, and that we must judge of it by Halliwell's
meagre extracts". These present the humorous low life of the play
rather than the romantic part, which was clearly of the character
of Shakespeare's earlier comedies, in which pairs of lovers are
fantastically at cross purposes :
Lo! here the common fault of love, to follow her that flies,
And fly from her that makes pursuit with loud lamenting cries.
Fedele loves Victoria, and she hath him forgot;
Virginia likes Fedele best, and he regards her not.
1 In Stationers' register, 12 November 1584; Arber, vol. 11, p. 202.
? Have with you to Saffron Walden.
3 (See, however, bibliography, post, p. 474. ]
4 Halliwell(-Phillipps), J. O. , The Literature of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries, 1851, No. 2, pp. 18, 19, 24.


## p. 315 (#339) ############################################

The Translation of Fedele and Fortunio 315
Victoria's song at her window and Fedele's in answer are of real
poetic charm, and Fedele's denunciation of woman's fickleness is
exactly in the strain, as it is in the metre, of the riming rhetoric
of Love's Labour's Lost. But the comic scenes are not less
interesting. Their combination with the romantic intrigue is
organic, and, in clear strong outlines, the play gives us two
motives which receive elaborate development in English drama.
Crackstone is the prototype of Bobadill and Tucca and all the
braggadocios of the Elizabethan stage—but of Falstaff, also, for
every one is glad of his company: 'I have such a wild worm in my
head as makes them all merry. And, secondly, the witchcraft
scenes of the play deserve careful notice' Medusa, the witch, is
capable of development, either romantically and tragically, or
humorously and by the method of realism. The witches of Mac-
beth, as well as the charlatans of Jonson and Brome, may be derived
from this germ ; but, in the main, the witchcraft, in Munday's
play, is realistic, in actual connection with the vigorous low life
characters. Victoria's maid Attilia, who is wooed by Pedante and
Crackstone, and is the confidante and champion of her mistress, is
put before us in clear English speech, and, of course, stands at the
beginning of a long gallery of familiar creations. She is indis-
pensable in nearly all ensuing species of the drama. There seems
to be no blank verse in the play. Riming alexandrines and four-
teen-syllabled lines are generally employed; but, in Fedele's speech
already referred to, special seriousness and dignity of style are
attained by the use of riming ten-syllabled lines in stanzas of six
lines? This might be expected in 1584 ; what is unexpected is
the idiomatic English vernacular of the translation, which stamps
Munday as much more than a translator in the ordinary sense. His
a
prose translations do not display any special power in transforming
the original into native English ; so that the mere style of Fedele
and Fortunio is an argument for its having been translated in
order to be acted, and for the translator having expected himself
to be one of the actors. Nashe's allusion makes it highly probable
that captain Crackstone had appeared upon the Elizabethan
stage.
Munday, in 1580% and in his earliest published work, is anxious
i Presumably, Halliwell alludes to these when he says that one scene might by
possibility have been the germ of one in Macbeth'; and yet he seems to imply that he
bas not printed this scene.
? Compare Biron's speech, Love's Labour's Lost, act 1, sc. 1, 92-94.
3 A View of Sundry Examples, &c. , 1580: pp. 71 and 75 of the reprint in Collier's
John a Kent and John a Cumber.
2


