to it by the most powerful of human motives-the ambition of making or keeping a reputation. The dramatists of greatest general repute next to Shakespeare are Ben Jonson and John Fletcher.1 There are good grounds for their pre-eminence. Among their contemporaries and competitors were men of higher and rarer qualities, men of more interesting character; but no others, excepting always Marlowe and Shakespeare, gave so much original impulse to the drama, established themselves so firmly and unmistakably as leaders of literature. We shall see that it is a mistake to regard Jonson as an imitator of classical models; and that he himself took a juster view of his position when he disclaimed adherence to Plautus and Terence, and declared himself the inventor of a new comedy. Jonson was the first English dramatist who found the whole materials of his comedy in contemporary life. He may have taken this idea from the Latin comedians, but his method as well as his spirit was essentially different from theirs. Chapman was an older man than Jonson, and Dekker excelled him in the fidelity and delicacy of his delineation of life; but both were his disciples. As regards Fletcher, who threw into the drama not only the high spirits and daring manner of aristocratic youth, but also a sweet odour of poetry brought from the vales of Arcadia and the gardens of the Faëry Queen, he is the real progenitor of the drama of the Restoration. Charles Lamb was not strictly correct in saying that "quite a new turn of tragic and comic interest came in with the Restoration." It was not strictly new it had at least been foreshadowed by Fletcher. Dryden was Fletcher's pupil in tragedy as Wycherley was in comedy. Their work was the natural development of his when relieved from the restraining influences of his agein tragedy, the competition of men who wrote with a high sense of artistic responsibility, and in comedy, the regard to decency imposed by a decorous female sovereign and her successor, a royal old wife. The young barbarians who 1 I shall show reason for believing that injustice is done to Fletcher by writing his name with Beaumont's. enjoyed the obscenities of Fletcher would not have been shocked by the indecent wit of Wycherley or Congreve, and probably looked upon Shakespeare as old-fashioned and stilted. I have said nothing about the influence of the Spanish drama on Elizabethan dramatists, because I do not believe that it could have exercised, or did exercise, any appreciable influence. It may have been that Marlowe was induced to write for the public stage by hearing of a great popular drama in Spain-news which he might have had from his friend Greene if he did not know it otherwise; but once the Elizabethan drama was in full career, it was no more possible to turn it into the channels of the Spanish drama, than to turn the Rhine at Frankfort into the Rhone, or to sensibly change the waters of the Ganges by bucketfuls from the Volga. Much of the material of the English drama was taken from Southern Europe, where intrigue and passion have freer play than with us; but the mode of representation was wholly indigenous. I. GEORGE CHAPMAN (1559-1634). George Chapman is conspicuous among the mob of easy and precocious writers in his generation for his late entrance into the service of the Muses, and his loudly proclaimed enthusiasm and strenuous labours in that service. He made no secret of the effort that it cost him to climb Parnassus, or of his fiery resolution to reach the top; he rather exaggerated his struggles and the vehemence of his ambition. He refrained from publication till he was thirty-five years old, and then burst upon the world like a repressed and accumulated volcano. The swelling arrogance and lofty expectations with which he had restrained his secret labours 1 A profession of contempt for critics was quite a commonplace in those days; but Chapman is peculiarly earnest. His fury at some exceptions taken to his Homer was boundless: he fairly gnashed his teeth at the frontless detractions of some stupid ignorants that, "no more knowing me than their own beastly ends, and I ever (to my knowledge) blest from their sight, whisper behind me, vilifying of my translation." display themselves without reserve in the 'Shadow of Night' his first contribution to print. The dedication of that poem and the poem itself strike the key-note of his literary character. "It is," he bursts out, "an exceeding rapture of delight in the deep search of knowledge. . . that maketh man manfully endure the extremes incident to that Herculean labour: from flints must the Gorgonian fount be smitten." . . . "Men must be shod by Mercury, girt with Saturn's adamantine sword, take the shield from Pallas, the helm from Pluto, and have the eyes of Graia (as Hesiodus arms Perseus against Medusa), before they can cut off the viperous head of benumbing ignorance, or subdue their monstrous affections to a most