THE NORTH BRTISH No. XLIX. REVIEW, FOR MAY, 1 8 5 6. ART. I.-1. Works of Beaumont and Fletcher. | know something about Art. Meanwhile, in London, 1679. 2. Works of Ben Jonson. London, 1692. 3. Massinger's Plays. Edited by WILLIAM GIFFORD, Esq. London, 1813. 4. Works of John Webster. Edited, &c., by Rev. ALEXANDER DYCE. Pickering, London, 1830. 5. Works of James Shirley. Edited by Rev. A. DYCE. Murray, 1833. 6. Works of T. Middleton. Edited by Rev. A. DYCE. Lumley, 1840. 7. Comedies, &c. By Mr. WILLIAM CARTWRIGHT. London, 1651. 8. Specimens of English Dramatic Poets. By CHARLES LAMB. Longmans & Co. 1808. 9. Histriomastix. By W. PRYNNE, Utter-Barrister of Lincoln's Inn, London, 1633. 10. Northbrooke's Treatise against Plays, &c. (Shakspeare Soc.) 1843. 11. The Works of Bishop Hall. Oxford, 1839. 12. Marston's Satires. London, 1600. 13. Jeremy Collier's Short View of the Profaneness, &c., of the English Stage. London, 1730. 14. Langbaine's English Dramatists. Oxford, 1691. 15. Companion to the Playhouse. London, 1764. 16. Riccoboni's Account of the Theatres in Europe. 1741. THE British isles have been ringing, for the last few years, with the word "Art," in its German sense, with " High Art," "Symbolic Art,' ""Ecclesiastical Art," "Dramatic Art," "Tragic Art," and so forth; and every welleducated person is expected, now-a-days, to spite of all translations of German "Esthetic" treatises, and "Kunstnovellen," the mass of the British people cares very little about the matter, and sits contented under the imputation of "bad taste." Our stage, long since dead, does not revive; our poetry is dying; our music, like our architecture, only reproduces the past; our painting is only good when it handles landscapes and animals, and will so remain unless Mr. Millais succeed in raising up some higher school: but, meanwhile, nobody cares. Some of the deepest and most earnest minds vote the question, in general, a "sham and a snare," and whisper to each other confidentially, that Gothic art is beginning to be a "bore," and that Sir Christopher Wren was a very good fellow after all; while the middle classes look on at the Art movement half amused, as with a pretty toy, half sulkily suspicious of Popery and Paganism; and think, apparently, that Art is very well when it means nothing, and is merely used to beautify drawing-rooms and shawl pat terns; not to mention that if there were no painters, Mr. Smith could not hand down to posterity likenesses of himself, Mrs. Smith, and family. But when "Art" dares to be in earnest, and to mean something, much more to connect itself with religion, Smith's tone alters. He will teach "Art" to keep in what he considers its place, and if it refuses, take the law of it, and put it into the Ecclesiastical Court. So he says; and what is more, he means what he says; and as all the world, from Hindostan to Canada, knows by most practical proof, what he means, he sooner or later does, perhaps not always in the wisest way, but still he does it. Thus, in fact, the temper of the British | miraculous confirmations of it at the same nation toward "Art," is simply that of the time that it fiercely persecutes any one who, 'old Puritans, softened, no doubt, and widened; but only enough so as to permit Art, not to encourage it. by attempting innovation or reform, seems about to snatch from weak faith the last plank which keeps it from sinking into the Were we Germans, our thoughts on this abyss. In describing such an age, the histocurious fact would probably take the form rian lies under this paradoxical disadvantage, of some æsthetic à priori disquisition, be- that his case is actually too strong for him ginning with "the tendency of the infinite to to state it. If he tells the whole truth, the reveal itself in the finite," and ending-easy-going and respectable multitude, in who can tell where? But being Britons, easy-going and respectable days like these, we cannot honestly arrogate to ourselves, as will either shut their ears prudishly to his painour German brothers seem so fond of doing, ful facts, or reject them as incredible, unaccusany skill in the scientia scientiarum, or say, tomed as they are to find similar horrors "The Lord possessed me in the beginning of and abominations among people of their His way, before His works of old. When own rank, of whom they are naturally inHe prepared the heavens, I was there, when clined to judge by their own standard of He set a compass upon the face of the deep." civilisation. Thus if any one, in justification Leaving, therefore, æsthetic science to those of the Reformation, and the British hatred who think that they comprehend it, we will, of Popery during the sixteenth century, as simple disciples of Bacon, deal with facts, should dare to detail the undoubted facts of and with history as "the will of God re- the Inquisition, and to comment on them vealed in facts." We will leave those who dramatically enough to make his readers choose to settle what ought to be, and our- feel about them what men who witnessed selves look patiently at that which actually them felt, he would be accused of a "morwas once, and which may be again; that so bid love of horrors." If any one, in order out of the conduct of our old Puritan fore- to show how the French Revolution of 1793 fathers, (right or wrong,) and their long was really God's judgment on the profligacy war against "Art," we may learn a whole of the ancien régime, were to paint that some lesson, as we doubtless shall, if we profligacy as