## p. 316 (#340) ############################################

316
Lesser Elizabethan Dramatists
6
to proclaim himself 'servant to the Earl of Oxford. ' The earl of
Oxford's company of players acted in London between 1584 and
1587. Fleay, therefore, claims for Munday the authorship of The
Weakest goeth to the Wall, a play printed in 1600, 'as it hath
bene sundry times plaide by the right honourable Earle of
Oxenford, Lord great Chamberlaine of England his servants. '
It is in favour of this claim that the story of the play is found in
Rich's Farewell to the Military Profession, printed 1581. But
the play is very different from Fedele and Fortunio. Its chief
merit is the force and fluency of portions of its blank verse, which
must be later than Tamburlaine. On the other hand, there are
signs of an older style in the play. We have frequent passages of
rime, and, in one place, the six-lined stanza occurs. The humorous
scenes are a great advance upon Kemp's applauded ‘Merriments
already referred to. They are excellent examples of the low
life comedy that grew out of the part of the extempore clown
in earlier interludes. Barnaby Bunch the 'botcher'l, and Sir
Nicholas the country vicar, are vigorously etched from contempo-
rary English life, and speak a fluent vernacular prose which, in
one or two places, recalls Falstaff. Jacob Smelt the Dutchman
requires a date nearer to 1600 than to 1580, but all this might be
Munday's work, and is certainly the work of his fellow craftsmen.
Moreover, the general looseness of construction is characteristic
of 'our best plotter’; but he cannot have written the sonorous
blank verse of the historic scenes, or made Emmanuel reproach
Frederick-
That from the loathsome mud from whence thou camest,
Thou art so bold out of thy buzzard's nest,
To gaze upon the sun of her perfections!
Is there no beauty that can please your eye,
But the divine and splendant excellence
Of my beloved dear Odillia 2 ?
The first extant play which is certainly Munday's is John a
Kent and John a Cumber, of which we have a transcript dated
December 1595. Fleay has very plausibly conjectured that this
is identical with The Wiseman of West Chester, which was pro-
duced at the Rose by the Admiral's men on 2 December 1594, and
was very popular. Henslowe mentions thirty-one performances
within three years. On lines laid down by Greene in Frier Bacon
and Frier Bongay, it describes the 'tug for maistree’ between
the two wizards John a Kent and John a Cumber. When the play
a
I. e. tailor.
2 C. 4.


## p. 317 (#341) ############################################

>
John a Kent and John a Cumber 317
opens, the two heroines, Sidanen and Marian, are preparing a
strong confection of deadly aconite, which they propose to drink
with the husbands presently to be forced upon them, the earls of
Morton and Pembroke. But the romantic side of the story is entirely
subordinated to the wiles and disguisings by which the wizards
succeed in getting possession of the heroines, first for one set of
lovers and then for the other. Finally, by the subtlety of John a
Kent, Sir Griffin and lord Powis win their brides. The power of
the wizards to disguise and transform, and the masking of the
'antiques,' make the play a maze of errors not easy to follow. With
this main action, the comic scenes of "Turnop with his Crewe
of Clownes and a Minstrell' are mingled in pleasant confusion.
"Turnop and his Crew' are not unworthy of being mentioned in
the same breath with Bottom and his mates. Munday's play is a
humble variation of the dramatic type of A Midsummer Night's
Dream. But another parallel with Shakespeare's work is even
more interesting. Shrimp, John a Kent's familiar, makes himself
invisible and, by music in the air, leads his master's enemies astray
till they lie down to sleep from weariness. It throws light upon
Shakespeare's mind and imagination rather than upon Munday's
to suppose that Munday's play gave bints for the character of
Ariel and the exquisite poetry of The Tempest; but the earlier
play, in its brightness and sweetness and wholesomeness, was
worthy of supplying the ground upon which Shakespeare's feet
stood—the point of departure for his mind—when he created
his own masterpiece.
This play shows that Munday was interested in English folk-
lore. His next play is a further incursion into the same type of
drama, which may be looked upon, in some respects, as a variety of
the chronicle play, and, in others, as a variety of the romantic play
of which Fedele and Fortunio was a specimen. As in John a Kent
and John a Cumber, historical characters are brought into the
play and mixed up with folklore. Munday's new subject is the
Robin Hood cycle of legends and ballads, which had been con-
nected with dramatic representations early in the sixteenth, and
even in the fifteenth century. It is worth noticing that a line in
Fedele and Fortunio, ‘Robin-goodfellowe, Hobgoblin, the devil
and his dam", cannot have been a literal translation from the
Italian. Munday's treatment of the Robin Hood story ran into
two parts. Part I, when the plays were printed in 1601, was
Quoted by Collier, History of Dramatic Poetry, 1879, vol. III, p. 60. But for
• dam' we ought probably to read dame. '


