Page images
PDF
EPUB

rise

THE NEW AND THE OLD RELIGION CONTRASTED.

Ye rise for religion. What religion taught you that? If ye were offered persecution for religion, ye ought to flee. So Christ teacheth you, and yet you intend to fight. If ye would stand in the truth, ye ought to suffer like martyrs; and ye would slay like tyrants. Thus for religion, ye keep no religion, and neither will follow the counsel of Christ nor the constancy of martyrs. Why ye for religion? Have ye any thing contrary to God's book? Yea, have ye not all things agreeable to God's word? But the new [religion] is different from the old; and therefore ye will have the old. If ye measure the old by truth, ye have the oldest. If ye measure the old by fancy, then it is hard, because men's fancies change, to give that is old. Ye will have the old stile. Will ye have any older than that as Christ left, and his apostles taught, and the first church did use? Ye will have that the canons do establish. Why that is a great deal younger than that ye have of later time, and newlier invented; yet that is it that desire. And do ye prefer the bishops of Rome afore Christ? Men's inventions afore God's law? The newer sort of worship before the older? Ye seek no religion; ye be deceived; ye seek traditions. They that teach you, blind you; that so instruct you, deceive you. If ye seek what the old doctors say, yet look what Christ, the oldest of all, saith. For he saith, "before Abraham was made, I am." If ye seek the truest way, he is the very truth. If ye seek the readiest way, he is the very way. If ye seek everlasting life, he is the very life. What religion would ye have other how than his religion? You would have the Bibles in again. It is no mervail; your blind guides should lead you blind

still. *

*

*

ye

But why should ye not like that [religion] which God's word establisheth, the primitive church hath authorized, the greatest learned men of this realm have drawn the whole consent of, the parliament hath confirmed, the king's majesty hath set forth? Is it not truly set out? Can ye devise any truer than Christ's apostles used? Ye think it is not learnedly done. Dare ye, commons, take upon you more learning than the chosen bishops and clerks of this realm have?

[ocr errors]

Learn, learn to know this one point of religion, that God will be worshipped as he hath prescribed, and not as we have devised. And that his will is wholly in the Scriptures, which be full of God's spirit, and profitable to teach the truth.

1

[blocks in formation]

THE name of John Heywood introduces us at once to that department of Literature, in which the English have excelled all the other nations of the world-the Drama. It is impossible to fix any precise date for the origin of the English Drama. In tracing its history, however, we must make four divisions the Miracle Plays-the Moral Plays-the Interludes--and the Legitimate Drama.

THE MIRACLE PLAYS. It would appear that, at the dawn of modern civi lization, most countries of Europe possessed a rude kind of theatrical entertainment, consisting of the principal supernatural events of the Old and New Testaments, and of the history of the saints; whence they were called Miracles, or Miracle Plays. Some of their subjects were The Creation-The Fall of Man-The Flood-Abraham's Sacrifice-The Birth of Christ-His Baptism, &c. These plays were acted by the clergy, and were under their immediate management, for they maintained that they were favorable to the cause of religion. On the contrary, the language and the representations of these plays were indecorous and profane in the highest degree: and what must have been the state of society, when ecclesiastics patronised such scenes of blasphemy, and pollution! Let us hear no more about "the good old times," for "times" were doubtless far worse then than now.

MORAL PLAYS. The next step in the progress of the Drama was the Moral Play. The Moral Plays were dramas of which the characters were chiefly allegorical or abstract. They were certainly a great advance upon the Miracles, as they endeavored to convey sound moral lessons, and at the same time gave occasion to some poetical and dramatic ingenuity, in imaging forth the characters, and assigning appropriate speeches to each. The only scriptural character retained in them, was the Devil. He was rendered as grotesque and hideous as possible by the mask and dress he wore. We learn that his exterior was shaggy and hairy, one of the characters mistaking him for a dancing bear. That he had a tail, if it required proof, is evident from the circumstance, that in one play, the other chief character, called Vice, asks him for a piece of it to make a fly-trap. Thus, what would otherwise have been quite a sober performance, was rendered no little entertaining.

