also stirred him to plagiarise. We see from these works of the lesser luminaries how powerful was the impression made by Shakespeare upon his contemporaries: Tourneur also learned much from him in the use of language.

Of him, or for that matter of anyone else (for the remark suits all), it may be observed: that it is only in Shakespeare, in him alone in the drama of that mighty period, that we see an ideal conception of Love! Wherever we compare one of these numerous dramatists with Shakespeare, we find in them, without exception, even in the best, gross sensuality instead of love. This is perhaps the most palpable difference between Shakespeare and all the rest. In any case, this indisputable characteristic of the Shakespearian drama is a tinguishing mark between the genuine and spurious plays of Shakespeare at least as reliable as the calculated percentages of overrunning verses or of those that end the line.

This leads to the answer to the question that forces itself upon us: What led to the downfall of the stage in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? It has only itself to blame. Shakespeare was the only poet it produced against whose lofty morality even the Puritans did not venture to bring any charge. But it reared a host of dramatists who regarded every means of external success as right. Truth compels us to say that a lack of restraint had gradually made its way into the choice of subjects and language, which, even had it not been suppressed from outside, could not have gone far. The want of a more refined and better educated public revenged itself bitterly on the English drama in course of time. The demoralisation of poets and spectators exercised a reciprocal action, the first origin of which is hard to define.

The conflict between Puritans and theatrical people had already made itself heard during Shakespeare's lifetime: Shakespeare and Ben Jonson lashed puritanical moroseness with mild as well as harsh satire. The Puritans, when they came into power, revenged themselves in the simplest manner: they shut all the theatres. The oppression of actors and stage poets had begun early: the prohibition against uttering the name of God, Christ, and the Holy Ghost on the stage dated from the year 1601. In 1616 the Lord Mayor and City Aldermen vented their rage against the Blackfriars Theatre-King James defended it by a fresh charter. In 1630 petitions for the abolition of the Blackfriars Theatre were again presented, the plea being the crowding of carriages in front of the theatre and "manifold abuses and disorders." In 1633 French actresses appeared in London: their excessive indecency called forth a furious cry of distress in the camp of the Puritans, one of whom, WILLIAM PRYNNE, wrote a "pamphlet" of 1,000 (!) quarto pages, Histriomastix: the Players'

Scourge or Actors' Tragedy, in which he raves like a madman against drama, dramatists, and actors. In this also is found the spiteful remark, that Shakespeare's works were printed on better paper than the Bible. The author was condemned to a fine of £5,000 and to have his ears cut off, his book was burned by the public executioner, and he himself was imprisoned for several years.

On September 2nd, 1642, an order of the Parliament, which had become all-powerful as the result of the Civil Wars, decreed the closing of all the theatres. When, in spite of this, occasional performances still took place, a decree of the Puritan Parliament was issued during the time of Cromwell (1648), whereby "all players were declared rogues; all theatres were to be pulled down; every actor who offended against the decree was threatened with whipping, and every person present at the performance of a play was condemned to pay a fine of five shillings."

This was the end of that unique, incomparable golden age of the English drama. Its short-lived resuscitation during the reign of Charles II. fills no agreeable page in the history of the English stage. What came later was only a solitary flicker of the old healthy spirit: English drama was dead, and it remained so.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

GENERAL.-Baudissin, Ben Jonson und seine Schule (translations of plays by Jonson, Fletcher, Massinger); Gelbcke, Die englische Bühne zu Shakespeare's Zeit (translations of twelve plays by Lyly, Marlowe, Jonson, Heywood, Dekker, Middleton, Webster, Beaumont, Fletcher, Ford, Massinger, and of "Oldenbarneveld"); also the collections of Dodsley-Hazlitt, Nimmo, Bullen, Lamb, Bodenstedt, Tieck, Bülow (see p. 121).

BEN JONSON.-New edition by Cunningham; Von Friesen, Ben Jonson, eine Studie Jahrbuch, x.); Swinburne, A Study of Ben Jonson; good selection from his works (chiefly non-dramatic) in Grosart's Brave Translunary Things (Elizabethan Library).

BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.-Editions by Dyce, Darley; G. C. Macaulay, Francis Beaumont; Boyle, Beaumont, Fletcher, and Massinger (Englische Studien, vol. v.).

MASSINGER and FORD.-Works in one volume with introduction by H. Coleridge; Massinger alone, by Cunningham.

Webster.-Works by Hazlitt, Dyce.

THOMAS HEYWOOD.—Works (6 vols. 1874), with introduction.

MIDDLETON.-Works by Bullen (8 vols.).

CHAPMAN.-Works in three vols. with introduction by Swinburne, A Critical Essay. DAY.-Works by Bullen, with introduction.

CYRIL TOURNEUR.-Works edited by C. Collins.

F. G. Fleay, A Chronicle History of the London Stage, should also be consulted.

A

CHAPTER V

THE LYRIC POETS

1. EDMUND SPENSER

LMOST exactly at the time that Shakespeare wrote his first tragedies, the English language attained it highest perfection also in the lyric epic and in pure lyric poetry in the works of another poet of the Elizabethan era,-EDMUND SPENSER.

Born in London in 1552, and consequently twelve years Shakespeare's senior, Spenser entered at the University of Cambridge when seventeen years of age, and left it in 1573, after taking his B.A. In 1578 he returned to London, where he commenced his literary activity in the succeeding year with nine comedies which were never printed, and of which the MSS. have not come down to us.

