Part 6 (1/2)
SECTION II. _The Eight Plays._
Concerning the order of Lyly's plays there is, as we have seen, some difference of opinion. The discussion between Mr Bond and Mr Baker in reality turns upon the interpretation of the allegory of _Endymion_, and it is therefore one of those questions of literary probability which can never hope to receive a satisfactory answer. Both critics, however, are in agreement as to the proper method of cla.s.sification. They divide the dramas into four categories: historical, of which _Campaspe_ is the sole example; allegorical, which includes _Sapho and Phao_, _Endymion_, and _Midas_; pastoral, which includes _Gallathea_, _The Woman in the Moon_, and _Love's Metamorphosis_; and lastly realistic, of which again there is only one example, _Mother Bombie_. The fault which may be found with this cla.s.sification is that the so-called pastoral plays have much of the allegorical about them, and it is perhaps better, therefore, to consider them rather as a subdivision of cla.s.s two than as a distinct species.
For the moment putting on one side all questions of the allegory of _Endymion_, there are two reasons which seem to go a long way towards justifying Mr Bond for placing _Campaspe_ as the earliest of Lyly's plays. In the first place the atmosphere of _Euphues_, which becomes weaker in the other plays, is so unmistakeable in this historical drama as to force the conclusion upon us that they belong to the same period.
The painter Apelles, whose name seemed almost to obsess Lyly in his novel, is one of the chief characters of _Campaspe_, and the dialogue is more decidedly euphuistic than any other play. The second point we may notice is one which can leave very little doubt as to the correctness of Mr Bond's chronology. _Campaspe_ and _Sapho_ were published before 1585, that is, before Lyly accepted the masters.h.i.+p at the St Paul's choir school, whereas none of his other plays came into the printer's hands until after the inhibition of the boys' acting rights in 1591; the obvious inference being that Lyly printed his plays only when he had no interest in preserving the acting rights.
But whatever date we a.s.sign to _Campaspe_, there can be little doubt that it was one of the first dramas in our language with an historical background. Indeed, _Kynge Johan_ is the only play before 1580 which can claim to rival it in this respect. But _Kynge Johan_ was written solely for the purpose of religious satire, being an attack upon the priesthood and Church abuses. It must, therefore, be cla.s.sed among those political _moralities_, of which so many examples appeared during the early part of the 16th century. _Campaspe_, on the other hand, is entirely devoid of any ethical or satirical motive. Allegory, which Lyly was able to put to his own peculiar uses, is here quite absent. The sole aim of its author was to provide amus.e.m.e.nt, and in this respect it must have been entirely successful. The play is interesting, and at times amusing, even to a modern reader; but to those who witnessed its performance at Blackfriars, and, two years later, at the Court, it would appear as a marvel of wit and dramatic power after the crude material which had hitherto been offered to them. In the choice of his subject Lyly shows at once that he is an artist with a feeling for beauty, even if he seldom rises to its sublimities. The story of the play, taken from Pliny, is that of Alexander's love for his Theban captive Campaspe, and of his subsequent self-sacrifice in giving her up to her lover Apelles.
The social change, which I have sought to indicate in the preceding pages, is at once evident in this play. ”We calling Alexander from his grave,” says its Prologue[114], ”seeke only who was his love”; and the remark is a sweep of the hat to the ladies of the Court, whose importance, as an integral part of the audience, is now for the first time openly acknowledged. ”Alexander, the great conqueror of the world,”
says Lyly with his hand upon his heart, ”only interests me as a lover.”
The whole motive of the play, which would have been meaningless to a mediaeval audience, is a compliment to the ladies. It is as if our author nets Mars with Venus, and presents the shamefaced G.o.d as an offering of flattery to the Queen and her Court. _Campaspe_ is, in fact, the first romantic drama, not only the forerunner of Shakespeare, but a remote ancestor of _Hernani_ and the 19th century French theatre. ”The play's defect,” says Mr Bond, ”is one of pa.s.sion”--a criticism which is applicable to all Lyly's dramas; and yet we must not forget that Lyly was the earliest to deal with pa.s.sion dramatically. The love of Alexander is certainly unemotional, not to say callous; but possibly the great monarch's equanimity was a veiled tribute to the supposed indifference of the virgin Queen to all matters of Cupid's trade.
