No More Learning

1


## p. 293 (#311) ############################################

CHAPTER XII
UNIVERSITY PLAYS
TUDOR AND EARLY STEWART PERIODS
It has been pointed out earlier in this work that, while the
humanist movement at Oxford and Cambridge in the sixteenth
century did not result in any important contributions to classical
scholarship, it was remarkable for the production of a large
number of Latin plays? In the previous volume? , the rise of the
renascence academic drama on the continent was briefly traced,
and its influence on early Tudor comedy, especially school plays,
illustrated. But, in England, school plays had a comparatively
limited vogue. It was at the universities that the humanist drama,
written and acted by scholars, found its real home. Originating
in didactic tendencies, and encouraged, as has been shown, by the
framers of college statutes, its aims, at first, were educational rather
than literary or recreative. But, amidst the medley of plastic in-
fluences in English university life, it was inevitable that drama at
Oxford and Cambridge should not remain purely academic, in the
narrower pedagogic sense. The gradually increasing proportion of
plays in the vernacular produced on college stages, the ceremonial
visits of kings and queens and other royal personages to 'shows'
at the two seats of learning, the attractions, for the scholar play-
wrights and their audiences, of controversies, whether local and
personal or of national significance—these were among the factors
which speedily enlarged the bounds of university drama, and
developed within it that variety of types which the following pages
will attempt to sketch. But, to the last, it remained conscious, at
least intermittently, of its distinctive origin and mission. Though
influencing the popular stage, and being influenced by it in turn,
yet, in the main, it followed an independent and diverging track,
and it has both merits and limitations which are peculiarly its own.
i See vol. II, p. 424. See vol. v, chap. v, pp. 100 ff. 3 See ibid. p. 103.


## p. 294 (#312) ############################################

294
University Plays
5
Mummery and impersonation in their more primitive forms can
be traced back at the universities to the later fourteenth century.
Though Warton's reference to the fragment of an ancient ac-
compt-roll of the dissolved college of Michael-House in Cambridge'
(it was merged in Trinity college) containing expenditure, under
1386, on a comedia, cannot now be verified, it may reasonably be
taken as authentic. The statutes of New college, Oxford (1400)
and of King's college, Cambridge (1443) expressly provide for the
celebration of the favourite medieval ceremony of the boy bishop'
on the feast of the Innocents and of St Nicholas's day respectively.
In the King's college account-books there is an entry of expenses
incurred circa ludos on Christmas day, 1582, and of a payment
lusoribus in aula collegii, on the following day. Similar entries of
expenditure on Christmas ludi or 'disgysynges' are found in 1489,
1496, and later? The account-books of Magdalen college, Oxford,
show that provision was made for 'the bishop' on St Nicholas's
day frequently between 1482 and 1530, as well as for scriptural
ludi on the chief church festivals, and miscellaneous interludes
and entertainments. The register of Merton college, Oxford,
records the election of another mock dignitary, Rex Fabarum
or king of beans, who was chosen on or about the eve of St Edmund
(19 November). In the first entry, in 1485, the election is said
to be per antiquam consuetudinem, and the names of successive
'kings' are given annually till 1539, when the ceremony seems
to have fallen into disuse?
It was while such medieval plays and ceremonies retained
a flickering vitality that humanist drama at the universities began.
At Oxford, the mention in the Magdalen accounts for the first time
of a comedia in 1535, and, again, in 1539, and of a tragedia in 1540,
probably indicates the transition to neo-classic types. According
to Anthony à Wood, the Magdalen comedy of 1535 was Piscator
or The Fisher Caught, by John Hoker, a fellow of the society. In
1536, the Plutus of Aristophanes was acted in Greek at St John's
college, Cambridge. The production in 1546 of the Athenian play-
wright's Eiphvn or Pax, by John Dee the astrologer, at Trinity
college, Cambridge, of which he was a fellow, seems, also, to have
been in the original tongue. But these precedents were not
6
See Plays performed in Cambridge Colleges before 1585 by Smith, G. C. Moore in
Fasciculus Joanni Willis Clark dicatus, p. 267.
· The register is in MS, but the present writer has been given facilities for
consulting it.


## p. 295 (#313) ############################################

Nicholas Grimald
295
followed, and there appears to be no record of a classical tragedy
being acted in Greek on the Tudor university stage'.
Seneca, not Sophocles, was the pattern of the English humanist
when he essayed to write tragedy? It is thus typical of the
blending of old and new influences that the earliest extant uni-
versity plays should be on scriptural subjects, and should be cast
in approximately Senecan mould. Their author was Nicholas
Grimald, born in 1519, and a member, successively, of Christ's
college, Cambridge, and of Brasenose, Merton and Christ Church,
Oxford
The first of these plays, Christus Redivivus, printed at Cologne
in 1543, was written and acted at Brasenose, as Grimald relates in
a dedicatory epistle, soon after his migration to Oxford in 1540.
It combines a Senecan treatment of the Gospel story of the
resurrection, in which Mary Magdalene plays the most effective
part, with a comic underplot centring in the four Roman
soldiers who guard the sepulchre, and who are cleverly dis-
criminated types of the military braggart. Grimald's second
tragedy, Archipropheta, printed at Cologne in 1548, was written
in 1547, on his election to the newly constituted society of Christ
Church. It dealt with the career of John the Baptist, which
Buchanan had already dramatised in his Baptistes, acted at
Bordeaux a few years previously*.
But, in spirit and in style, the two plays are remarkably
different from each other. The Scottish humanist follows the
strict Senecan model, and makes the Baptist the mouthpiece of
his own political and religious opinions. In Grimald's work, John
plays a comparatively passive part. The interest centres in the
voluptuous passion of Herod and his unlawful wife Herodias,
which is portrayed with a lyrical intensity and opulence of phrase
unmatched in Tudor drama till the time of Marlowe. Equally
foreign to the scriptural theme and to the Senecan convention is
the comic note struck by Herod's fool, Gelasimus.
These two Latin tragedies of Grimald, if they were known to
Roger Ascham, did not earn from him in The Scholemaster the
1 John Cristopherson, according to Warton, exhibited in 1546 at Trinity college,
of which he was afterwards master, a Jephtha of his own composition in Greek and in
Latin. The MS of the Greek play is in the library of Trinity college.
Smith, G. C. Moore, u. s. , pp. 269–270, mentions performances at Cambridge
of Troas, 1551/2 and 1560/1, Oedipus and Hecuba, 1559/60, and Medea, 1560/1 and
1563. These were almost certainly Seneca's plays (Troas = Troades).
3 On Grimald's English poems, see vol. 11 of the present work, pp. 179, 180.
* See vol. in of the present work, p. 161.


