The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare Part 21

v.

[287] "Lenten Stuffe," vol. v. p. 280.

[288] "The Returne from Perna.s.sus," ed. W. D. Macray, Oxford, 1886, p.

87.

[289] "A Knights Conjuring," 1607, "Works," ed. Grosart, vol. v. p. xx.

[290] Only one of this sort has been preserved: "The tragedy of Hoffman or a revenge for a father," published in 1631. Chettle died about 1607.

[291] London, 1595, 4to. It has never been reprinted; only one copy belonging to the Bodleian Library is known to exist.

[292] Some also are in Greene's and Harman's vein; for example, his "Belman of London," 1608, and his "Lanthorne and candle-light," 1608, in which he describes, with no less success than his predecessors, "the most notorious villanies that are now practised in the kingdome."

[293] "Dramatic Works, now first collected," London (Pearson), 1873, 4 vol. 8vo; "Non-Dramatic Works," ed. Grosart, London, 1884, 5 vol. 4to, which non-dramatic works are the following:

I. "Canaans Calamite, Jerusalem's misery," 1611 (a poem on the siege and destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans); "The wonderfull yeare 1603" (on the plague of London); "The Batchelars banquet," 1603 (an adaptation of the "Quinze joyes de mariage"). II. "The seven deadly sinnes of London ... bringing the plague with them," 1606; "Newes from h.e.l.l," 1606, shortly after reprinted as "A Knights conjuring"; "The double P. P., a papist in armes," 1606 (in verse); "The Guls Horne-booke," 1609; "Jests to make you merie," 1607. III. "Dekker his dreame," 1620 (in verse); "The Belman of London," 1608; "Lanthorne and candle-light," 1609; "A strange horse race, at the end of which comes in the catch-poles masque," 1613. IV. "The dead tearme or ... a dialogue betweene the two cityes of London and Westminster," 1608; "Worke for armourers ... open warres likely to happin," 1609; "The ravens Almanacke, foretelling of a plague," &c., 1609; "A rod for run-awayes, in which ... they may behold many fearefull Judgements of G.o.d ... expressed in many dreadfull examples of sudden death," 1625. V. "Foure birdes of Noahs Arke," 1613; "The pleasant comodie of Patient Grissil," 1603 (with Chettle and Haughton).

[294] Only there was this notable difference, he died old, at about seventy years of age, probably in 1641.

[295] "A Knights conjuring," 1607. In the same happy retreat Dekker, gives a place to Watson, Kyd, Marlowe, Greene, Peele, Nash, Chettle, who comes in "sweating and blowing, by reason of his fatness" ("Non-Dramatic Works," vol. v. p. xx.).

[296] "Notes on the Elizabethan Dramatists"; "Philip Ma.s.singer; Thomas Dekker."

[297] "Satiro-mastix or the untrussing of the humorous poet," 1602.

"Dramatic Works" vol. i. p. 186. This is the play Dekker wrote as a revenge for Ben Jonson's "Poetaster," 1601, in which he was himself ridiculed under the name of Demetrius.

[298] _I.e._, Gabriel Harvey, Nash's obstinate adversary.

[299] "Newes from h.e.l.l," "Non-Dramatic Works," vol. ii. pp. 102-103.

[300] "Newes from h.e.l.l," "Non-Dramatic Works," vol. ii. p. 101.

[301] "Non-Dramatic Works," vol. i. _Cf._ Defoe's "Journal of the plague year ... 1665," London, 1722.

[302] "Non-Dramatic Works," vol. i. pp. 138 _et seq._

[303] "Grobia.n.u.s. De morum simplicitate, libri duo. In gratiam omnium rusticitatem amantium conscripti," Francfort, 1549, 8vo. It was translated into English by "R. F.," a little before Dekker adapted it: "The schoole of slovenrie: or Cato turned wrong side outward ... to the use of all English Christendome," London, 1605, 4to. In the same category of works may be placed Erasmus's famous: "Moriae Encomium,"

Antwerp, 1512, 4to, translated by Sir T. Chaloner: "The Praise of Folie," London, 1549, 4to. Many scenes in the comedies of the period are written in a style akin to Grobianism. They are especially to be found in Ben Jonson; see, for example, his satire of courtiers in "Cynthia's revels," act iii. sc. 1 and 3, &c.; note how their elegancies of speech are mostly derived from plays and novels.

