Part 3 (1/2)
The name of this Rhadamanthus of the birch occurs twice in entries of Elizabeth's paymaster, as receiving money for plays acted before her; and a certain proficiency as actors possessed by students of St. John's College at Oxford is ascribed to training given by old Mulcaster at the Merchant Taylors' school.
But no one of the great English public schools has enjoyed so long a fame in this regard as Westminster. According to Staunton, in his _Great schools of England_, Elizabeth desired to have plays acted by the boys, ”Quo juventus turn actioni tum p.r.o.nunciationi decenti melius se a.s.suescat,” that the youth might be better trained in proper bearing and p.r.o.nunciation. The noted Bishop Atterbury wrote to a friend, Trelawney, Bishop of Winchester, concerning a performance here of Trelawney's son: ”I had written to your lords.h.i.+p again on Sat.u.r.day, but that I spent the evening in seeing _Phormio_ acted in the college chamber, where, in good truth, my lord, Mr. Trelawney played Antipho extremely well, and some parts he performed admirably.”
In 1695, Dryden's play of Cleomens was acted. Archbishop Markham, head-master one hundred years ago, gave a set of scenes designed by Garrick. In our own day, Dr. Williamson, head-master in 1828, drew attention in a pamphlet to the proper costuming of the performers; and when, in 1847, there was a talk of abolis.h.i.+ng the plays, a memorial signed by six hundred old ”Westminsters” was sent in, stating it as their ”firm and deliberate belief, founded on experience and reflection, that the abolition of the Westminster play cannot fail to prove prejudicial to the interests and prosperity of the school.” At the present time the best plays of Plautus and Terence are performed at Christmas in the school dormitory.
It all became excessive, and in Cromwell's time, with the accession of the Puritans to power, like a hundred other brilliant traits of the old English life from whose abuse had grown riot, it was purged away.
Ben Jonson, in _The Staple of Newes_, puts into the mouth of a sour character a complaint which no doubt was becoming common in that day, and was probably well enough justified.
”They make all their schollers play-boyes! Is't not a fine sight to see all our children made enterluders? Doe we pay our money for this? Wee send them to learne their grammar and their Terence and they learne their play-bookes. Well they talk we shall have no more parliaments, G.o.d blesse us!
But an we have, I hope Zeale-of-the-land Buzzy, and my gossip Rabby Trouble-Truth, will start up and see we have painfull good ministers to keepe schoole, and catechise our youth; and not teach 'em to speake plays and act fables of false newes.”
Studying this rather unexplored subject, one gets many a glimpse of famous characters in interesting relations. Erasmus says that Sir Thomas More, ”adolescens, comoediolas et scripsit et egit,” and while a page with Archbishop Moreton, as plays were going on in the palace during the Christmas holidays, he would often, showing his schoolboy accomplishment, step on the stage without previous notice, and exhibit a part of his own which gave more satisfaction than the whole performance besides.
In Leland's report of the theatricals where King James behaved so ungraciously, ”the machinery of the plays,” he says, ”was chiefly conducted by Mr. Jones, who undertook to furnish them with rare devices, but performed very little to what was expected.” This is believed to have been Inigo Jones, who soon was to gain great fame as manager of the Court masques. The entertainment was probably ingenious and splendid enough, but every one took his cue from the king's pettishness, and poor ”Mr. Jones” had to bear his share of the ill-humour.