## p. 296 (#314) ############################################

296
University Plays
commendation of being ‘able to abyde the free touch of Aris-
totles preceptes and Euripides examples' which he reserved for
Buchanan's Jephthes and the Absalom of Thomas Watson of St
John's, Cambridge. Watson, owing to scruples on a minor metrical
point, never published the play; but it is probably that preserved
in the Stowe MSS 957, which is a tragedy of the strict Senecan
type. The story of the revolt in the royal house of Israel lent
itself as naturally to Senecan machinery as did legendary dynastic
feuds of early British kings, and Chusi's relation to David, in act
iv, of the overthrow of Absalom's ill-armed troops and of his
hapless end, is a vivid piece of narrative.
Religious drama of an entirely different type made its appear-
ance on the Cambridge stage when, during the Lent of 1545,
Kirchmayer's Pammachius was acted at Christ's college. Though
it was condensed for the occasion, no excisions could disguise
its savage anti-papal satire. It was inevitable that the orthodox
chancellor of the university, Gardiner, bishop of Winchester,
should write letters of remonstrance to the vice-chancellor, and
order him to hold an enquiry concerning the performance. Dis-
satisfied with the report, Gardiner laid the matter before the privy
council, which instructed the vice-chancellor to reprove the
offenders, but took no further disciplinary measures. The members
of Christ's college probably avoided controversial dramas in
future ; but entries in the college accounts testify to great dramatic
activity in the immediately following years. The leading spirit
in these entertainments was William Stevenson, who entered
Christ's in 1546, graduated B. A. in 1550, M. A. in 1553 and B. D. in
1560, and was twice elected a fellow of the college. A play by him
is mentioned in the accounts for 1550—1, and, again, in those for
1551—2; and, in the following year, he is reimbursed 18d. for ex-
penses on his 'plaies. ' There is another entry of a play by him in
1553—4, and a final one in 1559—60, during the second tenure of his
fellowship. Hence, it has been plausibly conjectured that Steven-
son is the author of Gammer Gurtons Nedle, 'played on stage,
not longe ago in Christes Colledge in Cambridge. Made by
Mr S. Mr of Art. '
The first edition of this comedy was not published till 1575, but
its printer Colwell had obtained, in 1562/3, a licence to issue
Dyccon of Bedlam. As ‘Diccon the Bedlem' is the leading figure in
1 The traditional ascription of the play to John Still rests merely upon a conjecture
of Isaac Reed in 1782, and may be dismissed. But it is remarkable that John Bridges,
dean of Salisbury, a member of Pembroke college, is spoken of in two of the Martin
Marprelate tracts, 1588, as the reputed author of the comedy.


## p. 297 (#315) ############################################

Gammer Gurtons Nedle
297
'Mr S. 's' play, the licence probably refers to it, and there are
bibliographical grounds for the conjecture that the work was
printed long before it was put on sale. A reference to arrest ‘in
the kings name' in act v suggests that the comedy was written
before the death of Edward VI in July 1553. If Stevenson were
its author, it would thus appear to have been composed between
1550 and 1553, and, if the title-page is to be trusted, revived later,
probably in 1559—60. However this may be, Gammer Gurtons
Nedle is of enduring interest as the earliest university play in
English which has come down to us. At first sight, it shows little
trace of scholarly influences. The fourteener' in which it is
'
mainly written is a rough and tumble metre; and the dialogue,
;
often coarse in strain, is, as a rule, in that south-western dialect
which became the conventional form of rustic speech on the
Elizabethan stage. The plot turns on the complications produced
in a small village society by the loss of the gammer's needle, and
the characters are typically English, including Diccon, who com-
bines the rôles of a Vice and a vagrant Tom of Bedlam. But, on
closer examination, the effect of classical models is seen. The
comedy is divided into acts and scenes, and the plot has a real
organic unity. The parts played by the different personages in the
village community, from “Master Baily' and the curate downward,
are neatly discriminated. The triumph of pastoral convention
had not yet blurred for English humanists the outlines of genuine
English country life.
The golden period of academic drama may be dated from the
visits paid by queen Elizabeth to the two universities early in her
reign. The visit to Cambridge began on 5 August 1564, and, in
a letter from Grindal, bishop of London, written about three
weeks before, the university authorities were admonished to
put themselves in all readinesse to please her Majestie, to welcome her with
all manner of scholastical exercises, viz. with Sermons, both in English and
Latin; Disputations in all kinds of Faculties; and playing of Comedies and
Tragedies; Oratios and Verses, both in Latin and Greek.
Under the direction of Roger Kelke, 'who was by the Vice-
Chancellor and Heads of Colleges specially appointed to set forth
and teach such plays as could be exhibited before her Grace,' a
varied dramatic programme was provided. It began with a per-
formance of the Auularia of Plautus? on the evening of Sunday,
* Plautus appears to have been the favourite classical dramatist at Cambridge in
the sixteenth century. Smith, G. C. Moore, U. 8. , pp. 269–271, records sixteen per-
formances of his plays between 1549 and 1583; four performances of comedies by
Terence are noted during the same period.
6


