Carlyle said of Emerson's, do not always "rightly stick to their foregoers and their followers." The most memorable sentences are often terse ones which stand out by themselves as if not meant for parts of wholes. In the essay Of Adversity, for example, we read: "Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes; " this between a sentence dealing with the predominance of sadness over joy in the Old Testament, and one which by an unusual figure of speech suggests that we "judge of the pleasure of the heart by the pleasure of the eye." The essay Of Studies is really a collection of texts, upon any one of which an extended discourse might well be written. In a period when long, involved sentences were the fashion, the directness and pithiness of Bacon's make his style especially noteworthy. The "Essays" and the Renaissance Spirit. The range of subjects treated in the Essays reflects the spirit of the Renaissance its unwillingness to endure any limitation of its inquiry, its ambition to extend knowledge, to take "all knowledge for [its] province." Matters of personal concern, such as Friendship, Honour and Reputation, Adversity; matters relating to government, such as Seditions and Troubles, Faction, The True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates, Judicature; matters of concern to all mankind, such as Truth, Beauty, Deformity, Youth and Age: - these topics give a hint of the fields of thought entered in the fiftyeight essays of the final edition (published in 1625). The fact that they cover subjects so clearly universal in their appeal, that, in the author's words, they "come home to men's business and bosoms," explains their interest for readers of to-day as well as for those of the seventeenth century. THE DRAMA The glory of the Elizabethan period, and therefore of all English literature, is the drama. Before treating the leading writers of drama in this period we shall trace the development of this form of literature somewhat in detail. Origin of Drama -in the Church. -The drama in England began soon after the Norman Conquest, with a composition called the Play of St. Katharine. The connection between religion and the drama suggested by this title is very vital. Whoever has attended high mass in a Roman Catholic church to-day must on reflection realize the dramatic elements in the service. The procession of priests and acolytes, the bowing before the altar, the elevation of the host, the chanted responses, the changing of the priest's costume, all these involve action making a definite appeal to the eye, which is the distinguishing element in all drama. At Christmas and Easter there are in many churches additions to the setting and the service, such as the placing of a babe in an improvised manger in the chancel, and the unveiling of crucifixes hidden from sight for three days. "Miracle 99 Plays. In the olden time such additions were many, and resulted (as the clergy hoped they would) in increased attendance on the church services. Similar extended services were held on saints' days. Before long crowds became too large for the church buildings, and services were then held outside the church porch serving as stage. Once outside the building the productions, called now Miracle or Mystery Plays, were rapidly secularized, that is, elements were added by no means chiefly religious, and others than priests and altar-boys performed. Drama in Secular Hands. The next step took the Miracle Plays out of the hands of the clergy. So popular had they become that even the largest churchyard could not accommodate the crowds; and the productions were now taken over by the guilds, the trades unions of the Middle Ages. Each of these organizations had a patron saint, and was accustomed to celebrate that saint's day in some public fashion. They made use of a moving stage, cr pageant car, upon which the play was produced in different parts of a city. Under their control were developed "cycles" of plays of which four containing from twenty-five to fifty plays each are extant those of Chester, Coventry, York, and Towneley. A "cycle" of Miracle Plays was a series depicting selected scenes from Creation to the Day of Judgment. Non-Scriptural Incidents in Plays. When these dramatic compositions had reached their full development (fourteenth or fifteenth century), they contained many incidents not found in the scriptural narrative or in the accepted lives of the saints. In a play called Noah's Flood, for example, a comic incident is introduced when Noah's wife, refusing to believe in the coming deluge, objects to entering the ark without her "gossips," or boon companions. When efforts at persuasion fail, Noah vigorously applies the lash and drives his partner unwillingly aboard. In a Play of the Shepherds, before the announcement of Christ's birth, one shepherd misses a sheep; the rest immediately suspect one Mak (who apparently has been in such scrapes before), and follow him to his home. After searching high and low and finding no sheep, the visitors feel rather guilty; and as they are about to depart they decide to make a peace-offering to Mak's baby in the cradle. Examination shows, however, that the supposed baby is nothing else than the missing sheep. The shepherds toss Mak in a blanket till they are exhausted; they then lie down in the field and sleep till they are aroused by the "Gloria in excelsis" of the Christmas angels. The comic element was further brought out in the antics of Herod, who was allowed to get down from the pageant car and circulate among the crowd playing practical jokes. Rise of the " Morality " Play. Morality" Play. When the Miracle Plays passed from the control of the church to that of the guilds, the secularizing process already mentioned went further. The plays, instead of containing some incidents not taken from Scripture, became chiefly non-scriptural in character. From this condition it was but a short step to the Morality Play, in which the characters are personified abstractions, representing virtues and vices, and qualities of the human mind. In the Morality of Everyman, for example, some of the characters are Death, Fellowship, Knowledge, Good-Deeds, Discretion. In Hycke-scorner (i.e., rascal, scoffer) we find Imagination, Pity, and Perseverance. Popular characters usually found are Vice and the Devil, who took the place of Herod as chief comic figures. Their part in the plays is alluded to in Shakspere's Twelfth Night, where the clown sings: The "I'll be with you again, Like to the old Vice, In his rage and his wrath, Interlude.' It seems that Miracle Plays and Moralities ran side by side until nearly the end of the sixteenth century. A third form of dramatic entertainment that some think grew out of the Moralities is called the Interlude, from having originally been performed between the courses at a feast or between the acts of a serious and longer play. Whatever its origin, its contribution to the development of drama is important. Roughly speaking, we may say that, as the Miracle Play furnished the plot-ancestry of the drama, the Morality the character-ancestry, so the Interlude furnished the dialogue |