In 1629 a Latin play was performed at Cambridge before the French amba.s.sador. Among the student spectators sat a youth of twenty, with long locks parted in the middle falling upon his doublet, and the brow and eyes of the G.o.d Apollo, who curled his lip in scorn, and signalised himself by his stormy discontent. Here is his own description of his conduct: ”I was a spectator; they thought themselves gallant men, and I thought them fools; they made sport, and I laughed; they misp.r.o.nounced, and I misliked; and to make up the Atticism, they were out and I hissed.” It was the young Milton, in the year in which he wrote the _Hymn on the Nativity._
Do I need to cite other precedents for the procedure at the Sweetbrier? I grant you it cannot be done from the practice of American colleges. The strictest form of Puritanism stamped itself too powerfully upon our New England inst.i.tutions at their foundation, and has affected too deeply the newer seminaries elsewhere in the country, to make it possible that the drama should be anything but an outlaw here. Nevertheless, at Harvard, Yale, and probably every considerable college of the country, the drama has for a long time led a clandestine life in secret student societies, persecuted or at best ignored by the college government,--an unwholesome weed that deserved no tending, if it was not to be at once uprooted.
I do not advocate, Fastidiosus, a return to the ancient state of things, which I doubt not was connected with many evils; but is there not reason to think a partial revival of the old customs would be worth while? It was not for mirth merely that the old professors and teachers countenanced the drama. To the editors of _David's Harp_ I have sent this pa.s.sage from Milton, n.o.blest among the Puritans, and have besought them to lay it before their consistory: ”Whether eloquent and graceful incitements, instructing and bettering the nation at all opportunities, not only in pulpits, but after another persuasive method, in theatres, porches, or whatever place or way, may not win upon the people to receive both recreation and instruction, let them in authority consult.” The German schoolmasters and professors superintended their boys in the representation of religious plays to instruct them in the theology which they thought all-important; in the performance of Aristophanes and Lucian, Plautus and Terence, mainly in the hope of improving them in Greek and Latin: and when the plays were in the vernacular, it was often to train their taste, manners, and elocution. Erasmus and the Oxford and Cambridge authorities certainly had the same ideas as the Continental scholars.
So the English schoolmasters in general, who also managed in the plays to give useful hints in all ways. For instance, Nicholas Udal, in the ingenious letter in _Ralph Roister Doister_, which is either loving or insulting according to the position of a few commas or periods, must have meant to enforce the doctrine of Chaucer's couplet:
”He that pointeth ill, A good sentence may oft spill.”
Madame de Maintenon was persuaded that amus.e.m.e.nts of this sort have a value, ”imparting grace, teaching a polite p.r.o.nunciation, and cultivating the memory”; and Racine commends the management of St.
Cyr, where ”the hours of recreation, so to speak, are put to profit by making the pupils recite the finest pa.s.sages of the best poets.” Here is the dramatic instinct, almost universal among young people, and which has almost no chance to exercise itself, except in the performance of the farces to which we are treated in ”private theatricals.” Can it not be put to a better use? It would be a c.u.mbrous matter to represent or listen to the _Aulularia_, or the _Miles Gloriosus_, or the [Greek: Eirhene], in which Dr. Dee and his Scarabeus figured so successfully. The world is turned away from that[1]; but here is the magnificent wealth of our own old dramatic literature, in which is contained the richest poetry of our language. It was never intended to be read, but to be heard in living presentment. For the most part it lies almost unknown, except in the case of Shakespeare, and him the world knows far too little. Who does not feel what a treasure in the memory are pa.s.sages of fine poetry committed early in life?
[Footnote 1: The developments of the last forty years show this judgment to be erroneous.]
Who can doubt the value to the bearing, the fine address, the literary culture of a youth of either s.e.x that might come from the careful study and the attempt to render adequately a fine conception of some golden writer of our golden age, earnestly made, if only partially successful?
I say only partially successful, but can you doubt the capacity of our young people to render in a creditable way the conceptions of a great poet? Let us look at the precedents again. When Mademoiselle de Caylus, in her account of St. Cyr, speaks of the representation of _Andromaque_, she writes, ”It was only too well done.” And prim Madame de Maintenon wrote to Racine: ”Our young girls have played it so well they shall play it no more”; begging him to write some moral or historic poem. Hence came the beautiful masterpiece _Esther_, to which the young ladies seem to have done the fullest justice, for listen to the testimony. The brilliant Madame de Lafayette wrote: ”There was no one, great or small, that did not want to go, and this mere drama of a convent became the most serious affair of the court.”