## p. 298 (#316) ############################################

298
University Plays
6 August, in King's college chapel. A great stage containing the
breadth of the Church from the one side to the other' was erected
for the performance at the queen's own cost, and so keen was her
interest that she remained till the final plaudite, without betraying
the slightest weariness, though some of her suite grew impatient,
owing to their ignorance of Latin or their desire for sleep.
On the following evening, a tragedy called Dido, written by
Edward Halliwell, fellow of King's college, was performed. It was
in hexameter verse, and drawn, for the most part, from the Aeneid.
Like the earlier school drama on the same subject, acted before
Wolsey in 1532", it is not extant; but the contemporary narrative
of Nicholas Robinson describes it as novum opus sed venustum et
elegans, though considered too long by some carping spectators.
A still more regrettable loss is that of the next evening's
play, Ezechias, an English Biblical drama by Nicholas Udalla.
As Udall was an Oxford man, and had been dead for about seven
years, the production of a play by him on this occasion is somewhat
remarkable, and was probably due to his long connection with
court entertainments. Though the work is not extant, the accounts
of the performance by Hartwell and Robinson show that it dealt
with Hezekiah's destruction of the idols of the grove and the
brazen serpent, the resentment of the populace, the mission of
Rabshakeh at the head of the Assyrian host and the mysterious
destruction of the invaders in a single night. As in the case of
miracle-plays, lighter episodes were evidently mingled with
Biblical incidents. Mirum vero quantum hic facetiarum, quantum
leporis in re tam seria ac sancta, et veritatis tamen certa serie
nunquam interrupta.
Great 'preparations and charges' had been 'employed and
spent about' another play, Ajax Flagellifer, a Latin version of the
Sophoclean tragedy, which was to be given on 9 August, the eve of
the queen's departure. But she was so much wearied by her
exertions that the performance had to be abandoned Before her
departure on the following morning, Elizabeth gave a present in
money and other marks of her favour to Thomas Preston, fellow
of King's, afterwards author of Cambises, king of Persia, who
had pleased her by his acting in Dido and his skill in disputation.
This visit of the queen to Cambridge had its counterpart two
* See ante, vol. v, chap. v, p. 102.
: On Udall'8 other plays, see ante, vol. v, chap. v, pp. 103—6.
3 See post, p. 317, as to the performance of an Ajax Flagellifer, doubtless the
same play, before James I.


## p. 299 (#317) ############################################

Elizabeth at Oxford in 1566
299
years later in one to Oxford, which began on Saturday, 31 August
1566, and lasted till Friday, 6 September. She arrived from Wood-
stock, and had to undergo so formidable a succession of welcoming
orations from the university and civic authorities on her way to
Christ Church that she was unable to be present the following
evening at the first play performed in her honour in the college
hall. On a stage specially prepared at the queen's own cost, with
'stately lights of wax, variously wrought, Marcus Germinus, a
comedy in Latin prose, was performed. It was the joint composition
of several Christ Church scholars, and was produced with the help
of Richard Edwards. From the analysis of the plot given by
Bereblock, it appears that it dealt with a conspiracy against
Germinus, a native of Campania, in the reign of Alexander Severus,
by jealous rivals who think that they have compassed his ruin,
but whose designs are foiled by the evidence of honest freedmen.
On the following night, 2 September, the first part of Palamon
and Arcyte, an English play by Richard Edwards, was acted in the
queen's presence? The report of the magnificence of the decora-
tions, and the eagerness to see Elizabeth, drew such a vast crowd
of spectators (infinita ac innumerabilis hominum multitudo) that
part of the wall of the staircase leading to the hall collapsed,
killing three persons and wounding others. The catastrophe, how-
ever, did not interfere with the performance or with the queen's
enjoyment of it. From the analysis of the plot given by Bereblock,
it is evident that it was exactly on the lines of Chaucer's Knight's
Tale. The first part ended with Theseus's discovery of the two
rivals for Emily's love fighting in the wood, and his determination
that the matter should be decided by a tournament. The second
part, acted on 4 September, dealt with the tournament, the victory
of Arcite, his sudden death and the betrothal of Palamon and
Emily. The loss of the play, which anticipated by about half a
century the treatment of the same theme in The Two Noble
Kinsmen, is a matter of great regret. Not only was the queen
delighted with it, but a party of courtiers who had seen a rehearsal
of it ‘said it far surpassed Damon and Pithias than which they
thought nothing could be better. '
The series of plays performed before the queen during this visit
terminated with a Latin tragedy, Progne, by James Calfhill, canon
of Christ Church. The plot was drawn from the sixth book of
Ovid's Metamorphoses, and dealt, doubtless on Senecan lines, with
the gruesome tale of the revenge of Progne, wife of king Tereus,
i On Edwards's previous career as a dramatist see ante, vol. v, chaps. IV and v.
a


