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retailed for daily sustenance. A new era of dramatic composition commenced with the Restoration, when the mighty labours of the past were just old enough to be superannuated, and not old enough to be antique. Milton lived on in the solitude of his blindness-the ghost and witness of departed greatness. Cowley and Dryden contrived to merit fame without foregoing popularity, by investing the robust intellect and subtile fancy of a former generation in modish habiliments. Butler, like Hogarth, struck out a way for himself, in which he has had many imitators, and no rivals. But no one of these, with all their varied excellence, was suited to create or sustain a taste for the imagination and philosophy which they superseded. The town and the court, not the people, were paramount on Parnassus, and town and court alike were subjected to French influence.

But, I believe, after all, that the principal reason why so little has been told of our old dramatists is-that there was very little to tell.

They might, no doubt, have written most interesting autobiographies or reminiscences. But I am not aware that, in that diary-keeping age, any dramatic writer left a diary. It is hardly probable that many dramatists have chronicled their days. Not that they were too constantly engaged. Sir Edward Coke, Richard Baxter, Whitlocke, Clarendon,―lawyers, statesmen, kings, have left minute and regular diaries *. Even men of pleasure have kept an audit book of their sins, and recorded of themselves what one might fancy a Papist would blush to mutter in confession. But the life of a dramatist, dependent for his daily bread upon the caprice of actors, and the humour of chance-collected audiences, must be too exciting, too fragmentary, for an employment which requires a calm, if not a cheerful, mind. The man whose means of existence

Poor Daye that day not 'scaped away;

And what still more amazes,
Immortal Cracke was burn'd all black,

Which every body praises."

"Immortal Cracke" never recovered from his scorching; but is dead and forgotten. Mr. Collier doubts whether it be the name of an author or of a play. Assuredly the latter, or perhaps the name of a character. By the way, crack, often used by our old writers for a mischievous urchin, is probably an abridgment of crackrope. Massinger uses the term at full length.

The Globe on the Bankside was burned 29th June, 1613. The Fortune in Golding Lane on the Sunday night preceding December 15. Ben Jonson alludes, in his Execration upon Vulcan, to both these conflagrations; at the former he seems to have been present. The Globe was fired by the wadding of the chambers (small pieces of ordnance) falling on the thatch. The cause of the Fortune's misfortune does not appear. Prynne of course ascribes both combustions to the Divine judgment. The Prynnes of our times were equally charitable when the two "great houses" were consumed. Lighter and saner wits do not seem to have taken the matter very seriously. Sir Henry Wotton, describing the fire of the Globe in a letter to his nephew, concludes thus:-"This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabric, wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broiled him, if he had not, by the benefit of a provident wit, put it out with bottle ale.”—Annals, vol. iii. 299. Probably a hit at the preposterous size and padding of the femoral garments then in use.

*There is an excellent article on diaries in D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature. He does not mention the very curious diary of Pepys, that whimsical compound of knavery and simplicity, of politics and piety, of foppery and worldly wisdom; nor the yet more interesting journal of the excellent Evelyn; nor Bubb Doddington's, the honestest self-exposure ever made by a self-conscious, self-satisfied rogue. Mr. Collier

are at the mercy of a contingent future, has little inclination to dwell upon the past. You might as well expect the diary of a gamester.

However it be, our elder dramatists have told us little about themselves, and their contemporaries have told us little about them. Letters they must occasionally have written; and the letters of that time, when newspapers were not, contain a great deal more matter of fact than the flippant and sentimental missives of later date. Yet, except Ben Jonson, whose epistles ought surely to be appended to his works, or printed in some accessible form, has any dramatist left "a collection of letters?" There is, indeed, a short and melancholy note, in which the name of Massinger is joined with those of Field and Daborne; a memorial of poverty, only less afflicting than poor Burns' death-bed supplication for the same trifle of five pounds.