1 We now enter upon the age of Queen Elizabeth, and I cannot but insert here the following fine remarks from the 18th vol of the Edinburgh Review :-"We cannot resist the opportunity of here saying a word or two of a class of writers, whom we have long worshipped in secret with a sort of idolatrous veneration, and now find once more brought forward as candidates for public applause The era to which they belong, indeed, has always appeared to us by far the brightest in the history of English literature, or indeed of human intellect and capacity. There never was, anywhere, any thing like the sixty or seventy years that elapsed from the middle of Elizabeth's reign to the period of the Restoration. In point of real force and originality of genius, neither the age of Pericles, nor the age of Augustus, nor the times of Leo X., nor of Louis XIV., can come at all into comparison; for, in that short period, we shall find the names of almost all the very great men that this nation has ever produced,--the names of Shakspeare, and Bacon, and Spenser, and Sidney, and Hooker, and Taylor, and Barrow, and Raleigh, and Napier, and Milton, and Cudworth, and Hobbes, and many others;-men, all of them, not merely of great talents and accomplishments, but of vast compass and reach of understanding, and of minds truly creative and original;-not perfecting art by the delicacy of their taste, or digesting knowledge by the justness of their reasonings; but making vast and substantial additions to the materials upon which taste and reason must hereafter be employed, and enlarging, to an incredible and unparalleled extent, both the stores and the resources of the human faculties

INTERLUDES, The Interludes were something between the Moral Plays and the modern Drama. The Moral Plays were frequent in the reign of Henry VI. (1422-1461.) In the reign of Henry VII. (1485-1509) they flourished in all their glory, and continued in force down to the latter half of the sixteenth century. But it was at length found that a real human being, with a human name, was better calculated to awaken the sympathies, and keep alive the attention of an audience, and not less so to impress them with moral truths, than a being who only represented a notion of the mind. The substitution of these for the symbolical characters, gradually took place during the earlier part of the sixteenth century, and before its close the English drama, in the writings of Shakspeare, reached its highest excellence.

One of the most successful writers of Interludes was John Heywood, or as he was commonly called, "Merry John Heywood." He was a native of London, but the year of his birth is unknown. He studied for some time at Oxford, but did not take his degree. He was of a social, festive genius, the favorite of Henry VIII, and afterwards of his daughter, Queen Mary, who were delighted with his dramatic representations. It is rather singular that the latter should have been so much pleased, as Heywood exposed, in terms of great severity, the vicious lives of the ecclesiastics. The play which per haps best illustrates the genius of Heywood, is that called the "FOUR P's,” which is a dialogue between a Palmer,2 a Pardoner, a Poticary,3 and a Pedler. Four such knaves afforded so humorous a man as Heywood was, abundant materials for satire, and he has improved them to some advantage. The piece opens with the Palmer, who boasts of his peregrinations to the Holy Land, to Rome, to Santiago in Spain, and to a score of other shrines. This boasting was interrupted by the Pardoner, who tells him that he has been foolish to give himself so much trouble, when he might have obtained the object of his journey-the pardon of his sins-at home.

For at your door myself doth dwell,

Who could have saved your soul as well,
As all your wide wandering shall do,
Though ye went thrice to Jericho.

The Palmer will not hear his labors thus disparaged, and he thus exclaims to the impostor, the relic-vender:

Right seldom is it seen, or never,

That truth and Pardoners dwell together.

The Pardoner then rails at the folly of pilgrimages, and asserts in strong terms the virtues of his spiritual nostrums;

With small cost, and without any pain,

These pardons bring them to heaven plain.

The Poticary now speaks, and is resolved to have his share of the merit. Of what avail are all the wanderings of the one or the relics of the other, until the soul is separated from the body? And who sends so many into the

1 A species of farce, so called because they were played at the intervals of festivity.

* Every Palmer was a Pilgrim, but every Pilgrim was not a Palmer. The Pilgrim so called was one who had visited any foreign shore, and who on his return wore some badge peculiar to the place visited. Those, for instance, who visited the statue of St. James at Santiago (Spain) wore, on their return, the scallop-shell so frequent in that neighbourhood. But the term Palmer was applied to those only who had visited the holy places of Palestine, in token of which he bore in his hat a small portion of the palm, which so much abounds in that region.

* In early times the apothecary and physician were united in the same person.

[ocr errors]

world as the apothecary? Except such as may happen to be hanged, ( h, for any thing he knows, may be the fate of the Palmer and Pardoner,) who dies by any other help than that of the apothecary? As, there fore, it is he, he says, who fills heaven with inmates, who is so much entitled to the gratitude of mankind? The Pardoner is here indignant, and asks what is the benefit of dying, and what, consequently, the use of an apothecary, even should he kill a thousand a day, to men who are not in a state of grace? And what, retorts the other, would be the use of a thousand pardons round the neck, unless people died? The Poticary, who is the most sensible of the three, concludes that all of them are rogues, when the Pedler makes his appearance.

He, like his companions, commends his wares. How can there be any love without courtship? And how can women be won without such tempting gifts as are in his sack?

Who liveth in love and love would win,
Even at this pack he must begin.