That the admiration was not merely feigned because it was the fas.h.i.+on, here is the testimony of a woman of the finest taste, Madame de Sevigne, given in her intimate letters to her daughter, who, in these confidences, spared no one who deserved criticism:
The king and all the Court are charmed with _Esther_. The prince has wept over it. I cannot tell you how delightful the piece is. There is so perfect a relation between the music, the verses, the songs, and the personages, that one seeks nothing more.
The airs set to the words have a beauty which cannot be borne without tears, and according to one's taste is the measure of approbation given to the piece. The king addressed me and said, ”Madame, I am sure you have been pleased.” I, without being astonished, answered, ”Sire, I am charmed. What I feel is beyond words.” The king said to me, ”Racine has much genius.” I said to him, ”Sire, he has much, but in truth these young girls have much too; they enter into the subject as if they had done nothing else.” ”Ah! as to that,” said he, ”it is true.” And then his Majesty went away and left me the object of envy.
Racine himself says in the Preface to _Esther_:
The young ladies have declaimed and sung this work with so much modesty and piety, it has not been possible to keep it shut up in the secrecy of the inst.i.tution; so that a diversion of young people has become a subject of interest for all the Court;
and what is still more speaking, he wrote at once the _Athalie_, ”la chef d'oeuvre de la poesie francaise,” in the judgment of the French critics, to be rendered by the some young tyros. When, in 1556, in Christ Church Hall, _Palamon and Arcite_ was finished, outspoken Queen Bess, with her frank eyes full of pleasure, declared ”that Palamon must have been in love indeed. Arcite was a right martial knight, having a swart and manly countenance, yet like a Venus clad in armour.” To the son of the dean of Christ Church, the boy of fourteen, who played Emilie in the dress of a princess, her compliment was still higher. It was a present of eight guineas,--for the penurious sovereign, perhaps, the most emphatic expression of approval possible.
Shall I admit for a moment that our American young folks have less grace and sensibility than the French girls, and the Oxford youths who pleased Elizabeth? Your face now, Fastidiosus, wears a frown like that of Rhadamanthus; but I remember our Hasty-Pudding days, when you played the part of a queen, and behaved in your disguise like Thor, in the old saga, when he went to Riesenheim in the garb of Freya, and honest giants, like Thrym, were frightened back the whole width of the hall. Well, I do not censure it, and I do not believe you recall it with a sigh; and the reminiscence emboldens me to ask you whether it would not be still better if our dear Harvard, say (the steam of the pudding infects me through twenty years), among the many new wrinkles she in her old age so appropriately contracts, should devote an evening of Commencement-time to a performance, by the students, under the sanction and direction of professors, of some fine old masterpiece?
At our little Sweetbrier we have young men and young women together, as at Oberlin, Antioch, and Ma.s.sachusetts normal schools. I have no doubt our Hermione, when we gave the _Winter's Tale_, had all the charm of Mademoiselle de Veillanne, who played Esther at St. Cyr. I have no doubt our Portia, in the _Merchant of Venice_, in the trial scene, her fine stature and figure robed in the doctor's long silk gown, which fell to her feet, and her abundant hair gathered out of sight into an ample velvet cap, so that she looked like a most wise and fair young judge, recited
”The quality of mercy is not strained,”
in a voice as thrilling as that in which Mademoiselle de Glapion gave the part of Mordecai. I am sure Queen Elizabeth would think our young cavaliers, well-knit and brown from the baseball-field, ”right martial knights, having swart and manly countenances.” If she could have seen our Antoninus, when we gave the act from Ma.s.singer's most sweet and tender tragedy of the _Virgin Martyr_, or the n.o.ble Caesar, in our selections from Beaumont and Fletcher's _False One_, she would have been as ready with the guineas as she was in the case of the son of the dean of Christ Church.
Our play at the last Commencement was _Much Ado about Nothing_.