## p. 318 (#342) ############################################

318
Lesser Elizabethan Dramatists
>
>
entitled The Downfall of Robert, Earle of Huntington; part II
was called The Death of Robert, Earle of Huntington; but both
title-pages describe the earl as called Robin Hood of merrie
Sherwodde. It would seem probable that, in a passage in the
first play, we have a description of an earlier play, of which
Munday's aspires to be a reconstruction. This contained 'mirthful
matter full of game' and confined itself strictly to the pranks and
pastimes of Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Friar Tuck and the other
familiar personages of the Robin Hood May game. Munday
prides himself upon adding to this the story of 'noble Robert's
wrong' and ' his mild forgetting' of 'treacherous injury. ' Fleay
thinks that the old play was The Pastoral Comedy of Robin Hood
and Little John, written in 1594. It cannot be claimed that the
attempt to identify Robin Hood with Robert earl of Huntington,
and Maid Marian with the chaste Matilda' whom king John
persecuted, is artistically successful; the two elements of history
and folklore are not satisfactorily fused together. On the whole,
John a Kent and John a Cumber has more artistic unity than The
Downfall of Robert, Earle of Huntington.
But the effort to work
in the historical element is due to a true artistic instinct and
aspiration. Munday wishes to raise his subject above farce and
horseplay to a romantic and even tragic level. He gropes, also,
after some sort of organic unity which shall make his play more
than a series of incidents. An effort is made to produce sustained
blank verse, which is most successful in the earl of Leicester's
account of the prowess of Richard I. For a moment, the dramatist
touches the epic note of the history play, when he is fired by the
thought of the deeds of Richard Cour de Lion. But, as a whole,
the historical side of the play is weak and feebly conceived. On
the romantic and imaginative side, it is stronger. When Fitzwater
comes upon the stage seeking 'the poor man's patron, Robin Hood,
and the life of the greenwood is described, Munday uses the riming
verse which he seems always to handle more easily than blank
verse, and the result may be called a pleasant and intelligent
attempt to express the soul of the old English Robin Hood story.
This is the soundest and best part of the play and was deservedly
popular. We find in the play phrases that may have rested in the
mind of Shakespeare : such are “heaven's glorious canopy,' 'made
the green sea red' and, in the second part, 'the multitudes of seas
died red with blood '; but a more general influence upon Shake-
speare's work of Munday's attempt to idealise and dignify the
Robin Hood legend may, probably, be found in As You Like It.
6


## p. 319 (#343) ############################################

Munday's Share in the Robin Hood Plays 319
Munday was paid £5 for the first part of his play in February
1598, and its vogue may have prompted Shakespeare's picture of
the forest ‘where they live like the old Robin Hood of England . . .
and fleet the time carelessly as they did in the golden world. '
The first part of Robin Hood was immediately succeeded by a
second part, in which Munday was assisted by Henry Chettle.
When the two parts were printed in 1601, The Downfall was
Chettle's revision of Munday's play for performance at court at
the end of 1598. This revision clearly consisted of the induction
in which the play is set and the ‘Skeltonical' rimes. The Death
presents a more difficult problem. Up to the death of Robin
Hood, it is, in the main, Munday's work and continues the style
and tone of Munday's combination of the Robin Hood legend with
a history ; but this occupies less than one third of the play, and,
when Robert is dead, a new play begins dealing with the ‘lamentable
tragedy of chaste Matilda,' and striking a tragic note quite different
from anything written by Munday. At the end of The Downfall,
a second play is promised us, which is to describe the funeral of
Richard Cour de Lion; and this was written in 1598, but is no
longer extant. It is tempting to suppose that the opening section
of The Death was written originally as a part of The Funeral of
Richard Coeur de Lion; and that Chettle, when he 'mended' the
play for the court, cut down Munday's work as much as he could.
In Henslowe’s diary, Munday is mentioned in connection with
fifteen or, perhaps, sixteen plays, between December 1597 and
December 1602. Of these, only two—The Downfall of Robert,
Earle of Huntington and The Set at Tennis-are ascribed to
his sole authorship. Munday's most frequent collaborators are
Drayton, Chettle, Wilson, Hathwaye and Dekker; Smith, Middleton
and Webster are mentioned as collaborating once. Of the lost
plays in which Munday had a share, we know that The Funeral
of Richard Cour de Lion continued the Robin Hood plays, while
Mother Redcap and Valentine and Orson belonged almost certainly
to the same type of play, which used sources more popular than
those of either the Italian romance or the literary chronicle.
These plays were founded upon ballads and chap-books and folk-
lore. They make a clumsy use of historical motives and romantic
motives and generally fail to fuse them successfully with low
life scenes—with the 'crew' of peasants, or "sort' of artisans-
which are often the salt of the play. Sir John Oldcastle is another
play in which Munday collaborated. The first part of this play has
survived. It shows a distinct advance towards the history' in
6