[304] "The Bachelars banquet ... pleasantly discoursing the various humours of women," 1603; "The Guls Horne-booke," 1609; "Non-Dramatic Works," vols. i. and ii.

[305] "Non-Dramatic Works," vol. ii. pp. 246 _et seq._

[306] 1603; with Chettle and Haughton.

[307] A scene at court. "_Amorphus_ (to the prentice courtier Asotus): If you had but so far gathered your spirits to you as to have taken up a rush when you were out, and wagged it thus, or cleansed your teeth with it; or but turn'd aside ..." &c. Ben Jonson, "Cynthia's Revels," act iii. sc. 1.

[308] _Cf._ Ben Jonson: "Why, throw yourself in state on the stage, as other gentlemen use, sir."--"Away, wag; what, would'st thou make an implement of me? 'Slid, the boy takes me for a piece of perspective, I hold my life, or some silk curtain, come to hang the stage here"

("Cynthia's Revels," Induction).

[309] "Les Facheux," act i. sc. 1 (Van Laun's translation, vol. ii. p.

97); _cf._ "Critique de l'Ecole des Femmes," sc. vi.

[310] The connection of Swift with Grobianism was noticed in his time, and a new translation of Dedekind's poem, "Grobia.n.u.s or the compleat b.o.o.by," 1739, was dedicated by Roger Bull "to the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Swift, ... who first introduced into these kingdoms ... an ironical manner of writing, to the discouragement of vice, ill-manners and folly." To come to even nearer times, Flaubert's "Bouvart et Pecuchet"

may be taken as a branch of Grobianism.

[311] "The fifteen comforts of rash and inconsiderate marriage ... done out of French," London, 1694, 12mo, fourth edition.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HEROICAL DEEDS IN A HEROICAL NOVEL, 1665.]

CHAPTER VII.

AFTER SHAKESPEARE.

I.

In the works of Nash and his imitators, the different parts are badly dovetailed; the novelist is incoherent and incomplete; the fault lies in some degree with the picaresque form itself. Nash, however, pointed out the right road, the road that was to lead to the true novel. He was the first among his compatriots to endeavour to relate in prose a long-sustained story, having for its chief concern: the truth. He leaves to his real heroes, Surrey, More, Erasmus, Aretino, their historical character, and he gives to his fict.i.tious ones caprices and qualities which make of them distinct and living beings like those of every-day life. He gives us no more languid shepherds, no more romantic disguises, no more pretended warriors whose helmets cover, as in Ariosto, a woman's fair locks. His style is flexible, animated, suited to the circ.u.mstances, free from those ornaments of language so sought after in his time; no one, Ben Jonson excepted, possessed at that epoch, in so great a degree as himself, a love of the honest truth. With Nash, then, the novel of real life, whose invention in England is generally attributed to Defoe, begins. To connect Defoe with the past of English literature, we must get over the whole of the seventeenth century and go back to "Jack Wilton," the worthy brother of "Roxana," "Moll Flanders,"

and "Colonel Jack."

But shepherds were not yet silenced, nor had romantic heroes spoken their last. On the contrary, their best time was still to come; in the seventeenth century they resumed their hardly interrupted speeches, conversations, correspondence, exploits and adventures, and flourished mightily in the world. We come to the time of the heroic romance and heroic drama. The main originality of the romance literature in England during this century was the increase and over-refinement of heroism in works of fiction. For many among the reading public of that age, Shakespeare was barbarous and Racine tame; but Scudery was the "greatest wit" that ever lived.

