who framed acts and issued proclamations lamenting the inquietation of their people by diversity of opinion, and interdicting all plays that had not received the royal sanction. Both Mysteries and Moralities were used to leaven the popular mind with sound doctrine. It is di JOHN BALE (1495-1563), a zealous reformer, favoured by Cromwell, forced to flee the country after his death in 1540, recalled by Edward VI. and made Bishop of Ossory, exiled under Mary, restored once more at the accession of Elizabeth, wrote no less than nineteen plays to promote the Reformation. "God's Promises," reprinted in Dodsley's Old Plays, was written in 1538, and entitled "A Tragedy or Interlude, manifesting the chief promises of God unto man by all ages in the old law, from the fall of Adam to the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ." The composition is much more solid than that of the "World and the Child," but the plan of the work is very much the same. vided into seven Acts, in each of which God sustains a dialogue with a Scriptural patriarch or a prophet: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, John the Baptist. Each of the Acts begins with a declaration of God's anger against man, proceeds with deprecating entreaties from the representative of man, and ends with a promise of mercy. The pious author thus embraces within his play the chief promises of a Saviour, as made to Adam, Abraham, David, and Isaiah. Three other mysteries by Bale are extant"The Three Laws, of Nature, Moses, and Christ;" "John the Baptist's Preaching in the Wilderness ;" and "The Temptation of Christ." This last is called by the author a comedy.1 Bishop Bale used Scripture-plays seriously for the purpose of disseminating his own views of Biblical truth. It is to his plays that we must go if we wish to keep up the idea that the object and function of mysteries was to diffuse , among the people a knowledge of Holy Writ. Moral-plays were also utilised by the champions of the Reformation. 1 Bale, says Mr Collier, was the first to apply, or rather to mis-apply, the words "tragedy" and "comedy" to dramatic representations in English. In the battle against the old faith, mysteries and moralities may be said to have served two separate functionsmysteries being employed in the constructive work of spreading the light of the Bible, and moralities in the destructive work of ridiculing the priests and tenets of Roman Catholicism. In the moral-play of "Lusty Juventus," written during the reign of Edward VI., the ministers and the ritual of Roman Catholicism are represented as being the offspring of hypocrisy, the daughter of the devil, and he is represented as complaining that the Reformation is taking away his choicest instruments. It was natural that when Mary ascended the throne, her party should employ the same organ to play a very different tune. Under Mary it was the new faith and its professors that had to be discredited and made odious. In the "Interlude of Youth," Youth is seduced by the ordinary means of Riot and Pride, and reclaimed by Charity with sound Catholic doctrine. And in a "merry interlude, entitled Respublica," Reformation figures as an alias of Oppression, with Insolence and Adulation as his comrades, and the three behave so badly that Nemesis comes down from heaven with her four fair ladies to chastise them and redress their perversion of "all right and all order of true justice." The three iniquities pay court to Avarice, a touchy old gentleman. Reformation says And to you have we borne hearty favours alway." To which Avarice replies shortly and sharply "And I warrant you hanged for your labours one day." Whereupon Reformation and Adulation chime in together, but get little encouragement from their irascible patronR. & A. Even as our God we have alway honoured you. Avar. And e'en as your God I have aye succoured you. R. & A. We call you our founder by all holy hallows. Avar. Founder me no foundering, but beware the gallows. This employment of a rude drama for political and reli gious purposes is heavy reading, now that the freshness of its applications is gone. It has little interest as literature side by side with the poetry of Wyatt and Surrey. Occasionally, however, the dreary waste is relieved by a sparkling interval. There are two songs in "Lusty Juventus" which step out of their lifeless surroundings, and challenge comparison with the new poetry of the period. They appeal to us as things of native growth against the imports of the Italian school. They are genuinely English, and have something of the quality of the snatches of song interspersed through the mature Elizabethan drama. The first of them is the opening of the play, and is sung by Lusty Juventus himself upon his entrance :— "In a herbere green asleep whereas I lay, The birds sang sweet in the midst of the day; I dreamed fast of mirth and play. In youth is pleasure-in youth is pleasure. Methought I walked still to and fro, In youth is pleasure—in youth is pleasure. Therefore my heart is surely pight, Which is my joy and heart's delight. In youth is pleasure-in youth is pleasure." The other is in a similar strain : "Why should not youth fulfil his own mind, Be not the trees in winter bare? And when they spring their fruits declare. Report me to you-report me to you. What should youth do with the fruits of age, Why should not youth fulfil his own mind, IV. JOHN HEYWOOD: "Merry Interludes"-The Four P's-Thersites. The "merry interludes" of John Heywood, an epigrammatist and noted jester or wit, in great favour with Mary, but driven abroad, on the accession of Elizabeth, by his adherence to the Roman Catholic faith, lie between moralities, otherwise called "moral interludes," and the regular comedy. They have not the plot of regular comedy, and they are superior to moralities in the exhibition of character, because they bring on the stage not personified abstractions but representatives of professions. In spirit they have much in common with the modern farce, being designed for the same purpose of keeping an audience in broad enjoyment for a short time. Heywood's "merry interludes " are fine examples of broad, boisterous, healthy English humour. He took a pride in his own "mad merry wit." "Art thou Heywood, with thy mad merry wit? Yea! forsooth, Master, that name is even hit. Art thou Heywood, that appliest mirth more than thrift? It seems a strange thing that this madcap should have suffered persecution for his religious faith: it is a parallel to the contemporary paradox of the facetious but fundamentally serious Sir Thomas More. From his interludes one might suppose Heywood's leanings to have been the other way M towards the Reformers rather than the Papists: in his extant plays, priests, palmers, and pardoners are the chief butts of his ridicule. One of them—“The Pardoner, the Friar, the Curate, and neighbour Pratt"-exhibits a struggle between a Pardoner and a Friar for the temporary use of the Curate's church, and the vain efforts of the Curate and neighbour Pratt to keep the peace. Another, entitled "A merry play between John the husband, Tib the wife, and Sir Jhan the priest," has for its subjects a henpecked husband and a clerical paramour. The main fun of a third"The Four P's, or the Palmer, the Pardoner, the Potecary, and the Pedlar"- turns upon engaging three notorious liars in a competition to prove which can tell the biggest lie, the fourth standing by as judge. The "Four P's," which is reprinted in Dodsley's Old Plays, is brimful of bright broad humour. The Palmer enters and tells what he is, where he has travelled, and why he goes on pilgrimage. So far all is serious: we have a pious man before us, enumerating his pilgrimages, and crossing himself as he repeats his devout motives:― "To these, with many other one, By whose prayers and my daily pain For my salvation, grace, and mercy. But the Pardoner enters, and dissipates the devout atmosphere with mad spirit. "For all your labour and ghostly intent," he says to the Palmer, "you return as wise as you went." The pilgrim should have come to him. |