A Game at Chesse 79 for the complete illusion of reality. There is not even the interruption of a mere splendour; no one speaks greatly or utters irrelevant poetry; here, poetry is the very slave and confidant of drama, heroically obedient. But the heights of The Changeling, the nobility of even what was evil in the passions of that play, are no longer attained. Middleton, left to himself, has returned, with new experience and new capacity, to his own level. With one more experiment, and this a masterpiece of a wholly new kind, the only work of English poetry,' says Swinburne, 'which may properly be called Aristophanic,' the career of Middleton comes, so far as we know, to an end. A Game at Chesse is a satire, taking the popular side against Spain, and it was the Spanish ambassador Gondomar, the 'Machiavelpolitician' and Black Knight of its chess-board, who caused the suppression of the play, and the punishment of all concerned in it. It is the most perfect of Middleton's works, and it carries some of his most intimate qualities to a point they had not reached before. Banter turns into a quite serious and clear and bitter satire; burlesque becomes a severe and elegant thing; the verse, beginning formally and always kept well within bounds, is fitted with supreme technical skill to this new, outlandish matter; there are straight confessions of sins and symbolic feasts of vices, in which a manner acquired by the city chronologer for numbering the feasts and fastings of the city is adapted by him to finer use. We learn now how fat cathedral bodies Have very often but lean little soul, and the imagery, already expressive, takes on a new colour of solemn mockery. From this leviathan-scandal that lies rolling Upon the crystal waters of devotion, is sometimes the language of the Black Knight, and sometimes In the most fortunate angle of the world Technique, in drama and verse alike, never flags; and the play is a satire and criticism, no longer of city manners or of personal vices, but of the nation's policy; and that it was accepted as such, by the public and by the government of the time, is proved by the fifteen hundred pounds taken by the actors in nine days, and by the arrest of Middleton for what was really a form of patriotism. We have no record of anything written by Middleton during the three remaining years of his life. A Game at Chesse is the culmination of those qualities which seem to have been most natural and instinctive in him, in spite of the splendid work of another kind which he did with Rowley in The Changeling. His genius was varied and copious, and he showed his capacity to do almost every kind of dramatic work with immense vigour. Life is never long absent from the tangled scenes, in which a heterogeneous crowd hurries by, not stopping long enough to make us familiar with most of the persons in it, but giving us an unmistakable human savour. Few of the plays are quite satisfactory all through; there is almost always some considerable flaw, in construction, in characterisation, or in aesthetic taste; yet hardly one of them can be neglected in our consideration of the dramatist's work as a whole. In single scenes of tragedy and of comedy (romantic comedy, the comedy of manners, farce and satire) he can hold his own against any contemporary, and it is only in lyric verse that he is never successful. He became a remarkable dramatic poet; but he was not born to sing. Poetry came to him slowly, and he had to disentangle it from more active growths of comic energy. It came to him when he began to realise that there was something in the world besides cheating shopkeepers and cozening lawyers, and the bargains made between men and women for bodies, not souls. With the heightening of emotion his style heightens, and as his comedy refines itself his verse becomes subtler. In Middleton's work, the cry of De Flores Ha! what art thou that tak'st away the light is almost unique in imagination. And it is drama even more than it is poetry. His style is the most plausible of all styles in poetry, and it has a probable beauty, giving an easy grace of form to whatever asks to be expressed. It rarely steps aside to pick up a jewel, nor do jewels drop naturally out of its mouth. CHAPTER IV THOMAS HEYWOOD IT is in writers of the second rank-and of these, with his abundant merit and attractive idiosyncrasy, Thomas Heywood unmistakably was-that we find it easiest to study the progress and expansion of the form of art practised by them. In the brief but often interesting addresses prefixed by Heywood to his plays, he was fond of referring to the changes in public taste which playwrights had been called upon to consult in the course of his own long experience; but he seems to care little about indicating his own preference for either old style or new, being manifestly as ready to fall in with the latter as he had been to put forth his best endeavours in the former. When commending to favour a drama depending for its effect entirely on character, situations and dialogue, and introducing No Drum, nor Trumpet, nor Dumbe show, No Combate, Marriage, not so much Today As Song, Dance, Masque, to bumbaste out our Play he hastens to add : Yet these all good, and still in frequent use With our best Poets1. And, as with matter, so with form: recalling the time when rime was in fashion in plays and 'strong lines were not lookt after,' he takes occasion to observe that what is out of date now may come into fashion again and sute well'—and, for himself, he is clearly quite ready to stop or rime his lines with his fellows. He has no wish to criticise or to theorise, or to set himself up as a representative of any special class or select sort of English drama. Had he not, at the