He then displays his wares, and entreats them to buy: but the churchmen.
of that day were beggars, not buyers; and the Poticary is no less cunning.
At length the Pardoner reverts to the subject of conversation when the Pedler
entered, and, in order to draw out the opinion of the last comer, states the
argument between himself and his two companions. The Pedler seems, at
first, surprised that the profession of an apothecary is to kill men, and thinks
the world may very well do without one; but the other assures him he is
under a mistake; that the Poticary is the most useful, and for this notable
reason, that when any man feels that his "conscience is ready," all he has
to do is to send for the practitioner, who will at once despatch him.

Weary of their disputes for pre-eminence of merit and usefulness, the Pedler proposes that the other three shall strive for the mastery by lying, and that the greatest liar shall be recognised as head of the rest. The task he imposes on them cannot, he says, be a heavy one, for all are used to it. They are each to tell a tale. The Poticary commences, and the Pardoner follows. Their lies are deemed very respectable, but the Palmer is to be victorious, as he ends his tale in these words:→→→→

Yet have I seen many a mile,

And many a woman in the while;
And not one good city, town, or borough,
In Christendom but I have been thorough:
And this I would ye should understand,
I have seen women, five hundred thousand:
Yet in all places where I have been,
Of all the women that I have seen,
I never saw nor knew in my conscience,
Any one woman out of patience.

Nothing can exceed the surprise of the other three at this astounding asser-
tion, except the ingenuity with which they are made to express-unwillingly
yet involuntarily-the Palmer's superiority in the "most ancient and notable
art of lying."

Poticary. By the mass, there's a great lie!

Pardoner. I never heard a greater-by our Lady!

Pedler. A greater! nay, knew you any one so great?

And so ends the old interlude of "Merry John Heywood," of the "Four P's."

JOHN STILL,

AND HIS GAMMER GURTON'S NEEDLE.

To John Still, master of arts of Christ's College, Cambridge, and subse quently archdeacon of Sudbury, and lastly bishop of Bath and Wells, is ascribed the first genuine comedy in our language. It was first acted in 1566, and was printed in 1575, under the following title: "A ryght pithy, pleasant, and merie Comedy, intytuled Gammer Gurton's Nedle; played on the stage not longe ago in Christe's Colledge, in Cambridge. Made by Mr. S., master of art." As the first comedy in our language, it would demand attention, independent of its merit. But it has a sort of merit in its way. It is written in rhyme. The humor is broad, familiar, and grotesque. The characters are sketched with a strong, though coarse outline, and are to the last consistently supported. Some of the language, however, and many of the incidents, are such as give us no very favorable view of the manners of the times, when the most learned and polished of the land, the inmates of a university, could listen with delight to dialogue often tinctured with phrases of the lowest and grossest character, and that, too, written by a prelate. But, as a curiosity, we will give the outline of this old piece.

The characters consist of Diccon, a cunning wag, who lives on stolen bacon and mischief; Hodge, a mere bumpkin; Gammer Gurton, and Dame Chat, two brawling old wives; Mas Doctor Rat, an intermeddling priest, who would rather run the risk of a broken head than lose a tithe-pig; and Gib, the cat. The plot turns upon the loss of the Gammer's only needle,

A little thing with an hole in the end, as bright as any siller,
Small, long, sharp at the point, and straight as any pillar.

The disaster happens while the dame is mending an article of clothing of
her man Hodge. In the midst of the operation, Gib, the cat, who is no un-
important personage in the play, disturbs the Gammer's serenity by making
a furtive attempt on a pan of milk. The Gammer, in a passion, throws the
before-mentioned article of apparel at Gib, and that valuable instrument of
female economy is most unhappily lost. After a fruitless search in all ima-
ginable places, Diccon, the bedlam, seeing that this affair would afford some
sport, straightway hies him to Dame Chat, and tells her how Gammer Gur-
ton has accused her of stealing her poultry. He next applies to the Gammer,
and vows he saw Dame Chat pick up the needle at the Gammer's door.
This brings the two old ladies together. The one accuses the other of steal-
ing her goods, and from words they soon proceed to blows, in which Dame
Chat comes off victorious. In this extremity the Gammer applies for relief
to the curate, Doctor Rat. Here again Diccon interposes, and persuades the
learned ecclesiastic to creep in the silent hour of night into Dame Chat's
house, when he will see her at work with the aforesaid needle. Meanwhile
Diccon gives Dame Chat notice that Hodge will that night pay an evil-inten-
tioned visitation to her poultry. The dame accordingly prepares for his re-
ception, and instead of the needle, the doctor meets with a door-bar, wielded
by the masculine hand of the Dame, (who conceives it to be Hodge,) to the
no small detriment of the said Doctor's skull. To the baily Gammer Gurton
has now recourse; when, after a long argument, the author of the mischief is
discovered, and enjoined a certain ceremony by way of expiation; and as a

1

« PreviousContinue »