the men of the ancien régime will believe firmly that our history is neither unblushingly painted it themselves, respectmore nor less than what the old Hebrew ability would have a right to demand, "How prophets called "God's gracious dealings dare you, sir, drag such disgusting facts with His people," and not say in our hearts, from their merited oblivion?" Those, again, like some sentimental girl who sings Jacobite ballards, (written forty years ago by men who cared no more for the Stuarts than for the Ptolemies, and were ready to kiss the dust off George the Fourth's feet at his visit to Edinburgh)-"Victrix causa Deis placuit, sed victa puellis." The historian of a time of change has always a difficult and invidious task. For Revolutions, in the great majority of cases, arise, not merely from the crimes of a few great men, but from a general viciousness and decay of the whole, or the majority of the nation; and that viciousness is certain to be made up, in great part, of a loosening of domestic ties, of breaches of the Seventh Commandment, and of sins connected with them, which a writer is now hardly permitted to mention. An "evil and adulterous generation" has been in all ages and countries the one marked out for intestine and internecine strife. That description is always applicable to a revolutionary generation, whether or not it also comes under the class of a superstitious one, "seeking after a sign from heaven," only half believing its own creed, and, therefore, on tiptoe for who are really acquainted with the history "But what matter," some one may say, that the historian's case is often too strong | pocrisy; that the stage-plays, though coarse, to be stated. There is always a reactionary were no worse than Shakspeare, whom everyparty, or one at least which lingers senti- body reads; and that if the Stuarts patronmentally over the dream of past golden ages, such as that of which Cowley says, with a sort of naïve blaphemy, at which one knows not whether to smile or sigh, "When God, the cause to me and men unknown, Forsook the royal houses, and his own." ized the stage they also raised it, and exercised a purifying censorship. And very many more who do not go all these lengths with the reactionists, and cannot make up their mind to look to the Stuart reigns either for model churchmen, or model landlords, are still inclined to sneer with Walter Scott at the Puritan "preciseness;" and to say lazily, that though, of course, something may have been wrong, yet there was no need to make such a fuss about the matter; and that at all events the Puritans were men of very bad taste. These have full liberty to say all that they can in praise of the defeated system; but the historian has no such liberty to state the case against it. If he dare even to assert that he has counter-facts, but dare not state them, he is at once met with a præjudicium. Mr. Gifford, in his introduction to MassThe mere fact of his having ascertained the inger's Plays, (1813,) was probably the truth is imputed as a blame to him, in a spokesman of his own generation, certainly sort of prudish cant. "What a very impro- of a great part of this generation also, when per person he must be to like to dabble in such he informs us, that "with Massinger termiimproper books that they must not even be nated the triumph of dramatic poetry; inquoted." If in self-defence he desperately deed, the stage itself survived him but a short gives his facts, he only increases the feeling time. The nation was convulsed to its cenagainst him, whilst the reactionists, hiding tre by contending factions, and a set of austheir blushing faces, find in their modesty tere and gloomy fanatics, enemies to every an excuse for avoiding the truth; if, on the elegant amusement, and every social relaxaother hand, he content himself with bare tion, rose upon the ruins of the State. assertion, and indicating the sources from Exasperated by the ridicule with which they whence his conclusions are drawn, what care had long been covered by the stage, they the reactionists? They know well that the persecuted the actors with unrelenting sepublic will not take the trouble to consult verity, and consigned them, together with manuscripts, State papers, pamphlets, rare the writers, to hopeless obscurity and wretchbiographies, but will content themselves edness. Taylor died in the extreme of povwith ready-made history from the pen of Hume or Clarendon, Fraser Tytler, or Miss Strickland; and they therefore go on unblushing to republish their old romance, leaving poor truth, after she has been painfully haled up to the well's mouth, to tumble miserably to the bottom of it again. In the face of this danger, we will go on to lay as much as we dare of the great cause, Puritans v. Players, before our readers, trusting to find some of them at least sufficiently unacquainted with the common notions on the point, to form a fair decision. erty, Shirley opened a little school at Brentford, and Downe, the boast of the stage, kept an ale-house at Brentford. Others, and those the far greater number, joined the royal standard, and exerted themselves with more gallantry than good fortune in the service of their old and indulgent master. "We have not yet, perhaps, fully estimated, and certainly not yet fully recovered what was lost in that unfortunate struggle. The arts were rapidly advancing to perfection under the fostering wing of a monarch who united in himself taste to feel, spirit to undertake, and munificence to