This kind of writing was thus partially renovated through certain superadded characteristics, the part allotted to "heroism" being the foremost; but the groundwork was as old as the very origin of the nation. For this new species of novel was mainly a development of the old chivalrous romances of early and mediaeval times. These romances, as we know, had continued in Elizabethan times to enjoy some reputation, and under an altered shape to have a public of their own. Even in the seventeenth century they had not pa.s.sed entirely out of sight.

Palmerins, Dons Belianis and Esplandians continued to be written, translated, adapted, paraphrased, printed, purchased, and read. There was still a brisk trade in this sort of literature. People continued to read "the auncient, famous and honourable history of Amadis de Gaule, discoursing the adventures loves and fortunes of many princes;"[312] or again "the famous history of Hercules of Greece, with the manner of his encountering and overcoming serpents, lyons, monsters, giants, tyrants and powerful armies."[313] Guy of Warwick, our friend of former chapters, still carried on, with undaunted energy, his manifold exploits throughout the world. Only, as time pa.s.ses, we find that he has become civilized; he has taken trouble to improve his mind, he has read books; he has even gone to the play. And his choice shows him a man of taste and feeling; a man with a memory too; for reaching a cemetery somewhere in his travels he "took up a worm-eaten skull, which he thus addressed: Perhaps thou wert a prince or a mighty monarch, a King, a Duke or a Lord. But the King and the beggar must all return to the earth; and therefore man hath need to remember his dying hour. Perhaps thou mightest have been a Queen or a Dutchess, or a Lady varnished with much beauty; but now thou art worms meat, lying in the grave, the sepolchre of all creatures." We are only surprised that "Alas poor Yorick" does not come in. The page is beautifully adorned with an engraving representing Sir Guy in c.o.c.ked hat, addressing a skull he carries in his hand.[314]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIR GUY OF WARWICK ADDRESSING A SKULL.]

The same phenomenon was taking place in France, and from France were to come the first examples of the regular heroic romance. "I have read [Lancelot]" says Sarasin, in a conversation reported by the well-known Jean Chapelain, the author of "La Pucelle," and "I have not found it too unpleasant. Among the things that have pleased me in it I found that it was the source of all the romances which for four or five centuries have been the n.o.blest entertainment of all the courts of Europe and have prevented barbarism from encompa.s.sing the whole world."[315] But as well as Guy of Warwick, Lancelot wanted some "rajeuniss.e.m.e.nt." His valour was still the fas.h.i.+on, but his manners, after so many centuries, and his dress too, were a little out of date. The new heroism was to pervade the whole man, and, in order to make him acceptable, to influence his costume as well as his mind. There was to be something Roman in him, and something French; he was to be represented in the style of Louis the Fourteenth's statues, where the monarch appears in a Roman tunic and a French wig.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BURIAL OF SIR GUY OF WARWICK.]

The transformation occurred first in France, and was received with great applause. The times indeed were most propitious for a display, not of the barbaric heroism of olden times, but of courtly heroism; of an heroism which plumes, wigs and ribbons well fitted, and which, with scarcely any change, could be transferred from the battle field to the drawing-room, from Rocroy to the Hotel de Rambouillet: no mean heroism, however, for all its ribbons. At this period, in France, manly and lofty virtues, as well as worldly ones, were wors.h.i.+pped in life, in literature and in art. From the commencement to the end of the century, examples of undoubted heroes were not lacking; Henri IV., Richelieu, Mme. de Longueville, Conde, Louis XIV., Turenne, now by their good qualities, now by their caprices, now by their deeds and now by their looks, resembled heroes of romance, and popularized in France an ideal of n.o.bleness and greatness. In order to please and to be admired, it was necessary to show a lofty character; men must be superior to fortune, and women must appear superior to the allurements of pa.s.sion; the hero made a display of magnanimity, the heroine of chast.i.ty. The hero won the battle of Fribourg, and the heroine had Montausier to pay court to her for thirteen years before she consented to be united to him in the bonds of wedlock. Such were the persons most admired in real life; such were the characters of romance and tragedy whom the public liked best, without, however, distinguis.h.i.+ng between them. The Cid, Alceste, Artaban, Nicomede, as well as Julie d'Angennes, Montausier and Conde, were all members of the same family, and not any one of them more than another appeared comic or ridiculous: that is why Montausier was very far from being offended that traits of the character of Alceste were thought to be found in him, and that is why Mme. de Sevigne, a pa.s.sionate admirer of Corneille, becomes as honestly enthusiastic over the extravagant heroes of the new romances as over those of the great Cornelian tragedies. "I am mad for Corneille; everything must yield to his genius ... My daughter, let us take good care not to compare Racine with him. Let us feel the difference!"[316] She writes elsewhere with regard to the heroes of La Calprenede: "The beauty of the sentiments, the violence of the emotions, the grandeur of the incidents and the miraculous success of their invincible swords, all that delights me like a young girl."[317]

