in Ben Jonson's Timber, or Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter. Here we find a direct and natural expression nowhere before seen and approaching close to modBen Jonson's ern prose. Jonson condemned sharply the laTimber, 1641 bored elegancies of the Elizabethan prose sentence. "Nothing is fashionable," he says, "till it be deformed; and this is to write like a gentleman." The Discoveries, varying in length from a brief paragraph to a full essay, consist of notes and reflections flowing naturally from his vast reading. Here is a sample of his sane style and sound criticism:

Talking and eloquence are not the same; to speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks; and out of the observation, knowledge, and the use of things, many writers perplex their readers and hearers with mere nonsense. Their writings need sunshine. Pure and neat language I love, yet plain and customary. A barbarous phrase hath often made me out of love with a good sense, and doubtful writing hath wrecked me beyond my patience. . . . The chief virtue of a style is perspicuity, and nothing so vicious in it as to need an interpreter. Words borrowed of antiquity do lend a kind of majesty to style, and are not without their delight sometimes; for they have the authority of years, and out of their intermission do win themselves a kind of gracelike newness. But the eldest of the present, and newest of the past language, is the best.

There was no longer any doubt about the fitness of prose for literary purposes. Scholars continued to make a pedantic display of their learning in Latin and Greek quotations, but the sense of artistic propriety was maturing. The year after Jonson's Timber was printed, Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici appeared, and two years later, Milton's Areopagitica, two of the accepted classics of English prose.

PROGRAM OF WORK

CLASS READING. LYLY: Euphues (Arber's Reprints). Or selections in Craik, Manly, Chambers, Garnett, Century.

LODGE: Rosalynde (Standard Eng. Cl., Shakespeare Classics). Greene's Pandosto also may be obtained in the Shakespeare Classics. Selection from Nashe's picaresque tale, Jack Wilton,

in Manly, Chambers, vol. 1, 330; and from Green's Groat's Worth of Wit (the famous assault on Shakespeare), Manly, Chambers, 326. RALEIGH: Last Fight of the Revenge (Arber, Century). Selections

from Raleigh's History, North's Plutarch, Hackluyt's Voyages,
Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, Foxe's Book of Martyrs, in Cham-
bers, vol. I.

CHAPMAN: Homer: Selections in Ward, Bronson, Manly.
BACON Essays: Of Truth, Of Revenge, Of Envy, Of Boldness, Of
Great Place, Of Atheism, Of Travel, Of Love, Of Friendship, Of
Riches, Of Studies, Of Discourse, Of Nature in Men, Of Ambition,
Of Ceremonies and Respects. A careful critical study of these
essays should be made. Read the description of the "House of
Solomon" in The New Atlantis.

EARLE: Microcosmography (Arber's Reprints). Jonson's Timber (Athenæum Press Series). Selections from Earle, Feltham, Jonson in Craik, Manly, Garnett (Timber).

BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM. Church's Life of Bacon (E. M. L.); Spedding's Life and Times of Francis Bacon; Lee's Great Englishmen; Hinchman and Gummere's Great English Writers; Macaulay's Essays; Whipple's Age of Elizabeth; Morley, vol. XI. Annotated editions of the Essays in Clarendon Press, Pocket, R. L. S., Maynard, Heath's English Classics.

LITERARY HISTORY. Seccombe and Allen's Age of Shakespeare, vol. 1; Saintsbury's Elizabethan Age; Cambridge, vol. III, chs. xv (Historians), xvi (Prose Fiction), xvii (Marprelate Controversy), xviii (Hooker); vol. IV, chs. i (Translations), iii (Raleigh), xvi (Essays); Symonds's Shakespeare's Predecessors, ch. xiii (Euphuism); Jusserand's English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare; Ainger's Lectures and Essays (Euphuism Past and Present); Morley, vol. vIII, 305-322 (Euphuism); Walton's Lives (Hooker); Courthope, vol. 1; Chandler's Literature of Roguery, ch. v.

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION AND RESEARCH

1. Effect of the Renaissance upon English prose. 2. What are the merits, as well as the faults, of Euphuism? 3. Influence of Euphuism in English literature (see Ainger; also Love's Labor's Lost, Scott's Monastery). 4. Characterize the two styles of Elizabethan fiction. 5. Read and discuss Lodge's Rosalynde. 6. Elizabethan method of translating the classics and the modern method; compare passages from Chapman's Homer with the same passages in Bryant's translation.

7. Outline of Bacon's public career. 8. Was Bacon's purpose to become rich and powerful in order to be useful to humanity a sincere purpose? Was it wise? 9. Discuss the letter to his uncle (Church, p. 16), in view of his subsequent career. 10. Debate Bacon's treatment of Essex, employing Macaulay for the prosecution and Whipple for the defense. 11. A full account of Bacon's fall (Church, vi). 12. Bacon, the philosopher seeking truth, versus Bacon, the AttorneyGeneral seeking the Seals. 13. Bacon's service to the world as a scientist. 14. Bacon's use of rhetorical figures; classical allusions; compact style and abrupt transitions.

15. Compare the essay on Friendship with Emerson's or Thoreau's on the same theme. 16. Compare The New Atlantis with More's Utopia. 17. Discuss Pope's characterization of Bacon: "The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind.”

18. From the qualities of his character and writings, prove it to have been impossible for Bacon to write the plays of Shakespeare. 19. Write a Theophrastic character sketch. 20. Compare Ben Jonson's prose style with Bacon's.

CHAPTER VIII

THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA

ENGLISH drama was born in the church, and through a childhood of several centuries it was nurtured by the church; but finally becoming wayward and unmanageable, it was put out of its religious home, with a heritage of condemnation

Origin of
English

Drama

rather than of parental blessing. During the Middle Ages, the ancient drama of Greece and Rome exerted little or no influence, a mere spark being kept alive here and there by some fond monk or learned nun in the ashes of oblivion that covered all classical literature.

The earliest form of modern drama was the liturgical play, a simple dramatic enlargement of some of the services of the church. In the service of the mass are elements that furnished hints for this dramatic treatment: the priest's symbolic gestures, the reading of the lessons, the chanted prayers and responses of the congregation, the procession, and the interludes of song. As the service was in Latin, it was made more effective for the ignorant German, or French, or English peasant by the use of living pictures, such as the Child in the manger, the adoration of the Magi, and the death of the Saviour. Then appropriate songs and simple dialogues were added to the tableaux, and finally, to obtain the full value of these acted pictures of Biblical story, the vernacular was substituted for Latin. Such dramatic additions to the liturgy were employed especially at Christmas and Easter.

A ritual of the tenth century prepared by St. Ethelwold at Winchester contains one of these little liturgical plays with minute directions for its presentation. It is a A Liturgipart of the Easter service. A rude sepulcher is cal Play to be erected near the altar, and used first for the symbolic burial of the cross in the service of Good Friday. Then follow the directions for Easter morning:

While the third lesson is being chanted, let four brethren vest themselves. Let one of these, vested in an alb, enter as though to take part in the service, and let him approach the sepulcher without attracting attention, and sit there quietly with a palm in his hand. While the third respond is chanted, let the remaining three follow, and let them all, vested in copes, bearing in their hands thuribles with incense, and stepping delicately as those who seek something, approach the sepulcher. When he who sits there beholds them approach him like folk lost and seeking something, let him begin in a dulcet voice of medium pitch to sing

Quem quæritis in sepulchro, O Christicolæ?

[Whom seek ye in the tomb, O worshipers of Christ?]

Let the three reply in unison

Jesum Nazarenum crucifixum, O Coelicola.

[Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified, O Heavenly One.]

Then he

Non est hic, surrexit sicut prædixerat.
Ite, nuntiate quia surrexit a mortuis.
[He is not here, he is risen as he said.

Go ye, announce that he has risen from the tomb.]

At this bidding let the three turn to the choir and say

Alleluia! resurrexit Dominus.

66

An anthem is then sung, the three Marys hold up the cloth in which the cross was wrapped, as if to demonstrate that the Lord has risen," and lay it on the altar. Then the action concludes with the Te Deum and the chiming of the bells.