## p. 320 (#344) ############################################

320
Lesser Elizabethan Dramatists
the Shakespearean sense, and helps us to realise the special
achievement of a genius which, on the one hand, was to
create the Shakespearean romantic comedy and, on the other,
the Shakespearean history'. But these plays of Munday, just
because there is no genius in them, are more easily perceived to
be natural developments of the interlude as written by the elder
Wilson. In drawing the tree of our drama's descent, we must
insert them between Shakespeare and the interludes.
A play of exactly the same genre as Munday's plays is the
anonymous Looke about you, printed 1600; and it requires some
notice because, in some respects, it is the best specimen of its
class. We find Robin Hood and Robert earl of Huntington
identified in this play as in The Downfall and The Death. But
Robin is a youth remarkable for his good looks and the ward of
prince Richard, afterwards Cour de Lion ; his action in the play
is subordinate. Chronologically, therefore, our play would seem
to come between John a Kent and The Downfall. We are in
exactly the same atmosphere of mixed history and folklore, re-
corded, probably, in ballads and chap-books. Some of the
amateurish mannerisms of The Downfall, such as the use of
'too-too,' and the doubling of words and phrases to obtain emphasis,
occur in Looke about you, while the relation to the play of the
two tricksters, Skink and the 'humorous' earl of Gloster, is a
repetition of the use made of the rival wizards in John a Kent.
The earl of Gloster is, perhaps, a reminiscence in the popular mind
of Robert earl of Gloster, natural son of Henry I and father-in-law
of Ranulph earl of Chester, who is connected with the meagre
historical element in John a Kent. The historical part of Looke
about you deals with the quarrels of the sons of Henry II and is
exceptionally naïve, undignified and clownish. Skink and Gloster
are a sort of double Vice. Skink is tacked on to history as the
agent who administered the poison to fair Rosamond. The play
opens by his appearance before parliament, where Gloster strikes
him in the king's presence. Gloster is committed to the Fleet
prison for striking Skink and, after this perfunctory historical
opening, the real business of the 'pleasant comedy' begins with
the intricate succession of disguises, personations and tricks by
which Skink and Gloster deceive and bewilder their pursuers.
There are reminiscences of The Comedy of Errors in the play
>
1 As to the ascription of this play to Shakespeare see chap. x above.
? He is called 'Robin' once or twice in the play, which suggests the possibility that,
at one time, he was Robin Goodfellow.