reward. Architecture, painting, and poetry, were by turns the objects of his paternal care. What those notions are, is well known. Shakspeare was his closet companion,' Jonson Very many of her Majesty's subjects are now his poet, and in conjunction with Inigo Jones, of opinion that the first half of the Seven-his favoured architect, produced those magnifiteenth Century, (if the Puritans had not in- cent entertainments," &c. &c. terfered and spoilt all,) was the most beautiful period of the English nation's life; that in it the chivalry and ardent piety of the middle age were happily combined with modern art and civilisation; that the Puritan hatred of the Court, of stage-plays, of the fashions of the time, was only a scrupulous and fantastical niceness, barbaric and tasteless, if sincere; if insincere, the basest hy * ** * * He then goes on to account for the supposed sudden fall of dramatic art at the Restoration, by the somewhat far-fetched theory that "Such was the horror created in the general mind by the perverse and unsocial government from which they had so fortunately escaped, that the people appear to have anxiously avoided all Charles dislike in the mouth of Pedro sentiretrospect, and with Prynne and Vicars, to have ments so very like his own; but we must lost sight of Shakspeare and his fellows.' In- proceed, only pointing out the way in which stead, therefore, of taking up dramatic poetry where it abruptly ceased in the labors of Massinmen determined to repeat the traditional ger, they elicited, as it were, a manner of their clap-trap about the Stuarts, are actually own, or fetched it from the heavy monotony of blind to the meaning of the very facts which their continental neighbours." they themselves quote. Where, then, do the facts of history contradict Mr. Gifford ? So is history written, and, what is more, believed. The amount of misrepresentation We believe, that so far from the triumph in this passage (which would probably pass of dramatic poetry terminating with Mascurrent with most readers in the present singer, dramatic art had been steadily growday) is quite ludicrous. In the first place, ing worse from the first years of James; it will hardly be believed, that these words that instead of the arts advancing to perfecoccur in an essay, which after extolling tion under Charles the First, they steadily Massinger as one of the greatest poets of his deteriorated in quality, though the supply age, second, indeed, only to Shakspeare, also became more abundant; that so far from informs us, (and, it seems, quite truly,) that there having been a sudden change for the so far from having been really appreciated worse in the drama after the Restoration, or patronized, he maintained a constant the taste of Charles the First's, and of struggle with adversity,-"that even the Charles the Second's court, are indistinguishbounty of his particular friends, on which able; that the court poets, and probably the he chiefly relied, left him in a state of absolute dependence," that while "other writers for the stage had their periods of good fortune, Massinger seems to have enjoyed no gleam of sunshine; his life was all one misty day, and 'shadows, clouds, and darkness rested on it.'" So much for Charles's patronage of a really great poet. What sort of men he did patronize, practically and in earnest, we shall see hereafter, when we come to speak of Mr. Shirley. But Mr. Gifford must needs give an instance to prove that Charles was "not inattentive to the success of Massinger," and a curious one it is; of the same class, unfortunately, as that with the man in the old story, who recorded with pride that the King had spoken to him, and—had told him to get out of the way. Massinger in his "King and the Subject" had introduced Don Pedro of Spain thus speaking actors, also, of the early part of Charles the Second's reign, had many of them belonged to the Court of Charles the First, as did Davenant, the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, Fanshaw, and Shirley himself; that the common notion of a new manner' having been introduced from France, after the Restoration, or, indeed, having come in at all, is not founded on fact, the only change being that the plays of Charles the Second's time were somewhat more stupid, and that while five of the seven deadly sins had always had free license on the stage, blasphemy and profane swearing were now enfranchised to fill up the seven. As for the assertion that the new manner (supposing it to have existed) was imported from France, there is far more reason to believe that the French copied us than we them, and that, if they did not learn from Charles the First's poets the superstition of " the three unities," they at least learnt to make ancient kings and heroes talk and act like seventeenth century courtiers, and to exchange their old clumsy masques and translations of Italian and Spanish farces for a comedy depicting native scoundrelism. Probably enough, indeed, the great and sudden development of the French stage, which took place between 1650 and 1660, under Corneille and Molière, was excited by the English cavalier playwrights who took refuge in France. No doubt, as Mr. Gifford says, the Puritans were exasperated against the stageplayers by the insults heaped on them; but the cause of quarrel lay far deeper than any such personal soreness. The Puritans had attacked the players before the players meddled with them, and that on principle, with what justification must be considered here |