Plays that dealt with the History of Rome were frequent on the Elizabethan stage, and all portions of it were laid under contribution. Subjects were taken from legends of the dawn like the story of Lucretia, and from rumours of the dusk like the story of Lucina; from Roman pictures of barbarian allies like Massinissa in the South, or barbarian antagonists like Caractacus in the North; as well as from the intimate records of home affairs and the careers of the great magnates of the Republic or Empire. But these plays belong more distinctively to the Stuart than to the Tudor section of the period loosely named after Elizabeth, and few have survived that were composed before the beginning of the seventeenth century. For long the Historical Drama treated by preference the traditions and annals of the island realm, and only by degrees did “the matter of Britain” yield its pride of place to “the matter of Rome the Grand.” Moreover, the earlier Roman Histories are of very inferior importance, and none of them reaches even a moderate standard of merit till the production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in 1600 or 1601. In this department Shakespeare had not the light to guide him that he found for his English Histories in Marlowe’s Edward II., or even in such plays as The Famous Victories of Henry V. The extant pieces that precede his first experiment, seem only to be groping their way, and it is fair to suppose that the others which have been lost did no better. Their interest, in so far as they have any interest at all, lies in the light they throw on the gradual progress of dramatic art in this domain. And they illustrate it pretty fully, and show it passing through some of the main general phases that may be traced in the evolution of the Elizabethan Tragedy as a whole. At the outset we have one specimen of the Roman play in which the legitimate drama is just beginning to disengage itself from the old Morality, and another in which the unique Senecan exemplar is transformed rather than translated to suit the primitive art of the time. Then we have several more artistic specimens deriving directly or indirectly from the French imitators of Seneca, which were the most dignified and intelligent the sixteenth century had to show. And lastly we have a specimen of what the Roman play became when elaborated by the scholar-playwrights for the requirements of the popular London stage.
A survey of these will show how far the ground was prepared for Shakespeare by the traditions of this branch of the drama when he turned to cultivate it himself.
1. APPIUS AND VIRGINIA. THE TRANSLATION OF OCTAVIA
The crudest if not the earliest of the series is entitled A new Tragicall Comedie of Apius and Virginia, by R. B., initials which have been supposed with some probability to stand for Richard Bower, who was master of the Chapel Royal at Windsor in 1559. It was first printed in 1575, but must have been written some years before. A phrase it contains, “perhaps a number will die of the sweat,” has been thought to refer to the prevalence of the plague in 1563, and it may be identified with a play on the same subject that was acted at that time by the boys of Westminster. At any rate several expressions show beyond doubt that it was meant for representation, but only on the old-fashioned scaffold which was soon to be out-of-date. Its character and scope belong too, in part, to a bygone age. The prologue proclaims its ethical intention with the utmost emphasis:
You lordings all that present be, this Tragidie to heare Note well what zeale and loue heerein doth well appeare, And, Ladies, you that linked are in wedlocke bandes for euer Do imitate the life you see, whose fame will perish neuer: But Uirgins you, oh Ladies fair, for honour of your name Doo lead the life apparent heere to win immortall fame.[1]
It is written in commendation of chastity and rebuke of vice:
Let not the blinded God of Loue, as poets tearm him so, Nor Venus with her venery, nor Lechors, cause of wo, Your Uirgins name to spot or file: deare dames, obserue the life That faire Verginia did obserue, who rather wish(ed) the knife Of fathers hand hir life to ende, then spot her chastety. As she did waile, waile you her want, you maids, of courtesie. If any by example heere would shun that great anoy,[2] Our Authour would rejoyce in hart, and we would leap for joy.
[1] Quotations taken, with a few obvious emendations, from Mr. Farmer’s reproduction in the Tudor Facsimile Texts.
[2] The hurt of impurity, not of death.
No Moral Play could be more explicit in its lesson, and the Moral Play has also suggested a large number of the personages. Conscience, Justice, Rumour, Comfort, Reward, Doctrine, Memory, are introduced, and some of them not only in scenes by themselves, but in association with the concrete characters. Occasionally their functions are merely figurative, and can be separated from the action that is supposed to be proceeding: and then of course they hardly count for more than the attributes that help to explain a statue. Thus, when Appius resolves to pursue his ruthless purpose, he exclaims:
But out, I am wounded: how am I deuided! Two states of my life from me are now glided:
and the quaint stage direction in the margin gives the comment: “Here let him make as thogh he went out, and let Consience and Justice come out of[3] him, and let Consience hold in his hande a Lamp burning, and let Justice haue a sworde and hold it before Apius brest.” Thus, too, another stage direction runs: “Here let Consience speake within:
‘Judge Apius, prince, oh stay, refuse: be ruled by thy friende: What bloudy death with open shame did Torquin gaine in ende?’”