## p. 300 (#318) ############################################

300
University Plays
upon her husband for the wrongs done to herself and her sister
Philomela. It is not surprising that such a work ‘did not take
half so well as the much admired play of Palamon and Arcyte. '
But the relative merit of the pieces performed during these two
royal visits to the universities is of less import than the remarkable
variety of their subjects and their style. A play of Plautus, a
tragedy on Dido in Vergilian hexameters, an English verse play on
Hezekiah, a Latin version of the Ajax of Sophocles, a neo-Latin
prose comedy, an adaptation of The Knight's Tale, a tragedy in the
Senecan manner on an Ovidian theme_here is a microcosm of the
motley literary elements which, combined with features of more
popular origin, went to the shaping of the Elizabethan drama. It
was into academic societies in which such varied stage productions
formed part of the regular ritual of social and intellectual life that,
within the next two decades, Marlowe, Peele, Greene and Nashe
were to enter, and it was thence that they were to carry away
lessons destined to exercise a momentous influence on the future
of the London theatre.
To the immediately following years, no extant university play
can be assigned with certainty. But, from the register of Merton
college, Oxford, we learn that performances, both in English and in
Latin, were given in the warden's house or in the college hall. On
3 January 1566/7, Wylie Beguylie', an English comedy, was per-
formed by the scholars, merito laudandi recte agendo; and this
was followed, about a month later, by the Eunuchus of Terence.
In the January of the following year, the Merton scholars revived
Edwards’s Damon and Pithias, and, a few days later, acted the
Menaechmi of Plautus.
Byrsa Basilica by J. Rickets, a play of unique character sug-
gested by the foundation of the Royal Exchange in 1570, appears,
from the epilogue, to be of university origin, though it deals in
fantastic fashion with the career of Sir Thomas Gresham, and with
various aspects of London commercial life, in bizarre combination
with the figures and machinery of southern comedy? The political
1 The loss of this early Oxford play in the vernacular is particularly unfortunate,
as we cannot tell whether it bore any relation to the later Wily Beguiled (printed 1606),
which was almost certainly a Cambridge play (cf. Ward, vol. 11, pp. 612—3). Wily
Beguiled, however, was influenced so directly by The Spanish Tragedie, The Merchant
of Venice and Romeo and Juliet that it is doubtful whether it can be connected with
the Merton comedy of 1567.
* Gresham's civic career, with an admixture of episodes from the general history
of the period, afterwards furnished materials for the popular stage in Part II of
Thomas Heywood's If You know not me, You know no bodie (1606).


## p. 301 (#319) ############################################

Legge's Richardus Tertius
301
and dynastic, instead of the economic, aspect of the national annals
furnished material for another play of somewhat later date, which
attained unusual popularity, and which is of special interest
as illustrating the Senecan treatment of a theme which afterwards
became the basis of a Shakespearean chronicle history play. This
work, preserved in a number of manuscripts, is Richardus Tertius,
by Thomas Legge, master of Caius college, Cambridge, and twice
vice-chancellor. It was acted at St John's college in the spring of
1580, and in two of the manuscripts the list of performers is given.
It ranges over the long period from the death of Edward IV
to the battle of Bosworth field, and, hence, is in tripartite form,
consisting of three actiones performed on successive evenings. It
thus departs from the strict Senecan model in its comprehensive
sweep and in its disregard of the unities of time and place. It also
dispenses with the moralising chorus. Otherwise, it is a typical
Senecan tragedy, in metre and language, in motives and situations
and in the general conception of a royal tyrant akin to Nero in
Octavia and to Atreus in Thyestes. It has the characteristic faults
of the school to which it belongs—monotony and an excess of wire-
drawn declamation—but Legge had genuine skill in technique and
expression, and taught the lesson that structural design and
rhetorical embellishment are essentials in a historical play.
Greene, who took his B. A. at St John's in 1578, was still in residence
at Cambridge when the play was produced, and Marlowe entered the
university in the following year. There can be little doubt that
Legge's drama was known to them, and that, at least indirectly,
it also influenced Shakespeare in Richard III. The Senecan
series of reverses of fortune in Shakespeare's play, the passages of
semi-lyrical declamation, the dialogues in otixouvdía, the peculiarly
sombre colouring of the work and the two wooing scenes, which
have no source in Holinshed but are anticipated in Legge's tragedy,
all point strongly to this conclusion.
Not long after the production of Richardus Tertius, a number
of Senecan plays dealing with more remote and exotic historical
subjects were performed. Solymannidae, an anonymous tragedy,
was acted, at one of the universities, in March 1581/2. It treats
of the murder of Mustapha, son of Sultan Solyman II, at the insti-
gation of his ambitious step-mother Rhode, who wishes the throne
for her own son Selymus. Another Senecan tragedy on an oriental
historical theme, Tomumbeius, by George Salterne of Bristol, deals
with the tragic fate of Tuman-bey, who became sultan of Egypt in
1516. Its dedication to Elizabeth proves that it was written during


## p. 302 (#320) ############################################

302
University Plays
her reign; but, otherwise, its date and place of performance are
unknown. Even more uncertain is the provenance of the pseudo-
historical Senecan tragedy Perfidus Hetruscus, the plot of which has
points of contact with Hamlet. On the death of Sorastanus, duke
of Tuscany, his brother Pandolphus seeks to gain the throne by
conspiring against his nephews Columbus and Lampranus. His
chief agent, at first, is a Jesuit Grimalfi (an indication that the author
was a strong protestant), who, however, is slain by the ghost of
Sorastanus.
Through the further machinations of Pandolphus,
Columbus is banished by Lampranus ; but the ghost of Sorastanus
appears to him in exile, and bids him return to kill his uncle. He
obeys the command and fights a duel with Pandolphus, who sends for
a poisoned cup of wine. The traitor himself drinks by mistake from
the poisoned cup, but recovers, and afterwards strangles Columbus,
,
and poisons Lampranus during his sleep. He succeeds to the vacant
dukedom, but dies after donning the crown which he himself had
poisoned. Preserved in a single manuscript, and never printed, this
play has not attracted the attention to which its plot entitles it.
It is of greater interest than the much better known Roxana, by
William Alabaster, of Trinity college, Cambridge, acted about 1592.
This is a close version, with most of the names altered, and with no
indication of its source, of an Italian play, La Dalida, by Luigi
Groto, published in 1567. Alabaster lays the scene in Bactria; and
the plot, which centres round Roxana, a princess of the imaginary
royal house, exceeds even the usual measure of horrors in a
Senecan tragedy. Doubtless, this characteristic (in consequence
of which a gentlewoman fell distracted' at the performance),
together with the elegant Latinity of the play, gained for it the
popularity of which an echo remains in Dr Johnson's laudatory
allusion to it in his Life of Milton.
The Senecan school of university dramatists produced its most
important figure in William Gager, who is included in Meres's list
(1598) of the chief dramatists of the day, though, strange to say,
among writers of comedy. Born between 1555 and 1560, he entered
Christ Church, Oxford, in 1574, graduated in 1577 and became a
doctor of civil law in 1589. During his long residence, he took
the lead in writing plays for performance by members of his
college. With the exception of his single comedy, Rivales, no
longer extant, they were Latin tragedies on classical subjects.
The first of these, Meleager, was produced in 1581, and revived,
three years later, in the presence of the earl of Leicester, chancellor
of the university, and Sir Philip Sidney. The author of An Apologie


