1 quotes Seneca and St. Austin: and Simony offers the devil a bribe. The devil rejects her offer with much indignation: and swears by the foule Eumenides, and the hoary beard of Charon, that she shall be well fried and roasted in the unfathomable sulphur of Cocytus, together with Mahomet, Pontius Pilate, the traitor Judas, and king Herod. The last scene is closed wtth a view of hell, and a dance between the devil and the necromancer. The dance ended, the devil trips up the necromancer's heels, and disappears in fire and smoke'. Great must have been the edification and entertainment which Henry VII. and his court derived from the exhibition of so elegant and rational a drama! The royal taste for dramatic representation seems to have suffered a very rapid transition : for in the year 1520, a goodlie comedie of Plautus was played before Henry VIII. at Greenwich2. I have before mentioned Skelton's play of MAGNIFICENCE3. 'The only copy of Skelton's moral comedy of MAGNIFICENCE seems to have been more rigidly observed than in France. Malmesbury says, that king Harold, at the Norman invasion, sent spies into Duke William's camp: who reported, that most of the French army were priests, because their faces were shaved. HIST. lib. iii. p. 56. b. edit. Savil. 1596. The regulation remained among the English clergy at least till the reign of Henry VIII: for Longland bishop of Lincoln, at a Visitation of Oriel college, Oxford, in 1531. orders one of the fellows, a priest, to abstain, under pain of expulsion, from wearing a beard, and pinked shoes, like a laic and not to take the liberty, for the future, of insulting and ridiculing the governor and fellows of the society. ORDINAT. Coll. Oriel. Oxon. APPEND. ad. Joh. TROKELOWE. p. 339. Edicts of king John, in Prynne, LIBERTAT. ECCLES. ANGL. tom. ii. p. 23. But among the religious, the Templars were permitted to wear long beards. In the year 1311, Edward II. granted letters for safe conduct to his valet Peter Auger, who had made a vow not to shave his beard: and who having resolved to visit some of the holy places abroad as a pilgrim, feared, on account of the length of his beard, that he might be mistaken for a knight-templar, and insulted. Pat. iv. Edw. ii. In Dugdale's WARWICKSHIRE, p. 704. Many orders about Beards occur in the registers of Lincoln's-inn, cited by Dugdale. In the year 1542, it was ordered, that no member, wearing a BEARD, should presume to dine in the hall. In 1553, says Dugdale, such as had beards should pay 'twelve-pence for every meal they continued them; and every man to be shaven, upon pain 'of being put out of commons.' ORIG. JURID. cap. 64. p. 244. In 1550, no member is permitted to wear any beard above a fortnight's growth under pain of expulsion for the third transgression. But the fashion of wearing beards beginning to spread, in 1560 it was agreed at a council, that all orders before that time made, touching BEARDS, should be void and re'pealed.' Dugd. ibid. p. 245. 1 In the Mystery of MARY MAGDALENE, just mentioned, one of the stage-directions is, 'Here enters the prynse of the devylls in a stage, with hell onderneth the stage.' MSS. DIGB. 133.. 2 Hollinshed iii. 850. 3 It is in Mr. Garrick's valuable collection. No date. 4to. Hawkins, in the HISTORY OF Music, has first printed a Song written by Skelton, alluded to in the CROWNE OF LAWRELL, and set to music by William Cornishe, a musician of the chapel royal under Henry VII. B. 1. ch. i. vol. iii. p. 3. Lond. 1776. It begins, Ah, beshrew you, by my fay, These wanton clarkes are nice alway. &c. The same diligent and ingenious inquirer has happily illustrated a passage in Skelton's description of RIOT. Ibid. B. iii. ch. ix. vol. ii. p. 254. Counter he coulde O Lux upon a potte. That is, this drunken disorderly fellow could play the beginning of the hymn, O Lux beata Trinitas, a very popular melody, and on which many fugues and canons were anciently composed, on a quartpot at the tavern. Ibid. B. i. ch. vii. p. 9o. ii. 1. p. 130, By the way, the abovementioned William Cornish has a poem printed at the end of Skelton's Works, called a Treatise between Trouthe and Information, containing some anecdotes of the state of ancient music, written while the author was in the Fleet, in the year 1504. MSS. REG. 18 D. ii. 4. Thoresby's LEEDES, for Old musical compositions by several masters, among them by WILLIAM CORNISH, p. 517. Morley has assigned Cornysh a place in his Catalogue of English musicians. 