Cro. Nam certe has utrasque eadem dedit orbi Maria mater. Cro. Quos ego ambos hodie dolis doctis meis docebo quanti sit Dromodotus proceeds to inquire of Crobulus where he can meet with his friend Pedantius; and, after a long burlesque argument upon the merits of philosophy, Crobulus retires, and makes room for the hero Pedantius. A tedious disputation ensues upon the nature of love, in which Dromodotus endeavours to rid his friend of a passion so hostile, as our readers are well aware, to the advancement of philosophical research. Pogglostus cuts short the argument, by committing highway robbery upon the persons of both combatants; and thus the first act concludes. In the succeeding acts, which it is unnecessary to go through minutely, the peculiarities of the two literati are sometimes contrasted with each other, sometimes brought out in dialogues. with their respective pupils, or with Lydia, the heroine of the piece, who is as pretty, and as pert, and as willing to be married, as any chambermaid pictured by Hooke or Moncrieff. The character of Pedantius will remind the reader sometimes of a few touches in the colouring of his better-known friend Dominie Sampson, especially when the pedantry is softened in the play, as it is frequently in the novel, by a slight admixture of pathos. "O Clotho!" he exclaims, when he is deceived into a belief of the death of his mistress, "O Clotho, Atropos, et tu fatum !—(dictum quidem a fando, sed nefandum fatum, cui irascor ex animo,)-O fallacem hominum spem, fragilemq: fortunam!" The play abounds with bad puns, and with allusions to particular University studies and customs, which will be, in part, payment for the labour and weariness attendant on many of the scenes. Dromodotus and Pedantius are still, perhaps, to be met with, under different modifications, at either of our sister Universities. 66 The next in chronological order is Roxana, a tragedy; perhaps the best written play that was performed before the University. If it does not equal the more justly celebrated comedy of Ignoramus, (represented in the ensuing reign of James the First,) in the variety and admirable issue of its contrivances, it far surpasses it in the beauty of its language, and the elegance of its latinity. Speaking upon this play, Dr. Johnson says, in his Life of Milton, "That he once heard Mr. Hampton, the translator of Polybius, remark, that Milton was the first Englishman who, after the revival of letters, wrote Latin verses with classic elegance. If any exceptions can be made, they are very few. Haddon and Ascham, the pride of Elizabeth's reign, however they have succeeded in prose, no sooner attempt verse than they provoke derision. If we produced any thing worthy of notice before the elegies of Milton, it was, perhaps, Alabaster's Roxana." His Pentaglott Lexicon, and his tragedy, justify the high character the Oxford antiquary has given him. "He was, says Anthony Wood, "the rarest poet and Grecian that any age or nation produced." His play was acted several times in Trinity College Hall, and so admirably and so pathetically, that a gentlewoman present thereat, upon hearing the last words, sequar, sequar, so hideously pronounced, fell distracted, and never after recovered her senses.* The first edition was a surreptitious one, in small 12mo., 1632, which induced the author to publish a correct copy in the same year, having a well engraved frontispiece, and the title of, Roxana tragedia a plagiarii unguibus vindicta, aucta, et agnita ab authore Gulielmo Alabastro. Londini, excudebat Gulielmus Jones, 1632. This is followed by a Latin dedication to Radulphus Freeman, Eques Auratus, wherein he complains, that after his tragedy, the work of two weeks, had, according to his wishes, died a natural death, some plagiary brought it out from its obscurity, and caused it to be acted as a performance of his own. To which he added so many more faults, that he seemed to strive with him which of the two should commit most. He then says, "Quid facerem? An paterer vagari librum sceleratum, qui nomen meum si non à fronte, tamen à tergo gereret? Vel senex septuagenario propior, Musas juveniles procarer, ingenio jam moriente, et conditione vitæ abhorrente vicit paterna indoles, et fetum juventutis à curâ senis non deponerem. Revocari igitur ad calculos plurima quæ admisisset crimina, vel ex ingenio proprio, vel pravo amanuensium consortio." Both editions are very scarce: the later one, the true edition, is seldom, or ever, to be met with. A manuscript copy exists in the University library. It may be reasonably supposed, from the practice the Anglorum Speculum, p. 789. This book was written by Winstanley, but a different author from the writer of The Lives of the English Poets, and of a book called English Worthies, printed 1687. In the copy we consulted, formerly the learned Thomas Baker's, a manuscript note, in his hand-writing, says, "The author of Anglorum Speculum has borrowed freely from Dr. Fuller: what he has added, I have not observed." students had had in these exhibitions, that they had attained a considerable degree of skill and address; we accordingly, from this time, find the University adopting them as a part of the entertainment at the reception of princes, and other eminent personages. And prefixed to a map of Cambridge, in the second part of Braunii Civitates, &c., is an account of the University, by Gulielmus Soonus, 1575, in which curious memoir we are told, that even Plautus, Terence, or Seneca, if they could have witnessed them, would have been delighted and astonished at the grace and elegance displayed by the students in these spectacles: Januarium, Februarium, et Martium menses, ut noctis tædia fallant in spectaculis populo exhibendis ponunt tantâ elegantiâ, tantâ actionis dignitate, eâ vocis et vultus moderatione, eâ magnificentiâ, ut si Plautus, aut Terentius, aut Seneca revivisceret, mirarentur suas ipsi fabulas, majoremque quam cum inspectante populo Romano agerentur, voluptatem credo caperent. Euripidem vero, Sophoclem, et Aristophanem, etiam Athenarum suarum tæderet. Rainolds was the only author who dared to attack the plays acted before the University; even that excessively rare, and nervously written book, called, The Schoole of Abuse; containing a pleasaunt invective against Poets, Pipers, Plaiers, Jesters, and such-like Caterpillers of a Commonwealth: a Discourse as pleasaunt for gentlemen that favour learning, as profitable for all that will