## p. 321 (#345) ############################################

Munday lampooned by Jonson and Marston 32 1
and, still more clearly, of the Falstaff scenes in Henry IV. Old
Sir Richard Fanconbridge is a far-away echo of Falstaff; there is
a drawer who answers ‘anon’; but the glimpses of the inside of
the Fleet and of London taverns are at first-hand, and bring
Elizabethan London pleasantly before us. The stammering runner
Redcap is a humorous character of real originality, whose tireless
activity adds delightfully to the bustle and rush of the play. We
should like to claim this play for Munday; but, in the historical
scenes and especially in the character of prince John, we have
a style which cannot be Munday's and was, perhaps, Chettle's. It
is abrupt and extravagantly emphatic. Munday's tragical note in
The Downfall and The Death is smooth, sentimental and lachry-
mose; this writer's is rough, fierce and gloomy. It is very tempting
to discern in the clumsily boorish quarrels of Henry's sons and in
the fierce rant of prince John early work of Henry Chettle.
From about 1592, Munday was in the city's service, and pro-
bably began to write pageants about that date, although his extant
pageants date from 1605 to 1616. His historical and antiquarian
interests brought him the friendship of Stow, and, in 1606, after
Stow's death, he was instructed by the corporation to revise the
Survey of London, which revision was printed in 1618. It is
probable, therefore, that Munday left off writing for the stage
about 1603. His earlier career is excellently illustrated by the
attacks made upon him in the course of the 'war of the theatres,'
which broke out at the end of the century. In The Case is
Altered, Jonson introduces him as Antonio Balladino, the ‘pageant
poet,' 'when a worse cannot be had, and makes him describe his
own style as eminently 'wholesome'-
>
6
I do use as much stale stuff, though I say it myself, as any man does
in that kind I am sure. . . . Why, look you, Sir, I write so plain and keep
that old decorum that you must of necessity like it.
6
As for the new, more elegant play, 'the common sort they care
not for it. This, no doubt, was true. We must not assume that
the typical Elizabethan cared only for Shakespeare and Ben
Jonson. There was a large public to whom inferior plays appealed,
and for whose tastes Henslowe's group of writers very largely
catered. Munday has reason when he declares, “an they'll give
me twenty pounds a play, I'll not raise my vein. ' Besides Jonson's
admirable raillery, we have the equally interesting lampoon of
Munday in Histrio-Mastix, an early allegorical play, revised, pro-
bably by Marston, in 1599. The sketch of the 'sort' of players
E. L. V.
OH. XIII,
21


## p. 322 (#346) ############################################

322 Lesser Elizabethan Dramatists
is a vivid picture of an Elizabethan 'company,' scratched hastily
together, and not quite clear whose men they are :
6
Once in a week new masters we seek,
And never can hold together.
9
6
Posthast, the 'pageanter' and writer of ballads, is the poet of the
company, very anxious to show his skill in 'extempore' riming.
There is no 'new luxury or blandishment' in his style, but 'plenty
of old England's mothers words. ' But the writings of such 'ballad-
mongers' and 'apprentices,' says Marston, 'best please the vulgar
sense?
It is natural, after considering Munday's work and personality,
to proceed to the consideration of Henry Chettle's dramatic
activity ; but this implies discussing the tragedy of our group
of dramatists before we treat of their comedy. Both tragedy
and comedy are natural developments from such a play as
The Downfall; but, on the whole, we should expect what is
actually the case, that the group of plays we have been consider-
ing would lead rather to comedy than to tragedy, and that, on
the whole, the comedies would be better than the tragedies. The
Death of Robert, Earle of Huntington, Chettle's play on Matilda's
death, is a complete contrast in tone and spirit to the work of
Munday which preceded it.
If, from the scope of his activities and the length of his life,
Munday may be placed at the head of those lesser Elizabethan
dramatists whose work was not strong enough to survive except in
fragments, we must place next to him, for mere amount of literary
output, Henry Chettle, whom Henslowe associates with some fifty
plays. His personality can be made out with tolerable clearness.
He was the son of a London dyer, apprenticed in 1577 to a
stationer, and free of the company in 1584. In writing to Thomas
Nashe, he signs himself 'Your old Compositor,' which means that,
in 1589–90, he set up Nashe's tracts against Marprelate. In 1591,
he entered into partnership with two not very reputable stationers,
William Hoskins and John Danter. They published a good many
ballads, some of which may have been from Chettle's pen; and
some plays—one of Peele's, one of Lodge's, a Titus Andronicus in
1594 and, in 1597, the surreptitious first quarto of Romeo and
Juliet. Only one tract by Chettle himself was issued by Danter;
but, in 1592, Chettle edited Greens Groatsworth of Wit, and,
1 R. Simpson's School of Shakespere, vol. II, pp. 21, 31, 33, 39, 40, 51, 62, 67.