beautiful judgment." If Night, "sorrow's dread sovereign," will only give his "working soul" skill to declare the griefs that he has suffered, she will be able to sing all the tortures of Earth,"And force to tremble in her trumpeting Heaven's crystal spheres." He adjures Night, the mother of all knowledge, to give force to his words : "Then let fierce bolts, well ramm'd with heat and cold, In Jove's artillery my words unfold To break the labyrinth of every ear, And make each frighted soul come forth and hear. Let them break hearts, as well as yielding airs, That all men's bosoms (pierced with no affairs And with the threats of virtue terrified." One cannot wonder that this fiery aspirant to fame, so lofty in his pretensions, so novel in his strain, drew all men's eyes upon him, and found many admirers eager to support his claim to stand among the greatest poets. Englishmen have never been deficient in the worship of force: and the vehement enthusiasm of George Chapman exerted a strong fascination.1 Very little is known concerning Chapman prior to 1594, the date of the publication of his 'Shadow of Night.' He is believed to have been born at Hitchin, and to have 1 See above, p. 292. studied at Oxford, and perhaps also at Cambridge. The probability is that he had matured several works before he began to publish, because he issued three or four different productions in rapid succession, and then remained silent for six or seven years, presumably till he was ready for another attack upon the public. He followed up his 'Shadow of Night' in 1595 with a luxurious study in sensuous description-' Ovid's Banquet of Sense; and his "Blind Beggar of Alexandria" was played by the Lord Admiral's men in the same year, though not published till 1598. The chronology of the instalments of his translation of Homer has been greatly obscured by the rash assertions of Warton; but the facts seem to be that he published seven books in Alexandrines in 1598: the 'Shield of Achilles'in heroic couplets in the same year; and twelve books complete in 1606. "A Humorous Day's Mirth," a comedy, was published in 1599, having been sundry times acted before. He offered no other play to the public till 1605, when he printed the comedy of " All Fools." Thereafter he seems to have divided his energies between writing comedies and tragedies and translating from the Classics. His COMEDIES, in addition to those already mentioned, were,"Monsieur D'Olive," 1606; "The Gentleman Usher," 1606; "May-Day," 1611; "The Widow's Tears," 1612. His TRAGEDIES," Bussy d'Ambois," 1607; "Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois," 1613; "The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron," in two plays, 1608; "Cæsar and Pompey," not published till 1631; "Alphonsus," 1654; "Revenge for Honour," 1654. As regards translations, he was able to boast towards the close of his career that he had translated all the works attributed to Homer. He published a continuation of Marlowe's "Hero and Leander" in 1606. The circumstantial richness of description in Chapman's two earliest pieces is very remarkable. That was evidently his first study, and he pursued it with untiring enthusiasm till he obtained complete mastery. In the 'Shadow of Night' there are some studiously elaborate descriptions, such as the following: "And as, when Chloris paints th' enamelled meads, - But Ovid's Banquet of Sense' is his most fervent and indefatigable effort in the way of rich description. As if he had resolved to acquire once for all a complete command of sensuous expression, he there narrates a happy adventure that procured the gratification of all the senses, and tasks the whole power of his fancy in a protracted endeavour to depict the sweet tumult raised in the soul by their various objects. The argument of the poem is, that Ovid having fallen in love with Julia, daughter of Augustus, whom he celebrated under the name of Corinna, found means to enter the imperial gardens and see Corinna playing on her lute and singing, and afterwards entering her bath, which had been filled with the richest perfumes. In this adventure all Ovid's senses were feasted: his hearing with her voice and lute, his sense of smell with the dispersed odours, his eye with her disrobed figure, his mouth with a kiss. He is permitted also to touch her side-the gratification of Feeling, which Chapman calls the senses' groundwork, the emperor of the senses, whom it is no immodesty to serve. 'Ovid's Banquet of Sense' is really a banquet of most exquisite poetry-a most determined effort by the indomitable poet to eclipse by fervid elaboration all the raptures of previous pairs of mythological lovers-Lodge's Glaucus and Scylla, Marlowe's Hero and Leander, Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, Drayton's Endymion and Phoebe. How elaborately, for example, and with what glowing colours, he describes Ovid's feelings when Corinna stooped down to kiss him! |