The incuriosity of contemporaries has been amply atoned in the last century. Letters, diaries, memoirs, family papers, public records-everything in manuscript or print has been rummaged with indefatigable eyes. Every syllable, parenthesis, blank, and erasure, has been tortured-yea exorcised, for intelligence respecting men, of whom their contemporaries hardly thought it worth while to invent anecdotes. Much collateral knowledge has been elicited by the research, and much forgotten literature brought to light; but, with regard to the immediate objects of inquiry, it has rather led to additional doubt of what was heretofore taken for granted, than added to the scanty amount of ascertained facts. It is very well that so few reputations have suffered by the scrutiny; for, had the dramatists been conspicuous for either vice or folly, they would not have shared the fate of the heroes before Agamemnon. They lived in an age of personality. The great eye of the world was not then, any more than now, so intent on things and principles, as not to have a corner for the infirmities of individuals. I question whether, with all our newspapers, reviews, magazines, biographies, and autobiographies, a more personal history could be compiled of the courts of George the III. and IV. than of those of Elizabeth and James. In no age have men been wanting to woo the favour of the multitude by informing them, that their Betters were no better than they. The numerous memoirs, diaries, pamphlets, letters, so costly to collectors; "Wilson, Winwood, Weldon, Osborne, Peyton, Sanderson," and others, who, as Mr. Gifford remarks, "contributed to propagate a number of scandalous stories, which should have been left sub lodice,

gives some curious extracts, surely not intended for the public eye, from the diurnal of Sir Humphrey Mildmay, a man of wit and pleasure about town in the age of Massinger. The following, it will be admitted, are characteristic items, and evince good husbandry in sinning.

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It does not appear that extravagance was among Sir Humphrey's failings. He was probably a Romanist, for among his disbursements we find eight shillings for a Rhemish Testament, and three for popish books; but, perhaps, he bankered after all forbidden things. The MS. is in the library at Lambeth, and may supply some valuable information on the subject of prices.

where most of them perhaps had birth," sufficiently prove that kings and lords, at least, were not secured from calumny by the darkness of their excessive splendour. Nor were all the eyes of curiosity directed upwards: not a murder, rape, or adultery, could occur without being improved in the pulpit, set to tune by the ballad-mongers *, or dramatized on the scene. In our own days, Thurtell, Corder, Greenacre, the Bloodylane, and the Red-barn, have been exhibited in tearful melo-drama. That it should be so, is a reproach to the taste of the galleries themselves; but bad taste is no novelty. The stage has, ere this, been indebted for plots to the Tyburn Chronicle. It is enough to mention the titles of "The Yorkshire Tragedy," "Arden of Feversham," "Murderous Michael," "The Fair Maid of Bristol," "A Warning for Fair Women," "The Tragedy of John Cox of Collumpton," &c. all founded on recent atrocities, and decisively proving that this very illegitimate species of drama is not recommended even by originality of invention. The singularity of the old criminal tragedy is, that characters, some recently hanged, and others, it might be, living among the identical audience, are made to talk as poetical blank-verse as the authors could have put into

* "Graculo. You may see

We are prepared for hanging, and confess

We have deserved it. Our most humble suit is,

We may not be twice executed.

Timoleon. Twice ?

What meanest thou?

Gra. At the gallows first, and after in a ballad

Sung to some villainous tune. There are ten groat rhymers

About the town, grown fat on these occasions.

Let but a chapel fall, or a street be fired,

A foolish lover haug himself for pure love,

Or any such like accident; and before

They are cold in their graves, some damn'd ditty's made,
Which makes their ghosts walk."-

-MASSINGER. The Bondman.

These "damn'd ditties" once composed a very considerable part of the only literature that could truly be styled popular. Swift or Arbuthnot has a very humorous paper on the subject, written about the time that the penny stamp was inflicted on loose sheets. Of late, the victims of the law have been twice executed at the minor theatres. The melancholy music and nasal instrumentation of these historic ballads were a frequent theme of satire with the old dramatists, between whom and the ballad-makers there was no good will. "If I have not ballads made of you all, and sung to filthy tunes, may this cup of sack be my poison.”— Falstaff.

"Now shall we have damnable ballads out against us,

Most wicked madrigals. And ten to one, too,

Sung to such lousy lamentable tunes."

"They rail upon the general

-Humorous Lieutenant.

And sing songs of him,-scurvy songs to worse tunes."

FLETCHER'S Loyal Subject.

