ROBIN HOOD LEGEND.

As use with food to serve the market towns.
Fifthly, you never shall the poor man wrong,
Nor spare a priest, a usurer, or a clerk.
Lastly, you shall defend with all your power
Maids, widows, orphans, and distressèd men.

407

To this constitution, democratic in its essence, with a touch of chivalry and of chivalrous hatred for the lettered and moneyed classes, everyone agrees. Robin turns to Marian, and draws a seductive picture of woodland joys and pastimes :

Marian, thou seest, though courtly pleasures want,
Yet country sport in Sherwood is not scant :
For the soul-ravishing, delicious sound
Of instrumental music we have found,
The wingèd quiristers with divers notes
Sent from their quaint recording pretty throats,
On every branch that compasseth our bower,
Without command contenting us each hour :
For arras-hangings and rich tapestry,
We have sweet nature's best embroidery :
For thy steel glass, wherein thou wont'st to look,
Thy crystal eyes gaze in a crystal brook:

At court a flower or two did deck thy head;

Now with whole garlands is it circled ;

For what we want in wealth, we have in flowers,

And what we lose in hall, we find in bowers.

He only omits what the song in As You Like It' dwells upon in passing winter and rough weather.' The hero's portrait is completed in the speech of a private enemy, who eventually procures his death by poison :

I hate thy cousin, Earl of Huntingdon,
Because so many love him as there do,
And I myself am lovèd of so few.
Nay, I have other reasons for my hate :
He is a fool, and will be reconciled
To any foe he hath; he is too mild

Too honest for this world, fitter for heaven.
He will not kill these greedy cormorants,
Nor strip base peasants of the wealth they have.
He does abuse a thief's name and an outlaw's,
And is, indeed, no outlaw nor no thief :
He is unworthy of such reverend names.
Besides, he keeps a paltry whimling girl,
And will not bed, forsooth, before he bride.
I'll stand to 't, he abuses maidenhead,
That will not take it being offered,

Hinders the commonwealth of able men!
Another thing I hate him for again:

He says his prayers, fasts eves, gives alms, does good:

For these and such like crimes swears Doncaster

To work the speedy death of Robin Hood.

The second part opens with the death of Robin, and proceeds with the romantic history of Marian. She is pursued by King John, who woos her with lawless violence till she finds relief in death. The play becomes a chronicle of minor events in John's reign. He is drawn as a detestable tyrant, cruel and lustful. By far the most powerful episode of the piece is the description of Lady Bruce and her son starved to death in Windsor Castle.

George a Greene' interweaves an incident in the Robin Hood legend with the valorous exploits of another popular hero. The Pinner of Wakefield by his personal strength and influence quells the rebellion of Lord Kendal, forces Sir Gilbert Mannering to eat the traitor's seal, and entraps James, King of Scotland, who has crossed the Border on a foray. The Pinner's fame reaches to Sherwood Forest; and Robin Hood, putting himself at the head of his merry men, goes forth to visit the Yorkshire champion at Wakefield. George beats the merry men at their own weapons, and

'GEORGE A GREENE' AND 'SAD SHEPHERD'' 409

fraternises with Robin. King Edward of England and James of Scotland join the fun in disguise, carouse with shoemakers, and after making known their royal personages, wind the play up with a general jollification.

Before quitting the dramatised versions of Robin Hood's legend, I ought here to mention the fragment of Ben Jonson's 'Sad Shepherd.' Whether the imperfect state in which that play has come down to us, be due to the accident of death, intervening before the poet had versified further than the opening of the third act, or else to the carelessness of those who undertook the charge of editing his manuscripts, cannot be determined. But students will agree that

few of the many losses which English Dramatic Literature has sustained, are comparable to that of 'The Sad Shepherd.' This last offspring of Jonson's Muse promised to be one of the most interesting and entertaining, as it certainly would have been the most complete and regular, of English Pastorals. Lacking it, our Drama may be said to miss a mature and purely national masterpiece, in the pastoral style. Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess,' however beautiful, is still an echo from Italian literature. Jonson in his 'Sad Shepherd' interwove romantic fable with the myth of an English hero, who, though he was localised as an outlaw in Sherwood, may probably have been a rustic deity, surviving from the dim antiquity of Northern paganism.

History is, so to speak, nowhere in plays of this description. Their authors sought to dramatise the doughty deeds of common folk, and to exhibit English

kings and princes mixing with simple people, sharing their sports, making love to their daughters, receiving hospitality from humble entertainers. Greene's Friar Bacon,' of which some notice will be taken in the proper place, represents this species fairly; so do the opening scenes of The Famous Victories of Henry V.' Heywood worked the same vein in his 'Edward IV.;' while Shakspere, laying his golden touch on all that lesser men made popular, bequeathed to us the highest picture of this kind in his portrait of Prince Hal. That the portrait has been proved mythical, when tested by the touchstone of State documents, does not signify. It owes its force, its permanent artistic value, to the animating sentiment, a sentiment akin, though different, to that which runs through Robin Hood's conception.

The English working classes, loyal to the Crown, in spite of civil wars and treasons, have always loved to pat their princes on the back, to hob and nob with nobles, and if possible with scions of the royal race. Heirs apparent, who understood the secret of this popularity, have not unwillingly infused a grain of Bohemianism into their conduct. We may regard this partiality for madcap princes as a settled factor in the English Constitution. Based on a sound foundation— upon the touch of nature which makes all men kin— the willingness of royalty to sign its debt to vulgar sympathies, the pleasure of the folk to see that debt acknowledged this sowing of wild oats in common by the people and their beardless rulers constitutes a bond of sentiment more forcible than statutes. It eliminates the moneyed aristocracy, depreciates the courtier, ex

MADCAP PRINCES.

411

poses the squirearchy to ridicule, effaces the shams of etiquette and caste. It brings the extremes of society, those who in their several stations risk the most and suffer most from the encroachments of the intermediate classes, into fellowship. Meanwhile, in England, the law-abiding instinct has been ever hitherto respected, in legend no less than in fact. Prince Hal and Bluff Harry go to prison for their scapegrace tricks, and bear the Justice no ill-will. We might, perhaps, attribute something in the failure of the Stuarts to their non-recognition of this English idiosyncrasy, and something also in the popularity of the present royal family to their perception of the same. Be this as it may, the dramatists of the great epoch, with their keen sense of national characteristics, seized upon the point, and left us a gallery of pictures in the style I have attempted to describe.

In order to complete this study, it would have been admissible to catalogue those plays which glorify the several guilds, trades, and popular crafts of England— to show how the City and Corporation, the King's Jesters, prominent Clowns like Tarlton, the Prentices of London, the Shoemakers, Thieves, and Jolly Beggars, all of them representing English life under one or more distinctive aspects, received due meed of dramatic celebration. To carry out such analysis in detail might be curious, but hardly interesting. Opportunity, moreover, will be offered for resuming these points in the course of further inquiries.