## p. 323 (#347) ############################################

a
a
Henry Chettle's
Early Life and Work 323
soon after, wrote his Kinde Hart's Dreame, both of them memor-
able for their references to Shakespeare. These facts establish
very definitely Chettle's connection with playwrights and the stage.
Danter's presses were confiscated in 1597 for printing Jesu's
Psalter without authority, and he printed no more ; but it is
interesting to find Munday's Palladino of England licensed to
Danter shortly before he was suppressed as a printer. Upon the
failure of the printing business, Chettle would seem to have turned
to the writing of plays for a livelihood. In 1598, Meres names him
among our best for comedy,' which is disconcerting, inasmuch as
his comedies have not survived. From Kinde Hart's Dreame
(1593), we can gather that the humours of early comedy did not
come amiss to him, and, if we may ascribe to him the Welsh scenes
of Patient Grissill, we have in them a good example of a rather
boisterous, though, at the same time, arid, comedy which suits his
tragic vein? But Chettle was the most copious of Henslowe's colla-
barators. For about a dozen plays, he alone receives payment,
and we may suppose that these were his own work. In the early
months of 1598, a regular partnership was carried on between
Chettle, Dekker, Drayton and Wilson. In 1599, Dekker is most
frequently Chettle's collaborator. In 1600, Day begins to work
with him. On two occasions, he collaborates with Jonson. But of
all his work very little has survived. We have conjectured that
his tragic style is to be detected first in the melodramatic rant of
prince John in Looke about you. The allusion in that play to
the burning crown of red-hot iron,' with which prince Henry
threatens to sear Gloster's brain, is found again in the single play
extant which is ascribed to Chettle alone—The Tragedy of
Hoffman. But, before we discuss this, we must examine
Chettle's work in The Death of Robert, Earle of Huntington,
written in 1598. The few scenes in that drama which bring us to
the death of Robin Hood are described as a 'short play, and the
audience is asked to have patience while Matilda's tragedy is
ended. After three dumb-shows, the story of king John's pursuit
of Matilda is taken up, and with it is combined the story of the
starvation of lady Bruce and her little son. The epilogue describes
this play as 'Matilda's story shown in act,' and 'rough-hewn out
by an uncunning hand. ' That is to say, our play is the 'old com-
positor's' first tragedy in which he works alone. He succeeds in
striking a note of gloom and grief which marks the play off very
clearly from the tamely cheerful work of Munday. But the style
1 As to Patient Grissill, cf. vol. vi, chap. II.
6
21-2


## p. 324 (#348) ############################################

324
Lesser Elizabethan Dramatists
is extremely 'uncunning' and amateurish. Sometimes, it is merely
jejune and pedestrian, as when Loicester, surrendering to John,
humbly begs his Highness to beware
Of wronging innocence as he hath done.
At other times, it is almost comically naive and undignified, as in
the scene where the earl of Oxford tries to persuade queen Elinor
not to take too seriously the king's infidelities. But the dramatist
struggles manfully to rise above commonplace, and, though he pro-
duces mainly rant and fustian, there are occasional glimpses of
dignity and power: as when king John says of his nobles
Of high heroic spirits be they all;
and when he breaks out to Fitzwater,
Old brands of malice in thy bosom rest.
Moreover, Chettle has the conception in his mind of an atmosphere
of horror and grief as necessary to tragedy. But the elaborate
account of the starving of lady Bruce and her boy is a clumsy
failure, more painful to the reader because he must recall Dante's
canto on Ugolino's death. Only in one place, where lord Bruce
shows his murdered mother to the nobles, does the rant approach
poetic force and suggest to us the style which gives some merit to
The Tragedy of Hoffman. If Chettle copies any master in
Matilda's tragedy, it is Marlowe in his most inflated vein; in
one or two places, the influence of Shakespeare's Richard II is,
perhaps, to be detected.
Could we be certain that the second play in the Two Lament-
able Tragedies is Chettle's work, we should have an interesting
example of the development of his tragic manner. If we may take
Henslowe's writers as representative of the lesser dramatists and,
therefore, as reflecting the dramatic tastes and capacities of the
less cultured patrons of the drama, we perceive that, just at the end
of the sixteenth century, a definite taste for tragedy was setting in.
In 1598 and 1599, we find in Henslowe's lists a series of plays which
were domestic tragedies founded upon actual murders as they were
recorded in the ballads and pamphlets of the day. It was natural
that, if plays were being made out of folklore ballads upon
Robin Hood and other national heroes, mythical or historical, the
murder ballad should be seized upon for stage purposes, and such a
use could not but convey into serious drama a new strain of realism
and vitality. Tragedy would thus be prevented from losing itself
in the imaginative incoherence of the revenge' plays which Kyd's
genius, catching fire from Seneca, had brought into vogue. Arden
6