follow virtue, by Stephen Gosson, Stud. Oxon; says no more than that, Sundry are the abuses, as well of Universityes as other places; but they are such as neither become me to touch, nor every idle head to understand. It is not good for every man to travell to Corinth; nor lawful for all to talk what they list, or write what they please, least. their tongs run before their wits, or their pens make havoc of their paper, and so, wading too farre in other men's manners, whilst they fill their bookes with other men's faults they make their volums no better than an apothecary's shop of pestilent drugges, a quackesalver's budget of filthy receites, and a huge chaos of fowl disorder." And in his other book, equally rare, called, Playes refuted in fiue actions,* written against Thomas Lodge's Play of Playes, (in defence of them,) he only says, "That so subtill is the devill, that under the colour of recreation in London, and of exercise of learning in * * Although Gosson wrote against plays, he had first written three, called Cataline's Conspiracies, The Comedie of Captaine Moris, and Praise at Parting, a morality, none of which were ever printed; and for this effusion of Christian ink, he gives us no better excuse than that "Semel insanivimus omnes." the Universities, by seeing of playes, he maketh us to join with the Gentiles in theire corruption." And Prynne* says no more concerning theatrical exhibitions in the University than "That our Universities, though they tolerate and connive at, yet they give no public approbation to their private interludes, which are not generally received into all Colleges, but onely practised in some private houses, (perchance, once in three or four yeares,) and that by the particular statutes of those houses, made in times of popéry, which require some Latine comedies, for learning-sake onely, to bee acted now and then; which playes, as they are composed, for the most part, by idle brains, who affect not better studies, and acted by gentle bloods and lusty swash-bucklers, who prefer an ounce of vaine-glory, ostentation, and strutting on the stage, before pound of learning; or by such who are sent to the University, not so much to obtain knowledge, as to keepe them from the common ryot of gentlemen in these dayes; like little children whom their parents send to school, the rather to keep them from under feet in the streets, which careful mothers greatly feare." Heywood, in his Apology for Actors, says, "That in the time of his residence at Cambridge, he had seen tragedies, comedies, histories, pastoralls, and shows, publicly acted, in which graduates, of good place and reputation, had been specially parted. This was held necessary for the emboldening of their junior scholars, to arm them with audacity against they came to be employed in any public exercise, and make them bold sophisters, to argue pro et contra, to compose their syllogisms, cathegoricke, or hypotheticke." Milton can hardly be said to attack the plays acted before the University, since all he says against them is comprised in one sentence He objects to the system of academical education as it then existed, because those designed for orders were permitted to act plays, "writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antick and dishonest gestures of Trincalos, buffoons, and bawds; prostituting the shame of that ministry which they had, or were near having to the eyes of courtiers and court ladies, their grooms and mademoiselles." This is little in character with the sentiments he expresses in his Elegiacs to Carolus Deodatus, where, at some length, he relates the pleasures arising from the theatre. But his defenders will probably say, that he considered plays only criminal when they were acted by academics. Whether or not these books corrected the evils they complained of, we cannot now ascertain. From the outcry * Histriomastix, pp. 490, 491. against the drama, loud as it was, and long as it continued, some good effects resulted, as there did from a similar outcry, which was raised by Collier, against the stage, in more modern times. However, whilst this academical controversy was carrying on, the more dreadful scourge of the plague rendered it necessary for the vice-chancellor and heads of Colleges, on July 17, 1593, to address the Lord Burleigh, and state their objections to shows and plays as likely to increase the dangers of such a pestilence, as, from the life itinerant performers led, they were more likely, from their visiting various towns, to spread the infection. On July the 29th, a letter was sent to both Universities, prohibiting such spectacles during its continuance. That to Cambridge sets forth, that "As common players do ordinarily resort to the University, there to recite interludes and plays, some of them being full of lewd example, and most of vanity, besides the gathering together of multitudes of people, whereby is great occasion, also, of divers other inconveniences; we have thought good to require you, the Vice-Chancellor, with the assistance of the heads of the Colleges, to take special order that hereafter there may be no plays or interludes of common players be used or set forth, either in the University, or in any place within the compass of five miles, &c. Moreover, because we are informed that there are divers inmates received into sundry houses in the town, whereby the town doth grow overburthened with people, being a thing dangerous in this time of infection, and that causeth the prices of victuals, and all other things, to be raised,t and doth breed divers other inconveniences.' These letters, it will be seen, were not directed against the plays performed by the students, and, accordingly, those were continued; for, in 1595, there were comedies acted at King's, but what they were we have no means of ascertaining. From a paper in the Register Office, it appears there were great disturbances at one of them, occasioned by the exclusion of certain members of the University, whose indignation manifested itself by their breaking the windows, to the amount of fifty-eight shillings and two-pence. The rioters being summoned before the Vice-Chancellor, were reprimanded, and discharged upon the payment of the glazier's bill. Upon * MS. Lansdown, 75, v., printed in Strype's Annals, vol. iv., p.163. "Where rye was at 18d. or 20d. the bushell, and wheat 8 groats; now it is risen to 3s. 2d. rye, and 5s. 4d. wheat."-Blakeway's History of Shrewsbury. Nos. 13. 12. |