The first work of Spenser that has been preserved to us is the so-called Shepherd's Calendar, which appeared in 1579, and is dedicated to the poet's generous patron, Sir Philip Sidney. It certainly even at this early date exhibits Spenser's wonderful gift of language, but these artificial and quaint eclogues do not contain more genuine poetry than most of the similar poems of English and other literatures of that period. The Shepherd's Calendar consists of twelve somewhat lengthy poems, which only possess a certain consistence from the fact that they correspond to the months of the year. About the end of the sixteenth century the pastoral romance Diana (1558), written by the Spaniard Montemayor, had set the fashion of the spurious pastoral throughout Europe, that wonderful kind of enthusiasm for nature, which turned the so-called "Nature" into a green-carpeted salon.

Through the recommendation of Sidney and Leicester, Spenser obtained the post of Secretary to Lord Grey, who had been sent to the "emerald isle" as "lord-deputy" to put down the disturbance that was raging there. It was the famous naval hero Walter Raleigh who visited the poet at his Irish residence and took him back to London. Here Spenser succeeded in gaining from Queen Elizabeth a yearly pension of £50 by his poetical homage. On this occasion

it may also be observed that Spenser was the first so-called "poet laureate" in the more modern sense, i.e. a poet who writes in honour of certain occasions and is paid by the court,-a dignity which has lasted in England up to the present day, with a temporary interruption in the seventeenth century. Amongst the best-known court poets besides Spenser may be mentioned: Ben Jonson, Dryden, Southey, Wordsworth, Alfred Tennyson.

Returning to Ireland, as there had been nothing to gain at Elizabeth's court except the pension, he there made the acquaintance of his future wife. To her inspiration his most splendid but unfortunately too little known poem is due, The Epithalamium, which appeared in 1587, a hymn on his own marriage with the beautiful Irish lady Elizabeth. Spenser never again rose to such a height of melodious song: we may even perhaps say that English literature generally, down to the time of Shelley, never produced a poem of greater musical harmony than this wedding symphony. For the Epithalamium is indeed constructed like a mighty symphony: commencing with the first morning grey of the happy, long-expected day, it proceeds in tones continually swelling in greater fulness, as the hours hasten on, until it dies away in the enchanting stanzas in which the poet sings of the secret happiness of the rapturous night of love. The Epithalamium is also remarkable amongst Spenser's poetical creations from the fact that it keeps itself free from allegorical rubbish: that it is an outburst in song of a pure human emotion in language that resembles the notes of an organ and the sound of a bell that every stanza betrays its source not in an artificial, but in a real, deep feeling. Nor must we forget, in its sensuous ardour, the spotless purity of this poem. It is the most beautiful of the more important lyric poems of the sixteenth century, and of all the English literature of that period alone approaches Shakespeare. The narrow limits of this book allow only a few specimens of this triumphal song of happy love :

Open the temple gates unto my love,
Open them wide that she may enter in,
And all the posts adorn as doth behove,
And all the pillars deck with garlands trim,
For to receive this saint with honour due,
That comes in to you.

With trembling steps, and humble reverence,
She comes in, before the Almighty's view.

Behold, while she before the altar stands,
Hearing the holy priest that to her speaks,
And blesseth her with his two happy hands,
How the red roses flush up in her cheeks,
And the pure snow, with goodly vermeil stain,
Like crimson dyed in grain;

That even the angels, which continually

About the sacred altar do remain,
Forget their service, and about her fly,

Oft peeping in her face, that seems more fair,
The more they on it stare.

b

Now welcome, night! thou night so long expected, a
That long day's labour doest at last defray,
And all my cares, which cruel love collected,
Hath sum'd in one, and cancelled for aye;
Spread thy broad wing over my love and me,
That no man may us see;

But let the night be calm and quietsome,
Without tempestuous storms or sad afray;
Like as when Jove with fair Alcmena lay,
When he begot the great Tirynthian groom!
Or like as when he with thyself did lie
And begot Majesty.

And let the maids and young men cease to sing;
Ne let the woods them answer, nor their echo ring.

But let still Silence true night watches keep,
That sacred peace may in assurance reign,
And timely sleep, when it is time to sleep,

May pour his limbs forth on your pleasant plain;
The whiles an hundred little winged loves,
Like diverse feathered doves,

Shall fly and flutter round about the bed.

Who is the same, which at my window peeps ?
Or whose is that fair face which shines so bright?
Is it not Cynthia, she that never sleeps,

But walks about high heaven all the night?

Joseph von Hammer, the first German translator of Spenser, calls him "a prince of speech" (Ein Fürst der Rede). And indeed he was a creator of language,-certainly not so mighty as Chaucer, who owed most to himself,--but still one of those rare fertilisers of his native language, such as appear only at isolated intervals of centuries.

In his Four Hymns (1596), written in the seven-lined Chaucerian stanza, there are also to be found passages, which, apart from their unlimited idealism, are steeped in harmony to an extent which might be regarded as impossible by a superficial estimate of the unmusical character of the English language. Spenser has evidently been Shakespeare's model in language: in that "sweetness" which all voices unite in extolling in the master of the drama, only Spenser can compare with him. The Hymns are addressed to "earthly and heavenly love," to "earthly and heavenly beauty." A stanza or two from these poems may also testify to Spenser's permanent value as a lyric poet, which is independent of any criticism of his far-famed and little read Fairy Queen. Verses such as the following certainly alone find their equal for poetical vigour and musical harmony in Byron's Childe Harold in later English literature: