English Literature Part 48

Footnote 100: persecute

Footnote 101: slander

Footnote 102: rains

Footnote 103: In its English form the alleged Mandeville describes the lands and customs he has seen, and brings in all the wonders he has heard about. Many things he has seen himself, he tells us, and these are certainly true; but others he has heard in his travels, and of these the reader must judge for himself. Then he incidentally mentions a desert where he saw devils as thick as gra.s.shoppers. As for things that he has been told by devout travelers, here are the dog-faced men, and birds that carry off elephants, and giants twenty-eight feet tall, and dangerous women who have bright jewels in their heads instead of eyes, "and if they behold any man in wrath, they slay him with a look, as doth the basilisk." Here also are the folk of Ethiopia, who have only one leg, but who hop about with extraordinary rapidity. Their one foot is so big that, when they lie in the sun, they raise it to shade their bodies; in rainy weather it is as good as an umbrella. At the close of this interesting book of travel, which is a guide for pilgrims, the author promises to all those who say a prayer for him a share in whatever heavenly grace he may himself obtain for all his holy pilgrimages.

Footnote 104: For t.i.tles and publishers of reference works see General Bibliography at the end of this book.

Footnote 105: _Const.i.tutional History of England_.

Footnote 106: Symonds, _Revival of Learning_.

Footnote 107: Sismondi attributes this to two causes: first, the lack of general culture; and second, the absorption of the schools in the new study of antiquity. See _Literature of the South of Europe_, II, 400 ff.

Footnote 108: Erasmus, the greatest scholar of the Renaissance, was not an Englishman, but seems to belong to every nation. He was born at Rotterdam (_c_. 1466), but lived the greater part of his life in France, Switzerland, England, and Italy. His _Encomium Moriae_ was sketched on a journey from Italy (1509) and written while he was the guest of Sir Thomas More in London.

Footnote 109: Unless, perchance, the reader finds some points of resemblance in Plato's "Republic."

Footnote 110: See Wordsworth's sonnet, _On the Sonnet_. For a detailed study of this most perfect verse form, see Tomlinson's _The Sonnet, Its Origin, Structure, and Place in Poetry_.

Footnote 111: William Caxton (_c_. 1422-1491) was the first English printer. He learned the art abroad, probably at Cologne or Bruges, and about the year 1476 set up the first wooden printing press in England. His influence in fixing a national language to supersede the various dialects, and in preparing the way for the literary renaissance of the Elizabethan age, is beyond calculation.

Footnote 112: Malory has, in our own day, been identified with an English country gentleman and soldier, who was member of Parliament for Warwicks.h.i.+re in 1445.

Footnote 113: For t.i.tles and publishers of general works see General Bibliography at the end of this book.

Footnote 114: _Eastward Ho!_ a play given in Blackfriars Theater about 1603. The play was written by Marston and two collaborators.

Footnote 115: Lie so faint.

Footnote 116: The _View_ was not published till 1633.

Footnote 117: clad.

Footnote 118: handsome.

Footnote 119: jousts, tournaments.

Footnote 120: countenance.

Footnote 121: dreaded.

Footnote 122: took off.

Footnote 123: pity.

Footnote 124: know.

Footnote 125: In the nineteenth century men learned again to appreciate Chaucer.

Footnote 126: The most dramatic part of the early ritual centered about Christ's death and resurrection, on Good Fridays and Easter days. An exquisite account of this most impressive service is preserved in St.

Ethelwold's Latin manual of church services, written about 965. The Latin and English versions are found in Chambers's _Mediaeval Stage_, Vol. II.

For a brief, interesting description, see Gayley, _Plays of Our Forefathers_, pp. 14 ff.

Footnote 127: How much we are indebted to the Norman love of pageantry for the development of the drama in England is an unanswered question.

During the Middle Ages it was customary, in welcoming a monarch or in celebrating a royal wedding, to represent allegorical and mythological scenes, like the combat of St. George and the dragon, for instance, on a stage constructed for the purpose. These pageants were popular all over Europe and developed during the Renaissance into the dramatic form known as the Masque. Though the drama was of religious origin, we must not overlook these secular pageants as an important factor in the development of dramatic art.

Footnote 128: Miracles were acted on the Continent earlier than this. The Normans undoubtedly brought religious plays with them, but it is probable that they began in England before the Conquest (1066). See Manly, _Specimens of the Pre-Shaksperean Drama_, I, xix.

Footnote 129: See Jusserand, _A Literary History of the English People_, I, iii, vi. For our earliest plays and their authors see Gayley, _Plays of Our Forefathers_.

Footnote 130: These three periods are not historically accurate. The author uses them to emphasize three different views of our earliest plays rather than to suggest that there was any orderly or chronological development from Miracle to Morality and thence to the Interludes. The latter is a prevalent opinion, but it seems hardly warranted by the facts.

Thus, though the Miracles precede the Moralities by two centuries (the first known Morality, "The Play of the Lord's Prayer," mentioned by Wyclif, was given probably about 1375), some of the best known Moralities, like "Pride of Life," precede many of the later York Miracles. And the term Interlude, which is often used as symbolical of the transition from the moral to the artistic period of the drama, was occasionally used in England (fourteenth century) as synonymous with Miracle and again (sixteenth century) as synonymous with Comedy. That the drama had these three stages seems reasonably certain; but it is impossible to fix the limits of any one of them, and all three are sometimes seen together in one of the later Miracles of the Wakefield cycle.

Footnote 131: In fact, Heywood "cribbed" from Chaucer's _Tales_ in another Interlude called "The Pardoner and the Frere."

Footnote 132: Sch.e.l.ling, _Elizabethan Drama_, I, 86.

Footnote 133: That these gallants were an unmitigated nuisance, and had frequently to be silenced by the common people who came to enjoy the play, seems certain. Dekker's _Gull's Hornbook_ (1609) has an interesting chapter on "How a Gallant should behave Himself in a Playhouse."

Footnote 134: The first actors were cla.s.sed with thieves and vagabonds; but they speedily raised their profession to an art and won a reputation which extended far abroad. Thus a contemporary, Fynes Moryson, writes in his _Itinerary:_ "So I remember that when some of our cast despised stage players came ... into Germany and played at Franckford ... having nether a complete number of actors, nor any good aparell, nor any ornament of the stage, yet the Germans, not understanding a worde they sayde, both men and wemen, flocked wonderfully to see their gesture and action."

Footnote 135: Sch.e.l.ling, _Elizabethan Drama_.

Footnote 136: Baker, in his _Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist_, pp. 57-62, takes a different view, and shows how carefully many of the boy actors were trained. It would require, however, a vigorous use of the imagination to be satisfied with a boy's presentation of Portia, Juliet, Cordelia, Rosalind, or any other of Shakespeare's wonderful women.

Footnote 137: These choir masters had royal permits to take boys of good voice, wherever found, and train them as singers and actors. The boys were taken from their parents and were often half starved and most brutally treated. The abuse of this unnatural privilege led to the final withdrawal of all such permits.

Footnote 138: So called from Euphues, the hero of Lyly's two prose works, _Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit_ (1579), and _Euphues and his England_ (1580).

The style is affected and over-elegant, abounds in odd conceits, and uses hopelessly involved sentences. It is found in nearly all Elizabethan prose writers, and partially accounts for their general tendency to artificiality. Shakespeare satirizes euphuism in the character of Don Adriano of _Love's Labour's Lost_, but is himself tiresomely euphuistic at times, especially in his early or "Lylian" comedies. Lyly, by the way, did not invent the style, but did more than any other to diffuse it.

Footnote 139: See Sch.e.l.ling, I, 211.

Footnote 140: See p. 114.

Footnote 141: In 1587 the first history of Johann Faust, a half-legendary German necromancer, appeared in Frankfort. Where Marlowe found the story is unknown; but he used it, as Goethe did two centuries later, for the basis of his great tragedy.

Footnote 142: We must remember, however, that our present version of _Faustus_ is very much mutilated, and does not preserve the play as Marlowe wrote it.

Footnote 143: The two dramatists may have worked together in such doubtful plays as _Richard III_, the hero of which is like Timur in an English dress, and _t.i.tus Andronicus_, with its violence and horror. In many strong scenes in Shakespeare's works Marlowe's influence is manifest.

Footnote 144: _Gammer Gurton's Needle_ appeared _c_. 1562; _Love's Labour's Lost, c_. 1591.

Footnote 145: _King John_, IV, 2.

Footnote 146: Queen Mab, in _Romeo and Juliet_.

Footnote 147: By Archdeacon Davies, in the seventeenth century.