There is certainly nothing so lugubrious as the cracked voice of a ballad-singer, in a dull, ill-lighted back street, on a rainy night of November. But at present, great men have worse enemies to dread than balladsingers or players. If their bodies escape the surgeons, and their skulls the phrenologists, their fame, their letters, their family secrets, their least-considered words, are at the mercy of knavish booksellers, radical magazinists, ill-masked maligners, silly-mad idolaters, and even honest admirers of more zeal than prudence. There is no tune so filthy as the spite of some of these maggots, nor so lousy, lamentable, and villanous as the adulation of others.

the mouth of Cæsar or Cleopatra. We do not read that the genuine furniture or weapons of the murderers were exhibited in these performances*.

Even the licence of the old comedy of Greecet, in producing living persons, sometimes of high rank, upon the stage, by name, or by characteristics not to be

"There is a species of dramatic, representation, different from any of which we have yet spoken, and which may be said to form a class of itself:-it may be called domestic tragedy, and pieces of this kind were founded upon comparatively recent events in our own country. Of these several are extant, such as Arden of Feversham,' the story of which relates to a murder committed in the reign of Edward VI.; ‘A Warning for Fair Women,' arising out of a similar event in 1573. Two Tragedies in One,' part of which is founded upon the assassination of a merchant of London of the name of Beech, by a person called Thomas Merry. The Fair Maid of Bristol,' which had its origin also in a recent tragical incident; indeed it seems to have been the constant practice of the dramatists of that day to avail themselves (like the ballad-makers) of any circumstances of the kind which attracted attention, in order to construct them into a play, often treating the subject merely as a dramatic narrative of a known occurrence, without embellishing, or aiding it with the ornaments of fiction. Shakspeare is supposed to have been concerned, at least, in one production of this kind, The Yorkshire Tragedy' (founded upon an event in 1604), which was played at the Globe theatre, and printed with Shakspeare's name, in 1608. The internal evidence, however, of Shakspeare's authorship is much stronger than the external, and there are some speeches which could scarcely have proceeded from any other pen."-History of Dramatic Poetry, vol. iii. 49, 50.

"The Yorkshire Tragedy" is certainly much better than the rest of the disputed plays-" Pericles" excepted; but in diction, versification, and sentiment, as well as in its subject, it is more in the manner of Heywood, the Lillo of a more imaginative age, than in that of Shakspeare. It is, however, no argument against its authenticity that the plot is not such as Shakspeare generally chooses, or could be supposed to approve. There can be little doubt, that he, as well as his fellows, was sometimes obliged to work to order upon stories not at all to his own taste. But surely, at a time so affluent in dramatic genius, the simple merit of particular speeches can be no fair proof of Shakspeare's authorship, nor does the striking elevation of insulated passages above the level of a work conclude a different writer. The same man may produce a few flashes of volcanic splendour, and a vast monotony of dull extravagance.

It is a wonder that the assassination of Marlowe was never dramatized; but I have not read of any play on the subject.

Massinger has no play that classes exactly with "Arden of Feversham," and "The Yorkshire Tragedy," though "The New Way to Pay Old Debts" probably glances at recent transactions. Ford and Dekker's "Witch of Edmonton" falls under the denomination of News-plays.

The play-bill of one of the minor theatres, announcing "The Hertfordshire Tragedy," promised the identical gig in which Thurtell drove poor Weare to be murdered, and the identical table on which were placed the pork chops eaten in commemoration of the sacrifice. Music-sellers vied for priority in publishing the score of the song, sung by Hunt on this interesting occasion.

"LENARD HALIDAY, Mayor, 1605.

"Whereas Kempe, Armyn, and others, players at the Black-Friers, have again not forborn to bring upon their stage one or more of the Worshipful Company of Aldermen of the City of London, to their great scandal and to the lessening of their authority, the Lords of the Right Honourable the Privy Council are besought to call the said players before them, and to enquire into the same, that order may be taken to remedy the abuse, either by putting down or removing the said theatre."

From this document it appears that the offence was not the first of the kind; and we may conjecture, though not certainly conclude, from the wording, that individual aldermen were the objects of ridicule, though, perhaps, not absolutely named by their registered christian and sur-names.