beginning of his twoscore or more years of labours for the stage, dramatised both history and historical romance in plays to 1 Prologue to The English Traveller. * Epilogue (to the Reader) to The Royall King, and The Loyall Subject. E. L. VI CH. IV. 6 which no bold prentice could listen without breaking into rapturous applause and no citizen's wife without dropping a sympathetic tear; and, as for 'song, dance and masque,' had not Homer and Ovid and Apuleius been alike laid under contribution by him for providing entertainments from which neither learned nor lewd would go home unsatisfied? Even dramatic species to which he felt no personal attraction-such as that comedy of 'humours flash'd in wit' which satirised types of humanity neither heroic nor attractive-he declined to depreciate, merely urging those who cultivated them not to eschew the treatment of other and loftier subjects: the deeds of great Patriots, Dukes and Kings,' for the memorising of which the English drama (some plays of his own with the rest) had hitherto been notably distinguished1. But, while Heywood, cheerfully suiting himself and his art to a variety of dramatic genres, attained to virtuosity rather than to supreme excellence in the chronicle history and the romantic drama, and did as well as many others in the comedy of manners and the mythological play, he associated his name after a more intimate fashion with a species which had a character, and a future, of its own. This was the domestic drama, which, on the background of ordinary family life, presents an action of deep and commanding moral interest. Heywood was not the inventor of the domestic drama, which is as thoroughly English in its genesis and in a great part of its development as the national historical drama itself, justly held in high honour by him. Nor was it given to him, or to any of his contemporaries, to realise in the Elizabethan age the possibilities of this species with a fulness comparable to that reached by others-the comedy of manners, for instance. But he achieved memorable and enduring results in a field in which few of his fellow dramatists whose names are known to us made more than tentative efforts, and to which the greatest of them abstained from turning his attention except, as it were, in passing. The simplicity of these works cannot be held to detract from the honour due to the art which produced them, or to impair the recognition implied in the fact that, in the history of European literature, the name of Thomas Heywood is linked to those of great writers, to some of whom it was probably unknown-Steele and Richardson, Diderot and Lessing. Thomas Heywood was born, somewhere about the year 1572, in Lincolnshire, where his family must have been of good standing 1 See the interesting prologue to A Challenge for Beautie, where the superiority of English historical plays to the dramatic efforts of other nations is roundly asserted. and repute. We have it on his own authority that he was at one time a resident member of the university of Cambridge, where he saw 'tragedyes, comedyes, historyes, pastorals and shewes, publicly acted,' and 'the graduates of good place and reputation specially parted' in these performances'. The time-honoured tradition, which unfortunately it is impossible to corroborate with the aid of either college or university records, that he was a fellow of Peterhouse, rests on an explicit statement made by the bookseller and actor William Cartwright not more than ten years after Heywood's death". But it is practically certain that he never held a fellowship at Peterhouse, and, among the few incidental references to Cambridge scattered through his writings, there is but one which introduces the name of the college to which he is said to have belonged-and that, it must be confessed, in no very helpful way 3. By 1596, Heywood is mentioned in Henslowe's diary as writing, or having written, a play; but as to the time and circumstances of his taking up the twofold vocation of actor and playwright we know nothing. No link of any sort can have existed between him and the university wits,' whose academical experiences and entrance into London life belong to the preceding decade, and from whose arrogance and affectations he was equally free. He became connected in turn with several companies of players-probably beginning with the Admiral's men at the Rose, and, in 1634, becoming a servant of the king (Charles I). While a sound patriot, Heywood seems to have had no love for courts; though he celebrated the glories of the great queen in one of his early plays as well as in a history of the trials of her youth, indited the praises of Anne of Denmark five years after he had attended her funeral and hailed queen Henrietta Maria's hopes of motherhood in more than one loyal prologue. On the other hand, his attachment to the city of London, though not, so far as we know, due to any official or hereditary tie, was very strong and enduring, and comprehended both the town and its inhabitants. He celebrated the erection of the Royal 1 Apology for Actors (Shakespeare Society edition), p. 28. 2 In the dedication prefixed to his edition of the Apology, published in 1658 under the title The Actor's Vindication. ་ 3 In The Wise-woman Of Hogsdon, act Iv, Sencer, disguised as a pedant, caps the assertion of Sir Boniface that he was student in Brazennose' by 'Petrus dormit securus: I was Sir of Peeterhouse.' Fleay promptly concluded that Heywood acted Sencer. 4 Compare with the general tone of The Royall King, and The Loyall Subject, Wendoll's words on making his exit in A Woman Kilde with Kindnesse. 5 Fleay's suggestion that Heywood was one of the Master Stationers is hardly offered as more than a happy thought. |