## p. 325 (#349) ############################################

Chettle's Developmentas a Writer of Tragedy 325
of Feversham, printed in 1592, proves that the possibilities of
domestic tragedy had been perceived before Henslowe's day-
perhaps even as early as 1578/9, when The Creweltie of a Step-
mother and Murderous mychaell are mentioned in the accounts
of the revels'. In 1598 and 1599, Henslowe's collaborators pro-
duced two parts of Black Bateman of the North, Cow of
Collumpton, The Stepmothers Tragedy and Page of Plymouth,
all of which have been plausibly classed as 'murder' plays.
About the same date, if not earlier, the extant Warning for Faire
Women must have been written, a play composed with more pains
than Henslowe's writers usually bestowed upon their productions.
The author had no dramatic or poetic genius; but his play is a
transcript from the daily life of the people. It neither exaggerates
nor idealises; it makes no effort to be tragic or comic, but is so
steeped in English lower class sentiment and feeling that it will
always possess interest and value. In 1599, Day and Haughton
collaborated for Henslowe in Thomas Merry, or Beech's Tragedy.
The murder of Robert Beech by Thomas Merry took place in
London in 1594, and was duly recorded in a pamphlet and in
ballads. This murder is the subject of the first of the two murders
commemorated in Two Lamentable Tragedies, printed as by
Rob. Yarington in 1601. The second murder is an Italian version
of the story of the babes in the wood. Now, when we look at
Chettle's work for Henslowe, at the end of 1599, we find him at
work upon a certain Orphan's Tragedy, for which, in November,
he receives two payments of 108. Much later, in September 1601,
he receives another 108. for the same play. Moreover, in January
1600, a payment of £2 is made to John Day in earnest of The
Italian Tragedy. It is a plausible explanation of these entries
that Chettle wrote the main part of The Orphan's Tragedy, being
helped by Day, and that, in 1601, he was again employed to throw
into a single play Day and Haughton's Thomas Merry and Day
and Chettle's Orphan's Tragedy. He had done similar work in
the case of the Robin Hood plays; The Death of Robert, Earle of
Huntington is just as clumsy and mechanical an amalgamation as
Two Lamentable Tragedies. This view supposes that Robert
Yarington is a pseudonym, or that he merely prepared Chettle's
work for the press. Chettle's style is to be looked for mainly in
the second of the Two Lamentable Tragedies, which represents
The Orphan's Tragedy, otherwise called The Italian Tragedy, of
Henslowe's diary. In these scenes, we find repeated with greater
1 Cf. , as to the development of English domestic drama, vol. vi, chap. iv.
>