Between Campaspe and Apelles, however, we have scenes which are imbued, if not vitalized, by pa.s.sion. Lyly was a beginner, and his fault lay in attempting too much. Caring more for brilliancy of dialogue than for anything else, he was no more likely to be successful here, in portraying pa.s.sion through conversation weighted by euphuism, than he had been in his novel. Yet his endeavour to depict the conflict of masculine pa.s.sion with feminine wit, impatient sallies neatly parried, deliberate lunges quietly turned aside, was in every way praiseworthy.
”A witte apt to conceive and quickest to answer” is attributed by Alexander to Campaspe, and, though she exhibits few signs of it, yet in his very idea of endowing women with wit Lyly leads us on to the high-road of comedy leading to Congreve.
[114] From _Prologue_ at the Court.
In addition to the romantic elements above described, we have here also that page-prattle which is so characteristic of all Lyly's plays. These urchins, full of mischief and delighting in quips, were probably borrowed from Edwardes, but Lyly made them all his own; and one can understand how naturally their parts would be played by his boy-actors.
Their repartee, when it is not pulling to pieces some Latin quotation familiar to them at school, or ridiculing a point of logic, is often really witty. One of them, overhearing the hungry Manes at strife with Diogenes over the matter of an overdue dinner, exclaims to his friend, ”This is their use, nowe do they dine one upon another.” Diogenes again, in whom we may see the prototype of Shakespeare's Timon, is amusing enough at times with his ”dogged” snarlings and sallies which frequently however miss their mark. He and the pages form an underplot of farce, upon which Lyly improved in his later plays, bringing it also more into connexion with the main plot. In pa.s.sing, we may notice that few of Shakespeare's plays are without this farcical substratum.
Leaving the question of dramatic construction and characterization for a more general treatment later, we now pa.s.s on to the consideration of Lyly's allegorical plays. The absence of all allegory from _Campaspe_ shows that Lyly had broken with the _morality_: and we seem therefore to be going back, when two years later we have an allegorical play from his pen. But in reality there is no retrogression; for with Lyly allegory is not an ethical instrument. I have mentioned examples of plays before his day which employed the machinery of the _morality_, for the purposes of political and religious satire. The old form of drama seems to have developed a keen sensibility to _double entendre_ among theatre-goers.
Nothing indeed is so remarkable about the Elizabethan stage as the secret understanding which almost invariably existed between the dramatist and his audience. We have already had occasion to notice it in connexion with Field's parody of Kyd. The spectators were always on the alert to detect some veiled reference to prominent political figures or to current affairs. Often in fact, as was natural, they would discover hints where nothing was implied; and for one Mrs Gallup in modern America there must have been a dozen in every auditorium of Elizabethan England. Such over-clever busybodies would readily twist an innocent remark into treason or sacrilege, and therefore, long before Lyly's time, it was customary for a playwright to defend himself in the prologue against such treatment, by denying any ambiguity in his dialogue. In an audience thus susceptible to innuendo Lyly saw his opportunity. He was a courtier writing for the Court, he was also, let us add, anxious to obtain a certain coveted post at the Revels' Office.
He was an artist not entirely without ideals, yet ever ready to curry favour and to aim at material advantages by his literary facility. The idea therefore of writing dramas which should be, from beginning to end, nothing but an ingenious compliment to his royal mistress would not be in the least distasteful to him. But we must not attribute too much to motives of personal ambition. Spenser's _Faery Queen_ was not published until 1590; but Lyly had known Spenser before the latter's departure for Ireland, and, even if the scheme of that poet's masterpiece had not been confided to him, the ideas which it contained were in the air. The cult of Elizabeth, which was far from being a piece of insincere adulation, had for some time past been growing into a kind of literary religion.