560 PLOT OF SKELTON'S MORAL COMEDY OF MAGNIFICENCE. now remaining, printed by Rastal, without date in a thin folio, has been most obligingly communicated to me by Mr. Garrick; whose valuable collection of old Plays is alone a complete history of our stage. The first leaf and the title are wanting. It contains sixty folio pages in the black letter, and must have taken up a very considerable time in the representation. The substance of the allegory is briefly this. MAGNIFICENCE becomes a dupe to his servants and favorites, Fansy, Counterfet Countenance, Crafty Conveyance, Clokyd Colusion, Courtly Abusion, and Foly At length he is seized and robbed by Adversyte, by whom he is given up as a prisoner to Poverte. He is next delivered to Despare and Mischefe, who offer him a knife and a halter. He snatches the knife, to end his miseries by stabbing himself; when Good Hope and Redresse appear, and persuade him to take the rubarbe of repentance with some gostly gummes, and a few drammes of devocyon. He becomes acquainted with Circumspeccyon, and Perseverance, follows their directions, and seeks for happiness in a state of penitence and contrition. There is some humour here and there in the dialogue, but the allusions are commonly low. The poet hardly ever aims at allegorical painting, but the figure of POVERTY is thus drawn, fol. xxiii. a. A, my bonys ake, my lymmys be sore, A lasse I haue the cyatyca full euyll in my hyppe, A lasse where is youth that was wont for to skyppe ! I am lowsy, and vnlykynge, and full of scurffe, My coloure is tawny-coloured as a turffe: I am POVERTIE that all men doth hate, I am baytyd with doggys at euery mannys gate: I am raggyd and rent, as ye may se, Full few but they have envy at me. He dyned with DELYTE, with POVERTE he must sup. The stage-direction then is, 'Hic accedat at levandum MAGNIFICENCE.' 'It is not impossible, that DESPARE offering the knife and the halter, might give a distant hint to Spenser. The whole piece is strongly marked with Skelton's manner, and contains every species of his capricious versification'. I have been prolix in describing these two dramas, because they place Skelton in a class in which he never has yet been viewed, that of a Dramatic poet. And although many MoRALITIES were now written, yet these are the first that bear the name of their author. There is often much real comedy in these ethic interludes, and their exemplifications of Virtue and Vice in the abstract, convey strokes of character and pictures of life and manners. I take 1 Counterfet Countenance says, f. vi. a. this opportunity of remarking, that a MORALITY-MAKER was a professed occupation at Paris. Pierre Gringoire is called, according to the style of his age, Compositeur, Historien et Facteur de Mysteres, ou Comedies, in which he was also a performer. His principal piece, written at the command of Louis XII., in consequence of a quarrel with the pope and the states of Venice, is entitled, Le JEU du Prince de Sots et Mere Sotte, joue aux Halles de Paris. It was printed at Paris in 1511. See Mons. l'Abbe Goujet, BIBL. FRANC. tom. xi. p.212. MORALITIES seem to have arrived at their heighth about the close of Henry VII's reign. This sort of spectacle was now so fashionable, that John Rastall, a learned typographer, brother in law to sir Thomas More, extended its province, which had hitherto been confined, either to moral allegory, or to religion blended with buffoonery, and conceived a design of making it the vehicle of science and philosophy. With this view he published, A new INTERLUDE and a mery, of the nature of the iiii Elements, declaringe many proper points of philosophy naturall and dyvers straunge landys, &c. In the cosmographical part of the play, in which the poet professes to treat of dyvers straunge regyons, and of the new founde landys, the tracts of America recently discovered, and the manners of the natives, are described. The characters are, a Messenger who speaks the prologue, Nature, Humanity, Studious Desire, Sensual Appetite, a Taverner, Experience, and Ignorance2. later. 1 Among Mr. Garrick's OLD PLAYS. [Imperf.] i. vol. 3. It was written about 1510, or rather One of the characters is NATURE naturate: under which title Bale inaccurately mentions this piece. viii. 75. Percy, Ess. ENG. STAGE, p. 8. edit. 1767. Who supposes this play to have been written about 1510, from the following lines, Within this xx yere Westwarde be founde new landes, The West-Indies were discovered by Columbus in 1492. 