## p. 303 (#321) ############################################

William Gager
303
6
for Poetrie, as he watched the performance, must have rejoiced
that there had arisen a dramatist who carried out to the letter his
critical precepts, preserving the unities in the strictest fashion, and
taking care not to match ‘hornpipes and funerals. '
In 1583, before another visitor of distinction, Albertus Lasco,
prince palatine of Poland, two other plays by Gager were acted, the
comedy Rivales already mentioned, and 'a verie statelie tragedie,'
Dido, in the preparation of which George Peele took part. For
this tragedy, which was produced with ‘strange, marvellous, and
abundant' scenic effects, Gager, like Halliwell at Cambridge
twenty years before, drew the chief situations and much of the
dialogue (though cast into Senecan form) from the Aeneid.
Another of the Christ Church dramatist's tragedies, Oedipus, of
uncertain date, is only partly extant in manuscript. But the last
and finest of his classical plays, Ulysses Redux, was printed a few
months after its production in February 1591/2, when Rivales also
was revived. Ulysses Redux, though Senecan in form, is far from
being a lifeless piece of classical imitation. Drawing its subject
from the later books of the Odyssey, it is not unworthy of its
source. The incidents are skilfully grouped, and many of the
scenes, including the fight between Irus and Ulysses, and the
efforts of the suitors to bend the bow, are full of dramatic vigour.
The conjugal affection of Penelope for her lord is provided with
an effective foil in the passion of the handmaid Melantho for
Eurymachus-an un-Homeric episode which Gager develops in
the spirit of romantic drama.
But of greater permanent value than Gager's tragedies is his
masterly defence of academic plays and players contained in a
letter to John Rainolds of Queen's college, afterwards president of
Corpus, a puritan antagonist of the drama. Of both sides of th
correspondence an account is given in a later chapter of this
volume? The arguments with which Gager meets Rainolds ob-
jections to the impersonation of women by men in feminine attire,
and to Sunday performances, are full of interesting references to
contemporary college life, and he sets forth eloquently the aims
and ideals of academic playwrights and actors.
We doe it to recreate owre-selves, owre house, and the better parte of the
Universitye, with some learned Poeme or other; to practyse owre owne style
eyther in prose or verse; to be well acquantyed with Seneca or Plautus . . . to
trye their voyces and confirme their memoryes, to frame their speeche; to
1 See post, chap. xiv.


## p. 304 (#322) ############################################

304
University Plays
conforme them to convenient action; to trye what mettell is in everye one,
and of what disposition they arel,
But Seneca and Plautus were not the only exemplars with
whom university dramatists were 'well acquainted. ' From about
1580 onwards, their productions in the sphere of comed even
when written in Latin, had, usually, an Italian, and not a classical,
source. To this period belongs Victoria, by Abraham Fraunce of
St John's, Cambridge, a metrical Latin version of Luigi Pasqualigo's
prose comedy I Fedele, published in 1575. This is a typical pro-
duct of the southern stage, with a complicated intrigue between
rivals for the favours of a married lady, with impersonations
and disguisings and with the stock figures of a braggart and an
enamoured pedant. Fraunce's version, except for the addition of
an episode taken from The Decameron, and the revision of portions
of the later acts, is very close. It thus contrasts with the free
English adaptation of Il Fedele by Anthony Munday, Fedele and
Fortunio, wherein the braggart, who is called captain Crackstone,
becomes the chief figure in the comedy?
A more ingenious and skilful adaptation from the Italian
than Victoria, though from The Decameron and not from a play,
is the anonymous Hymenaeus, acted at St John's, Cambridge, prob-
ably in March 1578/9. The list of actors, which included Fraunce,
is virtually identical with that which took part in Richardus
Tertius, except that the latter has a considerably larger cast.
Boccaccio tells of the remarkable experiences of a gallant called
Ruggieri, who makes love to the beautiful young wife of an aged
doctor of Salerno, and who swallows a sleeping draught by mistake.
In Hymenaeus, the young wife is the daughter of an elderly
father, with three suitors-a doctor, a drunken German and a
young Venetian whom she favours. It is the Venetian who drinks
the potion prepared by his rival, the doctor, for the heroine's
father, and who, in consequence, goes through a series of adventures
which nearly ends on the gallows, before he succeeds in winning his
mistress's hand. To the same group of Latin comedies in Italian
style, though no immediate source of them has been hitherto
traced, belong several St John's college plays of somewhat later
date. These include the pastoral Silvanus (January 1597), with
resemblances of situation to the Silvius-Phoebe-Rosalind love-
| For a full account of Gager's letter, by the present writer, see The Fortnightly
Review, August 1907.
? See ante, vol. v, chap. XIII, and bibl. vol. v, pp. 474–5, for an account of Munday's
play.


