A Comparative View

OF THE

FELLOWS AND FOLLOWERS OF SHAKESPEARE

IN COMEDY

(Part One)

By Charles Mills Gayıy

A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF THE FELLOWS AND FOLLOWERS OF SHAKESPEARE IN COMEDY

1. The Judgment of Posterity

"THERE is such an overflowing life," says Swinburne in his paper on Thomas Middleton, "such a superb exuberance of abounding and exulting strength, in the dramatic poetry of the half-century extending from 1590 to 1640, that all other epochs of English literature seem as it were but half awake and half alive by comparison with this generation of giants and of gods. There is more sap in this than in any other branch of the national bay-tree : it has an energy in fertility which reminds us rather of the forest than the garden or the park. It is true," he concedes, "that the weeds and briars embarrass," that "the sun is strong and the wind sharp in the climate which reared the fellows and the followers of Shakespeare," that "the ground is unequal and rough," still, he has "often been disposed to wonder beyond measure at the apathetic ignorance of average students in regard of the abundant treasure to be gathered from this widest and most fruitful province in the poetic empire of England.” To describe in part this province, and to suggest some reasons why "so few should have availed themselves of the entry to so rich and royal an estate," is the purpose of the present

essay.

Is this, one asks, the most fruitful province in the poetic empire of England? Is the estate royal? Are the fellows and followers of Shakespeare who created it a generation of giants and of gods? or are but one or two divine, and that by spells; and but two or three gigantic, and that by comparison with their coevals, Shakespeare excluded? And is it possible that "the apathetic ignorance of average students," at any rate concerning nine-tenths of the comedies of Shakespeare's fellows and immediate followers, is not to be wondered at, after all?

In the first volume of this series justice has, I hope, been done to the work in comedy of Shakespeare himself and of his earlier contemporaries, such men as Lyly, Peele, Greene; and mention has been made of the activity of less prolific playwrights, Gascoigne, Edwards, Lodge, Nashe, Porter, and Robert Wilson. In this volume and that which will presently follow will be con

sidered the additions to the estate of comedy made by Shakespeare's fellows and followers in the half-century mentioned above. For purposes of convenience, and for lack of space, the discussion will be primarily limited to the period which begins about 1597-8, when Ben Jonson was writing his first great play, and ends with 1625, when Shakespeare had been nine years dead and Fletcher, the disciple both of Jonson and Shakespeare, was laid in the grave at St. Saviour's, Southwark. While the conditions of the stage from 1597 to 1614 will be passed in general review, attention will in this volume be particularly directed to some of the comedies produced between 1597 and 1611, when Shakespeare practically withdrew to his home in Stratford-on-Avon.

To the writers who in 1598 were cultivating comedy we are pointed by the Wit's Treasury of Francis Meres. If we exclude from his account those whose activities have been sufficiently discussed in our first volume, there remain to be considered, as "best for comedy," Thomas Heywood, Anthony Munday, George Chapman, Henry Porter, Robert Wilson, Richard Hathway, and Henry Chettle. Our informant has already mentioned Chapman in a list of those who are "our best for tragedy," and with him Michael Drayton, Thomas Dekker, and Ben Jonson. These, as we know, were writing at that time comedy as well. In connection with the preceding authors, they are frequently entered in the accounts of the theatrical proprietor and manager, Henslowe, between 1597 and 1603, as producers of various kinds of drama; and with them John Marston, John Day, and William Haughton. Shakespeare does not occur in Henslowe's accounts, but Meres ranks him as "most excellent in both kinds "—tragedy and comedy. Coming down to 1612, we find that, in the preface to his White Devil, Webster mentions, in company with five of these dramatists, "the worthily excellent Master Beaumont and Master Fletcher "; and that these poets had come to London before 1607 with two comedies "then not finished" appears from other authority. By 1610 Nathaniel Field is acknowledged as Chapman's "loved son," and has written comedy. By 1615 Middleton is named among the poets, by Howes in his continuation of Stow; and in Taylor's Praise of Hempseed, where "many that are living at this day" are mentioned-" which do in paper their true worth display," William Rowley and Philip Massinger are joined to half a dozen of the preceding. These lists are to some extent repeated by Heywood in his Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels (1635), and the names of John Webster, Thomas May, and John Ford are added. In 1623 the first play of Richard Brome (written in company with Ben Jonson's son) was licensed; and by 1625 James Shirley had made his first attempt at comedy. Entries in the Stationers' Registers and the Revels Accounts, and the dates of plays as published, confirm the roster. It is, perhaps, for our purposes,

more than complete, for Brome, Shirley, and Ford had not attained importance in comedy before 1625, and Hathway's contribution is negligible.

Of

Of the comedies of Shakespeare's earlier contemporaries only two or three had life upon any stage after 1600, and then but for a moment. comedies produced between 1597 and 1625 by his later contemporaries there are recorded some two hundred and fifty. Of these about one hundred and twenty have disappeared. Of the remaining one hundred and thirty about fifty survived the Restoration as acting plays; but since the middle of the eighteenth century not more than twenty-six of them have been presented upon the public stage.

Three of the twenty-six dropped out before 1775: Fletcher's The Tamer Tamed and Wit Without Money (in 1757); and Jonson's Alchemist (in 1774). Ten more dropped before 1800: Chapman, Jonson, and Marston's Eastward Hoe (adapted as Old City Manners, in 1775); Fletcher's Little French Lawyer (in 1778) and his Prophetess (in 1784); Beaumont and Fletcher's King and No King, The Scornful Lady, and The Coxcomb (in 1785, 1788, and 1792, respectively); Massinger's The Bond-Man (altered, in 1779); Jonson's Volpone and The Silent Woman (in 1785 and 1784); and Marston's The Dutch Courtezan (altered as Trick upon Trick, in 1789). Eight others ceased to be acted before 1825: Fletcher's The Pilgrim (in 1812), Beggar's Bush, adapted as The Merchant of Bruges (in 1815), The Humorous Lieutenant (in 1817), and The Chances (in 1808; as an opera in 1821); Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster (in 1817); Dekker's Olde Fortunatus (in 1819); Massinger's The City Madam (altered as Riches, in 1822); and Rowley's A New Wonder: A Woman Never Vext (altered, in 1824). Four more had disappeared by 1850 Jonson's Every Man in his Humour (in 1825); Massinger's The Maid of Honor (adapted, in 1829); Fletcher's Rule a Wife and Have a Wife (in 1829) and The Spanish Curate (in 1840). In the last quarter of the nineteenth century only one of the comedies written between 1597 and 1625 still held the boards-Massinger's A New Way to Pay Old Debts. Such is the verdict of theatre-going posterity concerning the value of the comic output of "this generation of giants and of gods."

A few plays have been recently revived by stage societies and universities: The Shomaker's Holiday, for instance, Every Man in His Humour, The Silent Woman and The Case is Altered, The Knight of the Burning Pestle and The Coxcomb, Fletcher's The Maid in the Mill, Heywood's Fortune by Land and Sea and The Faire Maid of the West, and Middleton and Rowley's The Spanish Gipsie, but the interest evoked has been historical and literary rather than dramatic. The popular judgment of posterity is not the only criterion of literary or dramatic worth; but it is an important criterion. Significance for thought and conduct, significance for feeling are also criteria; but of what