This change, which consisted, not of course in the introduction of heroism into novels, where it had in all times found place, but in the magnifying, to an extraordinary degree, of this source of interest, and in a transformation of costume and of tone of speech, appeared not only in romances, but in the drama also, and even in history. Everything worthy of attention was for many years to be heroical. Heroes defy earth and heaven; they do not, like Auca.s.sin, with a temper of ironical submission, give up Paradise in the hope of joining Nicolete in the nether world; they make the nether world itself tremble on its foundations: for nothing can resist them. Even in serious historical works the old rulers of the French nation appear under an heroical garb.

King Clovis is thus described by Scipion Dupleix, historiographer royal, in his "Histoire Generale de France," 1634: "The hour of Easter-eve at which the King was to receive the baptism at the hands of St. Remy having come, he appeared with a proud countenance, a dignified gait, a majestic port, very richly dressed, musked and powdered; his flowing wig was curiously combed, curled, frizzed, undulated and perfumed, according to the custom of the old french Kings;"[318] but much more it seems according to the custom of less ancient sovereigns; and there is at the Louvre, a portrait of Louis XIII. bare-legged, periwigged, ermine-cloaked, which corresponds far better to this description than anything we know of Clovis.

The same characteristics appear in the epic and the drama. Antoine de Montchrestien, besides having written the earliest treatise of political economy, and thus having stood, if nothing more, G.o.dfather to a new science,[319] wrote a number of plays, flavoured most of them with a grandiloquence and heroism which give us a foretaste of Dryden. In his "Aman ou la vanite," he treats the same subject as Racine in his "Esther," but he has nothing in common with his successor, and much with the dramatists of the heroical school. In order, doubtless, to justify from the first the t.i.tle of the play, Aman indulges his "vanite" in an opening monologue to the following effect:

"Whether fair Phoebus coming out of the hollow waters brings back colour to the face of the world, whether with his warmer rays he sets day ablaze or departs to take his rest in his watery bower, he cannot see in all the inhabited world a single man to be compared with me for successes of any sort. My glory is without peer, and if any of the G.o.ds were to exchange heaven for earth and dwell under the lunar disc, he would content himself with such a brilliant fortune as mine."[320]

Nearly all the dramas of Scudery are made up of such speeches, and they were the rage in Paris before Corneille arose, Corneille in whom something of this style yet lingers. Each of Scudery's heroes, be it in his dramas, in his epics, in his romances, is like his Alaric, nothing less than "le vainqueur des vainqueurs de la terre"; and having conquered all the world is in his turn conquered by Love. To write thus was supposed to be following the n.o.ble impulse given by the Renaissance, to be Roman, to outdo Seneca.[321]

In the novel especially this style shone in all its l.u.s.tre and beauty.

All the heroes of the interminable romances of the time, by Gomberville, George and Madeleine de Scudery, La Calprenede and many others, be they Greek, Roman, Turk or French, are all of them the conquerors of the world and the captives of Love. "I can scarcely believe," wrote wise censors, "that the Cyrus and the Alexanders have suddenly become, as I hear it reported, so many Thyrsis and Celadons."[322] But their protests were of no avail, for a time, and romance heroes continued to reign in France, having had from the first for their palace and chief place of resort the famous Hotel de Rambouillet.