2 For the sake of connection I will here mention some more of Rastall's pieces. He was a great writer of INTERLUDES. He has written, 'Of GENTYLNESS AND NOBYLYTE. A dyaloge between the marchaunt, the knyght, and the plowman, disputynge who is a veray gentyl'man, and how men shuld come to auctoryte, compiled in maner of an INTERLUDE. With dyvers TOYES and GESTIS addyd therto, to make mery pastyme and disport. T. Rastall me 'fieri fecit. Printed by himself in qto. without date. PR. O what a gret welth and.' Also, A new Commodyte in Englysh in maner of an ENTERLUDE ryght elygant and full of craft of rhetoryck wherein is shewed and descrybyd, as well the beute of good propertes of women as theyr vyces and evyll condicions, with a morall conclusion and exhortation to vertew.' T. Rastall me imprimi fecit.' In folio, without date. This is in English verse, and contains twelve leaves. PR. Melebea, &c.' He reduced a dialogue of Lucian into English verse, much after the manner of an interlude, viz. 'NECROMANTIA. A Dialogue of Lucyan 'for his fantasy fayned for a mery pastyme, &c.-T. Rastall me fieri fecit. It is translated from the Latin, and has Latin notes in the margin. It may be doubted, whether Rastall was not the printer only of these pieces. If the printer only, they might come from the festive genius of his brother sir Thomas More. But Rastall appears to have been a scholar. He was educated at Oxford; and took up the employment of printing as a profession at that time esteemed liberal, and not unsuitable to the character of a learned and ingenious man. An English translation of Terence, called TERENS in ENGLISH, with a prologue in stanzas, beginning "The famous renown through the worlde is spronge,' is believed, at least from similarity of type, to be by Rastall. In qto., without date, He published, in 1525, The MERY GESTYS of of one callyd EDYTH the lyeng wydow. This is a description, in English rhymes, of the frauds practised by a female sharper in the neighbourhood of London: the scene of one of her impostures is laid in sir Thomas More's house at Chelsea. The author, one of her dupes, is Walter Smyth. Emprynted at London at the svgne of the Meremayde at Pollis gate next to 562 PAGEANTS AND MORALITIES, ALLEGORICAL POETRY OF THE AGE. I have before observed, that the frequent and public exhibition of personifications in the PAGEAUNTS, which anciently accompanied every high festivity, greatly contributed to cherish the spirit of allegorical poetry, and even to enrich the imagination of Spenser1. The MoRALITIES, which now began to acquire new celebrity, and in which the same groupes of the impersonated vices and virtues appeared, must have concurred in producing this effect. And hence, at the same time, we are led to account for the national relish for allegorical poetry, which so long prevailed among our ancestors. By means of these spectacles, ideal beings became common and popular objects: and emblematic imagery, which at present is only contemplated by a few retired readers in the obsolete pages of our elder poets, grew familiar to the general eye. SECTION XXXIV. IN a work of this general and comprehensive nature, in which the fluctuations of genius are surveyed, and the dawnings or declensions of taste must alike be noticed, it is impossible that every part of the subject can prove equally splendid and interesting. We have, I fear, been toiling for some time through materials, not perhaps of the most agreeable and edifying nature. But as the mention of that very rude species of our drama, called the MORALITY, has incidentally diverted our attention to the early state of the English stage, I cannot omit so fortunate and seasonable on opportunity of endeavouring to relieve the weariness of my reader, by introducing an obvious digression on the probable causes of the rise of the MYSTERIES, which, as I have before remarked, preceded, and at length produced, these allegorical fables. In this respect I shall imitate those map-makers mentioned by Swift, who O'er inhospitable downs, Place elephants for want of towns. Nor shall I perhaps fail of being pardoned by my reader, if, on the Chepesyde by T. Rastall. fol. It will be sufficient to have given this short incidental notice of a piece which hardly deserves to be named. Rastall wrote and printed many other pieces, which I do not mention, as unconnected with the history of our poetry. I shall only observe farther, in general, that he was eminently skilled in mathematics, cosmography, history, our municipal law, and theology. He died 1526. 