## p. 305 (#323) ############################################

Laelia
305
complication in As You Like It, and with a Latinised echo, in the
closing song, of the August roundelay in The Shepheards Calender;
and Machiavellus (December 1597), in which the bearer of the
title role, and a Jew, Jacuppus, carry on a contest with a remark-
able series of disguises, plots and counterplots, for the hand of the
heroine, till her betrothed, who is supposed to have been killed in
the wars, returns just in time to claim her once more as his own.
Two comedies which can be traced to their Italian sources are
Leander (1598 and 1602) and Labyrinthus (1602), performed at
Trinity college, Cambridge, and written by Walter Hawkesworth,
fellow of the college, who acted the chief part in both plays.
Their popularity is evidenced by the number of manuscripts in
which they are still extant; but they were merely Latin adaptations
of La Fantesca and La Cintia respectively, both by G. B. della
Porta, the Neapolitan playwright. Of all these Cambridge versions
of Italian comedies, the most important is the anonymous Laelia,
acted at Queens' college in 1590, and revived in 1598. It is
founded on Gl Ingannati (1531), and its action is similar to that
of the main plot of Twelfth Night. The source of Shakespeare's
play has always been doubtful, though Rich's Apolonius and Silla
and Emanuel Ford's Parismus have features in common with
it. Nor is it safe, as has been attempted by W. H. Furness and
F. E. Schelling, to identify Laelia as the direct original of Twelfth
Night, though it is just possible that it may have been. In any
case, the university play and the Shakespearean comedy present
an instructive contrast of methods, the advantage not being all on
one side. Laelia lacks the lyric beauty, the delicate, imaginative
charm of Twelfth Night, without hint of its superbly humorous
underplot; its characters are of the conventional southern type,
including the stock figures of a pedant and a nurse. But the plot
of Laelia is a very deft piece of stagecraft; and, by representing
Flaminius (Orsino) as having loved Laelia (Viola), before he trans-
ferred his affections to Isabella (Olivia), it makes more plausible
the final union of hearts between hero and heroine.
The plays dealt with hitherto in this chapter are academic
in the sense that they were written and acted by university men
within college walls, and that, whether English or Latin, they
were influenced, almost without exception, by the classical or
1 It is curious that the Cambridge authorities, when asked to prepare A Comedie
in Englishe' to be acted at court by students before the queen at Christmas, 1592,
wrote to Burghley, 'Englishe Comedies, for that wee never used any, wee presentlie
have none. ' See ‘Dram. Records from Lansdowne MSS'in Malone Society Collections,
vol. 1, part 2, p. 199.
20
.
E. L. VI.
CH. XII.


## p. 306 (#324) ############################################

306
University Plays
9
Italian models which were of paramount authority in learned
societies of the renascence period. We now have to deal with
a group of comedies which are academic in a more special and
intimate sense ; which deal with the studies and the experiences of
scholars young and old, with the notable figures of contemporary
university life, with the immemorial feud of town and gown.
Of these plays, chiefly connected with Cambridge, probably the
earliest extant, as it is one of the most diverting, is Pedantius, a
Trinity college comedy. Though not published till 1631, it prob-
ably dates from the winter of 1580 or spring of 1581. Nashe, in
Strange Newes, ascribes it to 'M. Winkfield,' i. e. Anthony Wing-
field, fellow of Trinity, who, in March 1581, was a successful rival
of Gabriel Harvey for the office of public orator. Nashe, who
matriculated at St John's, in October 1582, cannot well have been
mistaken, though claims have been madel on behalf of Edward
Forcet or Forsett, fellow of Trinity, who is named as author in
a Caius college manuscript of the play.
Pedantius is an admirable combination of Plautine machinery
and types with the conditions of English university life in the later
sixteenth century. The lovesick pedant of southern comedy is here
transformed into a Cambridge humanist, who is the unsuccessful
rival of a freedman for the hand of a slave girl Lydia, and whose
rhetorical flights avail him nothing except to stave off payment of
his tailor's bills. But the pedant is not merely modernised, he is
individualised into a caricature of Gabriel Harvey. This is
vouched for by Nashe in Have with you to Saffron Walden, where
he declares that, in the concise and firking finicaldo fine school-
master,' Harvey was full drawen and delineated from the soule of
the foote to the crowne of his head. ' Internal evidence confirms
the identification. Not only is Pedantius, as was Harvey, according
to the view of his enemies, a fop and a sycophant, but phrases from
the Cambridge rhetorician's works occur repeatedly in the play,
and his Musarum Lachrymae is directly named. As satellite
and contrast to the main figure appears another contemporary
academic type, the solemnly argumentative, logic-chopping philo-
sopher Dromodotus.
The university stage, in this burlesque of Harvey, may claim
the dubious honour of having first made use of the drama in
England for purposes of personal attack. And, according to Nashe,
there were other plays, now lost, ridiculing members of the Harvey
1 See G. C. Moore Smith's introduction to his edition of the play in Bang's
Materialien.
6
6


