who passed to his throne, having nae speche to thende of the play, and then to ratify and approve, as in Parliament, all things done by the rest of the players, which represented THE THREE ESTATES. With him came his cortiers, PLACEBO, PICTHANK, and FLATTERYE, and sic alike gard: one swering he was the lustiest, starkeste, best proportionit, and most valeyant man that ever was; and ane other swore he was the beste with long-bowe, crosse-bowe, and culverin, and so fourth. Thairafter there come a man armed in harness, with a swerde drawn in his hande, a BUSHOP, a BURGES-MAN, and EXPERIENCE, clede like a DOCTOR; who set them all down on the deis under the KING. After them come a POOR MAN, who did go up and down the scaffolde, making a hevie complainte that he was hereyet, throw the courtiers taking his fewe in one place, and his tackes in another : wherthrough he had sceyled his house, his wyfe and childrene beggyng thair brede, and so of many thousands in Scotland; saying thair was no remedy to be gotten, as he was neither acquainted with controller nor treasurer. And then he looked to the King, and said he was not king in Scotland, fore there was ane other king in Scotland that hanged JOHNE ARMSTRANG, with his fellowes, SYM THE LAIRD, and mony other mae; but he had lefte ane thing undone. Then he made a long narracione of the oppression of the poor, by the taking of the corse-presaunte beists, and of the herrying of poor men by the consistorye lawe, and of many other abusions of the SPIRITUALITIE and Church. Then the BUSHOP raise and rebuked him. Then the MAN OF ARMES alledged the contraire, and commanded the poor man to go on. The poor man proceeds with a long list of the bushop's evil practices, the vices of cloisters, &c. This proved by EXPERIENCE, who, from a New Testament, shows the office of a bushop. The MAN OF ARMES and the BURGES approve of all that was said against the clergy, and alledge the expediency of a reform, with the consent of Parliament. The BusHOP dissents. The MAN OF ARMES and the BURGES said they were two, and he but one, wherefore their voice should have most effect. Thereafter the King, in the play, ratified, approved, and confirmed all that was rehearsed." The other nations of Europe, as well as England, had their Mysteries and Moralities. In France, Boileau, following Menestrier, imputes the introduction of these spectacles to travelling bands of pilgrims. Chez nos devots ayeux, le théâtre abhorré Fut long-temps dan la France un plaisir ignoré : Des pelerins, dit-on, une troupe grossiere En public à Paris y monta la premiere ; Et sottement zélée, en sa simplicité Joüa les saints, la Vierge, et Dieu par pieté. L'Art Poëtique, Chant iii. In Spain the Autos Sacramentales, which are analogues to the Mys teries of the middle ages, are still presented without shocking a nation whose zeal is stronger than their taste; and, it is believed, such rude and wild plays, founded on Scripture, are also occasionally acted in Flanders. In the History of the Council of Constance, we find that Mysteries were introduced into Germany by the English, about 1417, and were first performed to welcome the Emperor Sigismund, on his return from England; and, from the choice of the subjects, we should almost suppose, that they had transferred to that country the Chester Mysteries themselves. "Les Anglois," says the historians, “se signalèrent entres les autres par un spectacle nouveau, ou au moins inusité jusques alors en Allemagne. Ce fut une comédie sacrée que les Evêques Anglois firent représenter devant l'Empereur, le Dimanche 13 de Janvier, sur la naissance du Sauveur, sur l'arrivée des mages, et sur la Massacre des Innocens." (Hist. du Concile de Constance, par L'Enfant, lib. v.) The character of these rude dramatic essays renders them rather subjects for the antiquary, than a part of a history of the regular dramatic art. We may also pass over, with brief notice, the Latin plays which, upon the revival of letters, many of the learned composed, in express imitation of the ancient Grecian and Roman productions. We have mentioned those of Mussato, who was followed by the more celebrated Cararo, in the path which he had opened to fame. In other countries the same example was followed. These learned prolusions, however, were only addressed to persons of letters, then a very circumscribed circle, and, when acted at all, were presented at universities or courts on solemn public occasions. They form no step in the history of the Drama, unless that, by familiarising the learned with the form and rules of the ancient classical Drama, they gradually paved the way for the adoption of similar regulations into the revived vernacular Drama, and formed a division amongst the theatres of modern Europe, which has never yet been reconciled. While the learned laboured to revive the Classical Drama in all its purity, the public at large, to which the treasures of the learned languages were as a fountain sealed, became addicted to a species of representation which properly neither fell under the denomination of comedy or tragedy, but was named History or Historical Drama. Charles Verardo, who, about 1492, composed a Drama of this sort, in Latin, upon the expulsion of the Moors from Granada, claims, for this production, a total emancipation from the rules of dramatic criticism. Requirat autem nullus hic comedia "Let none expect that in this piece the rules of comedy or of tragedy should be observed; we mean to act a history, not a fable." From this expression it would seem, that, in a Historical Drama, the author did not think himself entitled to compress or alter the incidents as when the plot was fabulous, but was bound, to a certain extent, to conform to the actual course of events. In these histories, the poet often embraced the life and death of a monarch, or some other period of history, containing several years of actual time, which, nevertheless, were made to pass before the eyes of the audience during the two or three hours usually allotted for the action of a play. It is not to be supposed that, with so fair a field open before them, and the applause of the audience for their reward, the authors of these histories should long have confined themselves to the matter-of-fact contained in records. They speedily innovated or added to their dramatic chronicles, without regard to the real history. To those who plead for stageplays, that they elucidate and explain many dark and obscure histories, and fix the facts firmly in the minds of the audience, of which they had otherwise but an imperfect apprehension, the stern Prynne replies with great scorn, that play-poets do not explain, but sophisticate and deform good histories, with many false varnishes and playhouse fooleries ;" and that “the histories are more accurately to be learned in the original authors who record them, than in derivate playhouse pamphlets, which corrupt them." Prynne's Hist.