From a letter to "certain justices of the peace of the county of Middlesex" from the privy council, 10th May, 1601, we learn that certain players, who used to recite their plays at the Curtain in Moorefields, do represent upon the stage in their interludes the persons of some gent. of good desert and quality, that are yet alive, under obscure manner, but yet in such sort as all the hearers may take notice both of the matter, and the persons that are meant thereby." Here we have the middle comedy of Greece. It is probable that

mistaken, was not unknown to the palmy period of our drama. The authority of the master of the revels, backed by a court to which the theatres were indebted for their toleration, was insufficient to prevent the most flagrant invasions of the sanctity of

much of this Aristophanic licence was extemporal, and inserted at the discretion of the actors, who would have a shrewd guess at the measure of impudence which the audience for the time being were likely to relish. The Curtain, though one of the oldest theatres, was in little repute, and frequented chiefly by the unwashed. But in 1639, the Prince's players, then performing at the Red Bull, incurred the wrath of the privy council, by personal allusions to an alderman who had been a blacksmith in Holborn. Now the Red Bull seems to have been a place of genteel resort, for it had silk curtains.-Collier's Annals, vol. ii. p. 93.

But aldermen and common councilmen were long considered the lawful game of the stage, which was, perhaps, justified on the principle of retaliation. But the following extracts from Lord F. Egerton's translation of Von Raumer's" History of the 16th and 17th Centuries," (a history of nothing but the intrigues of ambassadors,) which I owe to Mr. Payne Collier's "New Facts regarding the Life of Shakspeare," must “give us pause." They are derived from a despatch of the French ambassador, Beaumont; and it, perhaps, may be as well to remember, that they are the narrative of a Frenchman, not supported, as far as I know, by collateral evidence, translated from French into German, and from German into English.

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April 5, 1606, I caused certain players to be forbid from acting The History of the Duke of Biron,' (a tragedy by Chapman ;) "when, however, they saw that the whole court had left town, they persisted in acting it; nay, they brought upon the stage the Queen of France and Mademoiselle de Verneuil. The former having first accosted the latter with very hard words, gave her a box on the ear. At my suit three of them were arrested; but the principal person, the author, escaped."

Pretty well this, but not absolutely incredible. The murder of the Marquis D'Ancre, which took place in the middle of April 1617, was dramatized in June of that year, but forbidden to be performed; and in 1624, Middleton, in his "Game of Chess," regardless of the inhibition against bringing "any modern Christian king upon the stage," (the Sultan, the Sophy, and the Great Mogul, were therefore excluded from the protection,) produced the King of Spain, the Count Gondemar, and other persons connected with the Spanish court, to the great indignation of the Spanish ambassador, and to the no small embarrassment of King James, who dreaded a rupture with Spain above all things. The play was performed nine days successively, a very extraordinary run at that time; and is said to have raised for the theatre more than £1500, which Mr. Payne Collier considers a palpable exaggeration. The piece, however, was forbidden, the actors reprimanded, and the. author, who "shifted out of the way" at first, forgiven upon surrender. But I cannot help suspecting, that in what follows, the French ambassador must have been hoaxed. Surely, if King James, as the identical King James, had been thus insulted, we should have had other information of the fact. But it is not impossible that in some jig or burlesque piece, like "Tom Thumb the Great," or " Bombastes Furioso," the representative of a king had ventured to take off some peculiarity of the King, (whose gait and utterance were very obnoxious to mimicry,) and perhaps alluded to some current scandal. "One or two days before, they had brought forward their own king and his favourites in a very strange fashion. They made him curse and swear, because he had been robbed of a bird, and beat a gentleman, because he had called off the hounds from the

scent.

upon

"He has made an order that no play shall be henceforth acted in London, for the repeal of which order they have already offered 100,000 livres. Perhaps the permission will be again granted, but condition that they represent no recent history, nor speak of the present time."

"We have no other record of this temporary inhibition of dramatic performances. If the Queen of France and Mademoiselle Verneuil once figured in Chapman's plays, they were omitted when those plays were printed in 1608."-New Facts, &c. 16, 17.

The prudence or good fortune of Shakspeare, who never appears to have been called in question, either for personal allusions (though his hit at his old neighbour is sufficiently obvious) nor for meddling with matters of church and sexte, is very remarkable. The company in which he was a sharer, with James and Richard Burbage, George Feele, &c. so early as 1589, in a memorial first published by Mr. Payne Collier in his “New Facts," take occasion to commend themselves on this special account, "that they have brought into their plays no matters of state and religion unfit to be handled by them, or to be presented before lewd (i. e. unlearned) spectators" Massinger, we shall see, was not so cautious nor so fortunate.

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