Even to us, there is something magical about the great Queen, and we can hardly be surprised that the pagans of those days hailed her as half divine. When Lyly commenced his career, she had been on the throne for twenty years, in itself a wonderful fact to those who could remember the gloom which had surrounded her accession. Through a period of infinite danger both at home and abroad she had guided England with intrepidity and success; and furthermore she had done all this single-handed, refusing to share her throne with a partner even for the sake of protection, and yet improving upon the Habsburg policy[115] by making coquetry the pivot of her diplomacy. It was no wonder therefore that,
”As the imperial votaress pa.s.sed on In maiden meditation fancy free,”
the courtiers she fondled, and the artists she patronized, should half in fancy, half in earnest, think of her as something more than human, and search the fables of their newly discovered cla.s.sics for examples of enthroned chast.i.ty and unconquerable virgin queens.
[115] ”Alii bella gerunt, tu felix Austria nube.”
All Lyly's plays except _Campaspe_ and _Mother Bombie_ are written in this vein; each, as Symonds beautifully puts it, is ”a censer of exquisitely chased silver, full of incense to be tossed before Elizabeth upon her throne.” In the three plays _Sapho and Phao_, _Endymion_, and _Midas_ this element of flattery is more prominent than in the others, inasmuch as they are not only full of compliments unmistakeably directed towards the Queen, but they actually seek to depict incidents from her reign under the guise of cla.s.sical mythology. It is for this reason that they have been cla.s.sified under the label of allegory. It is quite possible, however, to read and enjoy these plays without a suspicion of any inner meaning; nor does the absence of such suspicion render the action of the play in any way unintelligible, so skilfully does Lyly manipulate his story. With a view, therefore, to his position in the history of Elizabethan drama, and to the lessons which he taught those who came after him, the superficial interpretation of each play is all that need engage our attention, and we shall content ourselves with briefly indicating the actual incident which it symbolizes.
The story of _Sapho and Phao_ is, very shortly, as follows. Phao, a poor ferryman, is endowed by Venus with the gift of beauty. Sapho, who in Lyly's hands is stripped of all poetical attributes and becomes simply a great Queen of Sicily, sees him and instantly falls in love with him.
To conceal her pa.s.sion, she pretends to her ladies that she has a fever, at the same time sending for Phao, who is rumoured to have herbs for such complaints. Meanwhile Venus herself falls a victim to the charms she has bestowed upon the ferryman. Cupid is therefore called in to remedy matters on her behalf. The boy, who plays a part which no one can fail to compare with that of Puck in the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, succeeds in curing Sapho's pa.s.sion, but, much to his mother's disgust, won over by the Queen's attractions, refuses to go further, and even inspires Phao with a loathing for the G.o.ddess. The play ends with Phao's departure from Sicily in despair, and Cupid's definite rebellion from the rule of Venus, resulting in his remaining with Sapho. In this story, which is practically a creation of Lyly's brain, though of course it is founded upon the cla.s.sical tale of Sapho's love for Phao, our playwright presents under the form of allegory the history of Alencon's courts.h.i.+p of Elizabeth. Sapho, Queen of Sicily, is of course Elizabeth, Queen of England. The difficulty of Alencon's (that is Phao's) ugliness is overcome by the device of making it love's task to confer beauty upon him. Phao like Alencon quits the island and its Queen in despair; while the play is rounded off by the pretty compliment of representing love as a willing captive in Elizabeth's Court.
As a play _Sapho and Phao_ shows a distinct advance upon _Campaspe_. The dialogue is less euphuistic, and therefore much more effective. The conversation between Sapho and Phao, in the scene where the latter comes with his herbs to cure the Queen, is very charming, and well expresses the pa.s.sion which the one is too humble and the other too proud to show.
PHAO. I know no hearb to make lovers sleepe but Heartesease, which because it groweth so high, I cannot reach: for--
SAPHO. For whom?
PHAO. For such as love.
SAPHO. It groweth very low, and I can never stoop to it, that--
PHAO. That what?
SAPHO. That I may gather it: but why doe you sigh so, Phao?