1 And of Shakespeare. There is a passage in ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, where the metaphor is exceedingly beautiful; but where the beauty both of the expression and the allusion is lost, unless we recollect the frequency and the nature of these shows in Shakespeare's age. ACT iv. Sc. xi. I must cite the whole of the context, for the sake of the last hemistich. Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish, A vapour sometime, like a bear or lion; same principle, I should attempt to throw new light on the history of our theatre, by pursuing this enquiry through those deductions which it will naturally and more immediately suggest. About the eighth century, trade was principally carried on by means of fairs, which lasted several days. Charlemagne established many great marts of this sort in France; as did William the conqueror, and his Norman successors, in England. The merchants who frequented these fairs in numerous caravans or companies, employed every art to draw the people together. They were therefore accompanied by juglers, minstrels, and buffoons; who were no less interested in giving their attendance, and exerting all their skill, on these occasions. As now but few large towns existed, no public spectacles or popular amusements were established ; and as the sedentary pleasures of domestic life and private society were yet unknown, the fair-time was the season for diversion. In proportion as these shews were attended and encouraged, they began to be set off with new decorations and improvements and the arts of buffoonery being rendered still more attractive by extending their circle of exhibition, acquired an importance in the eyes of the people. By degrees the clergy, observing that the entertainments of dancing, music, and mimicry, exhibited at these protracted annual celebrities, made the people less religious, by promoting idleness and a love of festivity, proscribed these sports, and excommunicated the performers. But finding that no regard was paid to their censures, they changed their plan, and determined to take these recreations into their own hands. They turned actors; and instead of profane mummeries, presented stories taken from legends or the Bible. This was the origin of sacred comedy. The death of St. Catharine, acted by the monks of St. Dennis, rivalled the popularity of the professed players. Music was admitted into the churches, which served as theatres for the representation of holy farces. The festivals among the French, called LA FETE DE FOUX, DE L'ANE,' and DES INNOCENS, at length became greater favorites, as they certainly were more capricious and absurd, than the interludes of the buffoons at the fairs. These are the ideas of a judicious French writer, now living, who has 1 For a most full and comprehensive account of these feasts. See 'Memoires pour servir 'a l'histoire de la FETE DE FOUx, qui se faisoit autrefois dans plusieurs eglises. Par M. du "TILLIOT, gentilhomme ordinaire de son Altesse royale Monseigneur le duc de BERRY. A LAUSANNE et a GENEVE, 1741, 4to. Grosthead, bishop of Lincoln in the eleventh century, orders his dean and chapter to abolish the FESTUM ASINORUM, cum sit vanitate plenum, et voluptatibus spurcum, which used to be anually celebrated in Lincoln cathedral on the feast of the Circumcision. Grossetesti EPISTOL. xxxii. apud Browne's FASCICUL. p. 331. edit. Lond. 1699. tom. ii. Append. And p. 412. Also he forbids the archdeacons of his diocese to permit SCOT-ALES in their chapters and synods (Spelm. Gl. p. 506.) and other LUDI on holidays. Ibid. Epistol, xxii. p. 314. See in the MERCURE FRANCOIS for Sept., 1742, an account of a mummery celebrated in the city of Besancon in France, by the canons of the cathedral, consisting of dancing, singing, eating and drinking, in the cloisters and church, on Easter-day, called BERGERETTA, or the SONG OF THE SHEPHERDS; which remained unabolished till the year 1738. From the RITUAL of the church, p. 1930, ad ann. 1582. Carpentier, SUPPL. Du Cang. LAT. GLOSS. tom. i. p. 523. in V. And ibid. V. BOCLARE, p. 570. |