## p. 307 (#325) ############################################

Club Law
307
family. Tarrarantantara turba tumultuosa Trigonum, Tri-
Harveyorum, Tri-harmonia, a show at Clare hall, was directed
against the three brothers, Gabriel, Gilbert and Dick, while Duns
Furens : Dickey Harvey in a Frensie, at Peterhouse, so ex-
asperated its butt, the little minnow,' that he broke the college
windows during the performance and was set in the stocks 'till the
Shew was ended, and a great part of the night after. Doubtless,
personal satire, in some form, was a feature of Terminus et non
terminus, acted at St John's in or soon after 1586, and written by
Nashe and another member of the college. For, according to
Harvey (Trimming of Thomas Nashe), the latter was expelled for
his share in it; why Nashe, who appears to have played the part
of “Varlet of Clubs' in the show, was more leniently dealt with,
does not appear.
For attacks on academic personages like the Harveys, Latin
was the suitable instrument; but, when college playwrights took
a hand in the chronic feud between university and town, as
represented by the civic authorities, they naturally fell back upon
the vernacular. A remarkable episode in this connection is
chronicled by Fuller in his History of the University of Cam-
bridge, under date 1597—8.
The young scholars . . . having gotten a discovery of some town privacies
from Miles Goldsborough (one of their own corporation) composed a merry
(but abusive) comedy (which they called Club-Law) in English, as calculated
for the capacities of such whom they intended spectators thereof. Clare-
Hall was the place wherein it was acted, and the mayor, with his brethren
and their wives were invited to behold it, or rather themselves abused therein.
A convenient place was assigned to the townsfolk (riveted in with scholars
on all sides) where they might see and be seen. Here they did behold them-
selves in their own best clothes (which the scholars had borrowed). . . lively
personated, their habits, gestures, language, lieger-jests, and expressions.
So incensed were the civic dignitaries at the insult, that they com-
plained to the privy council, which, however, made little of the
matter, merely sending some slight and private check to the
principal actors. '
Fuller's narrative is scarcely to be accepted as authentic in all
its details, and it is noticeable that no mention of the incident is
found in the register of the privy council. But the play to which
9
1 In his introduction to Club Law, Smith, G. C. Moore argued that the date of the
production was 1599—1600, and that the mayor of Cambridge, satirised as Niphle, was
John Yaxley. Since then, he has found confirmation of his conjecture in a Jesus
college MS, ascribed to Fuller himself, which mentions the production in 1599—1600
at Clare ball of Club Law fabula festivissima. See The Modern Language Review,
vol. iv, no. 2, pp. 2689.
20-2


## p. 308 (#326) ############################################

308
University Plays
he alludes, and which was thought to be no longer extant, has
recently been rediscovered in manuscript in the library of St John's
college, Cambridge, by G. C. Moore Smith. The manuscript is im-
perfect, lacking the title and the first three scenes of act i and
scene 3 and parts of scenes 2 and 4 of act iv. But that the play
is the Club Law acted at Clare is proved by the constant introduc-
tion of the phrase, and by the general character of the comedy.
In an unconventional dramatic framework, wherein 'Commike
rules,' as confessed in the epilogue, are not observed, the play-
wright gives an animated though bitterly partisan picture of the
relations between university and town in the closing years of the
sixteenth century. The chronic hostility between them arose from
the peculiar privileges granted to the university by a series of
royal charters and by parliamentary enactment. These privileges
included powers of interference with the trade of the town, of
searching the houses of citizens and of punishing them in the
university courts. Every mayor on his accession to office had to
take an oath to preserve the privileges of the university-an
obligation which aroused the keenest resentment.
Of all these circumstances, the Clare hall dramatist makes
skilful use. Two graduates of Athens (Cambridge), Musonius and
Philenius, egged on by a waggish younger scholar, Cricket,
determine to make the 'muddy slaves,' the rebellious citizens,
'feele our stripes for their disobedience and renewe the ancient
Club-lawe. ' At the same time, the newly chosen burgomaster
(mayor) Niphle announces to the electors that he'will rout out the
whole generation' of academicians, 'they shall not nestle with
us in our streets, nor out brave us in our owne dunghills. ' And he
afterwards arranges a plan of campaign against them, including
the retaliation of their owne Clublawe. ' There are traitors, how-
ever, in the citizens' camp; Mrs Niphle and Mrs Colby, wife of a
leading 'headsman,' to win the good graces of Musonius and
Philenius, reveal the plot, and give the scholars directions for
appropriating the clubs which were to be used against them.
Meanwhile, the burgomaster has been caught out in a midnight
visit to a courtesan at the house of his sergeant, the Welshman
Tavie; and Colby has been detected in the act of carrying away
corn in sacks supposed to contain coal. Both are sent to jail by
virtue of the rector's (vice-chancellor's) authority, and bills of
discommoning' are issued, prohibiting scholars from having any
dealings with prominent members of the corporation. It is this
measure, whereby their means of livelihood are cut off, that brings


## p. 309 (#327) ############################################

The Parnassus Trilogy
309
the citizens to their knees, even more than their rout in a street
skirmish by the 'gentle Athenians' armed with the purloined clubs.
A deputation headed by Niphle, who has been released from jail,
comes to proffer submission to Musonius and Philenius.
Wee crave pardon, and craving pardon we tender our supplication, that it
may please you to letts live by you, and recover our old estats, that is, to
reape what benefits we may by you, which if it please you to grant, I being
the month of the rest doe promise for the rest hereafter to be obedient to
you in any reasonable demand.
But it is not till the promise is confirmed by an oath that the
scholars hold out to the suppliants a prospect of the renewal of
their former privileges. The play hangs loosely together, and the
satire is so acid and unrelieved throughout that it goes beyond the
limits of dramatic plausibility. The author's knock-down blows
are themselves a species of 'club law. ' But he has a remarkable
command of idiomatic and racy vocabulary, which gives pungency
to the dialogue. The broken English of Tavie, the Welshman, and
of Mounsier Grand Combatant, a French braggadocio, and the
north-country dialect of Rumford, one of the corporation, give
further evidence of the writer's quick ear for characteristic modes
of speech.
Broadly contemporary with Club Law is the Parnassus trilogy,
which, in originality and breadth of execution, and in complex
relationship to the academic, literary, theatrical and social life
of the period, ranks supreme among the extant memorials of the
university stage. Both the first and second parts of the trilogy
remained in manuscript till 1886, when they were published by
W. D. Macray. The third part had appeared in quarto in 1606,
with the title The Returne from Pernassus : Or the Scourge of
Simony: Publiquely acted by the Students in Saint Johns
Colledge in Cambridge. Internal evidence proves that this third
part must have been written before the death of Elizabeth, and
indicates Christmas 1602 as the probable date of the performance.
On similar evidence, The Pilgrimage to Parnassus, and Part I of
The Returne from Parnassus (as the recovered plays have been
named), may be assigned, respectively, to 1598 and 1601. The
writer of the trilogy is unknown, for, though he throws out tan-
talising clues in the prologue to Part I of The Returne, they are
not sufficient to identify him. The ingenious argument in support
of the authorship of John Day is open to serious chronological
and other objections. But, whoever he may have been, the St
John's playwright was a man of singularly penetrating intelligence,