## p. 326 (#350) ############################################

326
Lesser Elizabethan Dramatists
force and more concentration those qualities which we have noted
in Chettle's part of The Death of Robert, Earle of Huntington.
But Marlowe is more obviously and definitely imitated. The rant
of the incredible villain Ithamore, the familiar of Barabas in The
Jew of Malta, is almost copied by the first murderer, whose
character is sketched with a horrible intense vigour which is the
aim and goal of Chettle's art. But there are, also, echoes of the
style of Shakespeare's Richard II, and of the peculiar note of
exquisite self-pity to which the deposed king gives perfect ex-
pression. The second of the Two Lamentable Tragedies may,
very plausibly, be set down as Chettle's work; but the first play
is quite different in character. In parts, it is extraordinarily bald
and pedestrian in its realism, taking out of prose pamphlets all
that is trivial and brutal with unintelligent accuracy. On the
whole, it lacks the emotional and imaginative vehemence of the
Chettle drama. Is this the tragic style of Haughton after Day's
work has been stripped away? It is noticeable that the inartistic
faithfulness of the realism which we find here follows the method
of the writer of A warning for Faire Women, which play must be
supposed to have prompted the writing of Thomas Merry and,
probably, of Chettle's play also. But there are occasional intru-
sions into the Merry play of Chettle's heightened emotionalism,
due, probably, to his revision as amalgamator ; and the induction
and chorus scenes, suggested by similar scenes in A warning
for Faire Women, are, probably, also by Chettle. These are more
nearly passionate and tragic than those in A warning, where the
reader is mainly interested in the faithful description of the actual
figures of Comedy and Tragedy, with drum, bagpipes and other
stage properties. As personifications, they are wooden and lifeless,
while Chettle's Homicide, Avarice and Truth have in them some
breath of life and imagination. In every way, then, Chettle's power
improves and develops in the Two Lamentable Tragedies. His
style gains in compression, and there are fewer lapses into rough-
ness and banality; and, as a reviser, he shows more judgment and
neatness in joining together his two plays than he did in the case of
the Robin Hood plays. At the same time, it must be granted that
these revisions and amalgamations are not in any sense fusions ;
the two plots are merely tied together without any true coherence
in a manner essentially inartistic.
The Tragedy of Hoffman, or A Revenge for a Father survives
in an edition of 1631. Unfortunately, the text is much corrupted.
1 Bullen's Old English Plays, vol. iv, p. 48.


## p. 327 (#351) ############################################

The Tragedy of Hoffman
327
The play is one of revenge and murder of the type first made
popular by Kyd; but it has none of Kyd's fluency and lucidity. It
follows very naturally upon the plays we have just been con-
sidering. It is written with a concentration and energy of lan-
guage and metre, lapsing continually into obscurity, which
approximate to the stabbing ferocity of style conspicuous in the
work of Marston and Tourneur. The dramatist's power of creat-
ing a tragic atmosphere, already noted in Chettle's treatment of
Matilda's story, is matured in Hoffman. His imagination collects
and groups together a succession of scenes which are consistently
gloomy and horrible. It is worth noticing that Henslowe men-
tions Chettle twice in 1602 as collaborating with Webster.
Hoffman was composed at the end of 1602; so Chettle may have
stimulated the genius of Webster and himself received some in-
spiration from that great tragedian Hoffman is a second part,
probably of The Danish Tragedy which Henslowe mentions earlier
in 1602. When the play begins, the hero, Hoffman, is discovered
lurking in a cave on the sea-shore with his father's skeleton. The
father, admiral Hoffman, has been executed as a pirate by the
duke of Lunenburg, who destroyed him by fastening a burning
crown of red-hot iron on his temples. The duke's son, Otho, is
conveniently shipwrecked near Hoffman's cave, and becomes his
first victim. Hoffman, by the help of Lorrique, Otho's valet, per-
sonates Otho and continues his riot of revenge with considerable
ingenuity and entire success, until he falls in love with Otho's
mother and, in consequence of this weakness, is entrapped and
himself perishes by the torture of the burning crown. There are
many correspondences between this play and Hamlet, but no real
similarity. Shakespeare is human and sympathetic in a species of
art which Chettle makes inhuman and almost insane. Hoffman, the
revenge-mad hero of Chettle's tragedy, is a special development of
Marlowe's tragic type ; but Chettle is without Marlowe's sense of
the beautiful. Marlowe's type is hardened and coarsened. Chettle,
however, by the time he wrote Hoffman, had improved upon
the workmanship of Matilda's Tragedy, and his coarse but
powerful melodrama was appreciated, probably, by a large public.
Chettle died before 1606. In that year, his friend Dekker repre-
sents him as joining the poets in Elysium-Chaucer, Spenser,
Marlowe and the rest; ‘in comes Chettle sweating and blowing by
reason of his fatness. If Dekker felt that the 'old compositor'
belonged to the company of which Marlowe, Greene and Peele
were notable members, we need not doubt that he had reason for


## p. 328 (#352) ############################################

328
Lesser Elizabethan Dramatists
his judgment, and that Chettle's capacity is inadequately repre-
sented in what has survived of his work. Chettle was never so
well to do as Munday.