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the score of immorality. Others, like Sidney, attack its want of art. It is chiefly with the latter class of accusers that we are here concerned.

Stephen Gosson had been a writer, and probably also an actor, of plays, before the year 1579, at which date he published his School of Abuse.' This was a comprehensive arraignment of the theatre from the ethical point of view. His tract called forth numerous replies, to one of which, composed by Thomas Lodge, he retorted in a second pamphlet, entitled 'Plays Confuted in Five Actions.'1 This, though its object is also mainly ethical, contains some references useful to our present purpose. Regarding the variety of sources drawn on by the playwrights at that early period, he asserts I may boldly say it because I have seen it, that" The Palace of Pleasure," "The Golden Ass," "The Æthiopian History," " Amadis of France," "The Round Table," bawdy Comedies in Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish, have been ransacked to furnish the playhouses in London.' That is to say, the translations of Italian Novels published by Painter, the Chivalrous Romances of the later Middle Ages, Heliodorus, the Myth of 'Cupid and Psyche,' together with comedies in Latin and three modern languages, had already become the stock in trade of dramatist and actor. On the topic of History, he says: 'If a true History be taken in hand, it is made like our shadows, largest at the rising and falling of the sun, shortest of all at high noon. For the poets drive it most commonly unto such points as may best show the majesty of their pen in tragical

1

Reprinted in the Roxburgh Library, 1869, from the undated edition of possibly 1581 or 1582.

out.

speeches; or set the hearers agog with discourses of love; or paint a few antics to fit their own humours with scoffs and taunts; or wring in a show to furnish forth the stage when it is too bare; when the matter of itself comes short of this, they follow the practice of the cobbler, and set their teeth to the leather to pull it So was the history of Cæsar and Pompey, and the play of the Fabii at the Theatre, both amplified there where the drums might walk or the pen ruffle.' Through this critique we discern how the romantic method was applied to subjects of classical History. In another place, he touches on the defects of chivalrous fable as treated by romantic playwrights: 'Sometimes you shall see nothing but the adventures of an amorous knight, passing from country to country for the love of his lady, encountering many a terrible monster made of brown paper, and at his return is so wonderfully changed that he cannot be known but by some posy in his tablet, or by a broken ring or a handkerchief, or a piece of cockle shell. What,' adds the critic pertinently, 'shall you learn by that?'

George Whetstone, when he published Promos and Cassandra' in 1578, prefixed to it a short discourse upon contemporary plays. It is a succinct disparagement of the romantic as compared with the classical method. Having commended the moral dignity and mature art of the ancient comic poets, he proceeds thus: 'But the advised devices of ancient poets, discredited with the trifles of young, unadvised, and rash-witted writers, hath brought this commendable exercise in mislike. For at this day the Italian

1 Six old plays, published by J. Nichols, 1779, p. 3.

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is so lascivious in his comedies that honest hearers are grieved at his actions: the Frenchman and Spaniard follows the Italian's humour: the German is too holy, for he presents on every common stage what preachers should pronounce in pulpits. The Englishman, in this quality, is most vain, indiscreet, and out of order. He first grounds his work on impossibilities: then in three hours runs he through the world; marries, gets children; makes children men, men to conquer kingdoms, murder monsters; and bringeth gods from heaven, and fetcheth devils from hell. And (that which is worst) their ground is not so imperfect as their working indiscreet; not weighing, so the people laugh, though they laugh them, for their follies, to scorn. Many times, to make mirth, they make a clown companion with a king; in their grave counsels they allow the advice of fools; they use one order of speech for all persons-a gross indecorum, for a crow will ill counterfeit the nightingale's sweet voice; even so, affected speech doth ill become a clown. For to work a comedy kindly, grave old men should instruct; young men should show the imperfections of youth ; strumpets should be lascivious; boys unhappy; and clowns should be disorderly: intermingling all these actions in such sort as the grave matter may instruct, and the pleasant delight: for without this change the attention would be small, and the liking less.'

The whole case against the English Drama of that age is summed up by Sir Philip Sidney in a famous passage of his 'Defence of Poesy.' Written probably in 1583, though not printed till 1595, Sidney was most likely acquainted with what Gosson and Whetstone

had already published on the subject. He certainly knew Whetstone's Preface, for he borrowed some of its phrases almost verbatim. Though long, I shall not hesitate to transcribe the whole of Sidney's criticism, bidding the reader bear in mind that the apologist for poetry wrote some years before the earliest of Shakspere's plays appeared, and when the first of Marlowe's had not yet been acted. His strictures apply therefore in the most literal sense to the romantic drama in its embryonic period.

'Our tragedies and comedies, not without cause, are cried out against, observing rules neither of honest civility nor skilful poetry. Excepting "Gorboduc" (again I say of those that I have seen), which notwithstanding, as it is full of stately speeches, and well-sounding phrases, climbing to the height of Seneca his style, and as full of notable morality, which it doth most delightfully teach, and so obtain the very end of poesy; yet, in truth, it is very defectuous in the circumstances, which grieves me, because it might not remain as an exact model of all tragedies. For it is faulty both in place and time, the two necessary companions of all corporal actions. For where the stage should alway represent but one place; and the uttermost time presupposed in it, should be, both by Aristotle's precept, and common reason, but one day; there is both many days and many places inartificially imagined.

But if it be so in "Gorboduc," how much more. in all the rest? where you shall have Asia of the one side, and Afric of the other, and so many other under kingdoms, that the player, when he comes in, must ever begin with telling where he is, or else the tale will

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not be conceived. Now shall you have three ladies walk to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. By-and-by, we hear news of shipwreck in the same place, then we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock. Upon the back of that comes out a hideous monster with fire and smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a cave; while, in the meantime, two armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers, and then, what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field?

'Now of time they are much more liberal; for ordinary it is, that two young princes fall in love; after many traverses she is got with child; delivered of a fair boy; he is lost, groweth a man, falleth in love, and is ready to get another child; and all this in two hours' space; which, how absurd it is in sense, even sense may imagine; and art hath taught and all ancient examples justified, and at this day the ordinary players in Italy will not err in. Yet will some bring in an example of the Eunuch in Terence, that containeth matter of two days, yet far short of twenty years. True it is, and so was it to be played in two days, and so fitted to the time it set forth. And though Plautus have in one place done amiss, let us hit it with him, and not miss with him. But they will say, How then shall we set forth a story which contains both many places and many times? And do they not know, that a tragedy is tied to the laws of poesy, and not of history; not bound to follow the story, but having liberty either to feign a quite new matter, or to frame the history to the most tragical convenience? Again, many things may be told, which cannot be shewed; if