## p. 310 (#328) ############################################

310
University Plays
acute observation and wide reading. His mordant wit disdained to
flow in the conventional academic channel of Italianate comedy,
where a 'lisping gallant' and his 'wench,' or a 'sire' acknowledging
‘his lost son,' were the stock figures. He struck out on a path of
his own, with increased vigour and boldness at each stage.
The Pilgrimage is an allegory, in dramatic framework, of the
difficulties and temptations that beset the scholar in his pursuit
of learning. Two cousins and fellow students, Philomusus and
Studiosus, are plodding to Parnassus by the well worn track of
the trivium. In Logic land, ‘muche like Wales, full of craggie
mountains and thornie vallies,' they encounter Madido, a votary of
the winecup, who tells them that ‘Parnassus and Hellicon are but
the fables of the poets: there is no true Parnassus but the third
lofte in a wine taverne, no true Hellicon but a cup of browne bas-
tard. ' Thence they pass to the 'pleasant land of Rhetorique,' where
‘shrille Don Cicero' sings sweetly, and where they are overtaken by
Stupido. He is a type of the narrowest puritanism, who declaims
against the 'vaine arts of Rhetorique, Poetrie and Philosophie;
there is noe sounde edifying knowledg in them. Why they are
more vaine than a paire of organs or a morrice daunce. ' But the
fiercest trial is in the land of Poetry, where Amoretto, a volup-
tuary, who perverts the muse into an agent of sensual passion,
bids them ‘crop the joys of youth,' and allures them for a time
from their path. But, before it is too late, they realise that
wantonness is ‘sourelie sweete,' and they press on to the land of
Philosophy. Here they meet an old schoolfellow, Ingenioso, who
is hurrying away 'in a chafe,' and who cries to the pilgrims 'What!
I travell to Parnassus ? why I have burnt my bookes, splitted my
pen, rent my papers, and curst the cooseninge harts that brought
mee up to noe better fortune. ' These words, and others that
follow, are taken, with some modification, from Nashe's pamphlet
Pierce Penilesse (1592), in which he bewailed the miseries of the
life of a man of letters. The bitter cry of so gifted a member of
the college must have come home to the St John's audience, some
of whom may have been present at the performance of Terminus
et non terminus in the previous decade. But the pilgrims turn a
deaf ear and fare blithely on to the ‘laurell mounte,' where, for a
time, they lie with ‘Phoebus by the muse's springes. '
In Part I of The Returne, the playwright is in more sombre
mood, and his satire is more incisive. He drops almost entirely
the allegorical scheme, and, in a series of realistic genre pictures,
portrays the miserable shifts to which scholars, when their course


## p. 311 (#329) ############################################

The Returne from Parnassus, Part I 311
a
is completed, are reduced to earn a living. Philomusus goes
through pitiful experiences as a parish clerk and sexton till he
is dismissed for incompetency. Studiosus, who tries to find consola-
tion in the moral commonplaces of Senecan tragedy, leads a dog's
life as tutor to an idle and unruly ‘dandipratt' in a vulgar house-
hold. But he is sent packing, because he will not yield precedence
to a servant at table, and the two friends, as a last hope, resolve to
seek their fortunes under another sky, at ‘Rome or Rheims. Here,
however, they fare as ill as at home and they hurry back, feeling
That it's as good to starve mongst English swine
As in a forraine land to beg and pine.
But the adventures of Philomusus and Studiosus furnish only
one of the themes in this part of the trilogy. Another is found in
the relations of Ingenioso to Gullio, a vainglorious pseudo-patron
of letters, modelled in part on Nashe's portrait of 'an upstart' in
his Pierce Penilesse. Gullio, who is maintaining' Ingenioso in
most niggardly fashion, bids him personate his mistress, Lesbia,
that he may rehearse amorous speeches afterwards to be ad-
dressed to her. These speeches are mainly variations on lines
in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and Romeo and Juliet.
Gullio afterwards commissions Ingenioso to write specimen verses
for his lady ‘in two or three divers vayns, in Chaucer's, Gower's,
and Spenser's and M Shakspeare's. ' He quotes the opening
'
lines of Venus and Adonis as the preferable model, and cries
sentimentally:
O sweet M Shakespeare! I'le have his picture in my study at the courte.
When Ingenioso submits his poetical exercises for approval, the
lines in 'M' Shakspeare's vayne' are instantly preferred:
Ey marry, sir, these have some life in them! Let this duncified worlde
esteeme of Spencer and Chaucer, I'le worshipp sweet M' Shakespeare and
to honour him will lay his Venus and Adonis under my pillowe.
But the lines, accompanied by a Latin epistle of Gullio's own
composition, fail to move Lesbia, and Ingenioso is dismissed by
his indignant patron.
It is certainly not with complimentary intent that the author
makes Shakespeare the favourite poet of the shallow and affected
courtier. Further light is thrown on his attitude in act i sc.