-Mastix, p. 940. The dramatic chronicles, therefore, were a field in which the genius of the poet laboured to supply by character, sentiment, and incident, the meagre detail of the historian. They became so popular in England, that, during the short interval betwixt the revival of the stage and the appearance of Shakspeare, the most part of the English monarchs had lived and died upon the stage; and it is well known that almost all his historical plays were new written by him, upon the plan of old dramatic chronicles which already existed. But the miscellaneous audience which crowded to the vernacular theatre, at its revival in Europe, were of that rank and intellect which is apt to become tired of a serious subject, and to demand that a lamentable tragedy should be intermingled with very pleasant mirth. The poets, obliged to cater for all tastes, seldom failed to insert the humours of some comic character, that the low or grotesque scenes in which he was engaged might serve as a relief to the graver passages of the Drama, and gratify the taste of those spectators who, like Christophero Sly, tired until the fool came on the stage again. Hence Sir Philip Sydney's censure on these dramatists, "how all their plays be neither right tragedies nor right comedies, mingling kings with clowns; not because the matter so carrieth it, but to thrust in the clown, by head and shoulders, to play a part in magestical matters, with neither. decency nor discretion, so that neither the admiration and commiseration, nor the right sportfulness, is by their mongrel tragic-comedy attained." (Defence of Poesie, Sidney's Arcadia, edit. 1627, p. 563.) “If we mark them well," he concludes, "funerals and hornpipes seldom match daintily together." The historical plays led naturally into another class, which may be be called Romantic Dramas, founded upon popular poems or fictitious narratives, as the former were on real history. Some of these were borrowed from foreign nations, ready dramatized to the hand of the borrower; others were founded on the plots which occurred in the almost innumerable novels and romances which we had made our own by translation. "I may boldly say it," says Gosson, a recreant playwright who attacked his former profession, "because I have seen it, that the Palace of Pleasure, the Golden Asse, the Ethiopian History, Amadis of France, the Round Table, Bawdie Comedies in Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish, have been thoroughly ransacked to furnish the play-house in London.” But it was not to be supposed that the authors would confine themselves to stricter rules in pieces founded upon Italian and Spanish novels, or upon romances of chivalry, than they had acted upon in the histories. Every circumstance which tended to loosen the reins of theatrical discipline, in the one case, existed in the other; and, accordingly, comedies of intrigue, and tragedies of action and show, everywhere superseded, at least in popular estimation, the severe and simple model of the Classical Drama. It happened that in England and Spain, in particular, the species of composition which was most independent of critical regulation was supported by the most brilliant display of genius. Lopez de Vega and Calderon rushed on the stage with their hasty and high-coloured, but glowing productions, fresh from the mint of imagination, and scorning that the cold art of criticism should weigh them in her balance. The taste of the Spaniards has been proverbially inclined to the wild, the romantic, and the chivalrous; and the audience of their bards would not have parted with one striking scene, however inartificially introduced, to have gained for their favourites the praise of Aristotle and all his commentators. Lopez de Vega himself was not ignorant of critical rules; but he pleads the taste of his countrymen as an apology for neglecting those restrictions which he had observed in his earlier studies. "Yet true it is I too have written plays, The wiser few, who judge with skill might praise The crowd's, and, more than all, the fair's applause ; Who still are forward with indulgent rage To sanction every monster of the stage; I, doomed to write the public taste to hit, Resume the barbarous dress 'twas vain to quit ; Plautus and Terence banish from my sight, To vulgar standards, then, I frame my play, LORD HOLLAND'S Life of Lope de Vega, p. 103. The Spanish comedies of intrigue also went astray, as far as their romantic tragedies, from the classical path. In fact, these new representations were infinitely more captivating from their vivacity, novelty, and, above all, from their reflecting the actual spirit of the time, and holding the mirror up to nature, than the cold imitations which the learned wrote in emulation of the Classic Drama. The one class are existing and living pictures of the times in which the authors lived; the others, the cold resurrection of the lifeless corpses which had long slumbered in the tomb of antiquity. The spirit of chivalry, which so long lingered in Spain, breathes through the wild and often extravagant genius of her poets. The hero is brave and loyal, and true to his mistress: "A knight of love, who never broke a vow." Lovers of this description, in whose mind the sexual passion is sublimated into high and romantic feeling, make a noble contrast with the coarse and licentious Greek or Roman, whose passion turns only on the difficulty of purchasing his mistress's person, but never conceives the slightest apprehension concerning the state of her affections. That the crowd might have their loud laugh, a grazioso, or clown, usually a servant of the hero, is in the Spanish Drama, uniformly introduced to make sport. Like Kemp or Tarletun, famous in the clown's part before the time of Shakspeare, this personage was permitted to fill up his part with extemporary jesting, not only on the performers, but with the audience. This irregularity, with others, seems to have been borrowed by the English stage from that of Spain, and is the license which Hamlet condemns in his instructions to the players: "And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the meantime, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered; that's villanous; and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it." The bald simplicity of the ancient plots was, in like manner, contrasted to disadvantage with the intricacies, involutions, suspense, and bustle of Spanish intrigue upon the stage. Hence the boast of one of their poets, thus translated by Lord Holland : "Invention, interest, sprightly turns in plays, |