[3] Altered unnecessarily to out after by Mr. Carew Hazlitt in his edition of Dodsley’s Old English Plays. Appius’ words imply that the two principles pass from his life, and the spectators are asked to imagine that they actually see the process.
And he answers: “Whence doth this pinching sounde desende?” Here clearly it is merely the voice of his own feelings objectified: and in both instances the interference of the Abstractions is almost wholly decorative; they add nothing to the reflections of Appius, but only serve to emphasise them. This however is not always the case. They often comport themselves in every respect like the real men and women. Comfort stays Virginius from suicide till he shall see the punishment of the wicked. Justice and Reward (that is, Requital) summoned by the unjust judge to doom the father, pronounce sentence on himself. In the end Virginius enters in company with Fame, Doctrina, and Memory.
Other of the characters, again, if more than general ideas, are less than definite individuals. There is a sub-plot not at all interwoven with the main plot, in which the class types, Mansipulus, Mansipula, and their crony, Subservus, play their parts. With their help some attempt is made at presenting the humours of vulgar life. They quarrel with each other, but are presently reconciled in order to divert themselves together, and put off the business of their master and mistress, hoping to escape the punishment for their negligence by trickery and good luck. But we do not even know who their master and mistress are, and they come into no contact with either the historical or the allegorical figures.
The only personage who finds his way into both compartments of the “Tragicall Comedie” is Haphazard the Vice, who gives the story such unity as it possesses. His name happily describes the double aspect of his nature. On the one hand he stands for chance itself; on the other for dependence on chance, the recklessness that relies on accident, and trusts that all will end well though guilt has been incurred. In this way he is both the chief seducer and the chief agent, alike of the petty rogues and of the grand criminal. To the former he sings:
Then wend ye on and folow me, Mansipulus,[4] Mansipula, Let croping cares be cast away; come folow me, come folow me: Subseruus is a joly loute Brace[5] Haphazard, bould blinde bayarde![6] A figge for his uncourtesie that seekes to shun good company!
[4] Text, Mansipula.
[5] Altered by Hazlitt to “brave.” It probably means “embrace.”
[6] A horse that does not see where it is going.
To Appius’ request for advice he replies:
Well, then, this is my counsell, thus standeth the case, Perhaps such a fetche as may please your grace: There is no more wayes but hap or hap not, Either hap or els hapless, to knit up the knot: And if you will hazard to venter what falles, Perhaps that Haphazard will end all your thralles.
His distinctive note is this, that he tempts men by suggesting that they may offend and escape the consequences. In the end he falls into the pit that he has digged for others, and when his hap is to be hanged, like a true Vice he accepts the contretemps with jest and jape.
Yet despite the stock-in-trade that it takes over from Morality or Interlude, Appius and Virginia has specialties of its own that were better calculated to secure it custom in the period of the Renaissance. The author bestows most care on the main story, and makes a genuine attempt to bring out the human interest of the subject and the persons. In the opening scene he tries, in his well-meaning way, to give the impression of a home in which affection is the pervading principle, but in which affection itself is not allowed to run riot, but is restrained by prudence and obligation. Father, mother, and daughter sing a ditty in illustration of this sober love or its reverse, and always return to the refrain:
The trustiest treasure in earth, as we see, Is man, wife, and children in one to agree; Then friendly, and kindly, let measure be mixed With reason in season, where friendship is fixed.
There is some inarticulate feeling for effect in the contrast between the wholesomeness of this orderly family life and the incontinence of the tyrant who presently seeks to violate it. And the dramatic bent of the author—for it is no more than a bent—appears too in the portraiture of the parties concerned. The mingled perplexity and dread of Virginius, when in his consciousness of right he is summoned to the court, are justly conceived; and there is magnanimity in his answer to Appius’ announcement that he must give judgment “as justice doth require”:
My lord, and reason good it is: your seruaunt doth request No parciall hand to aide his cause, no parciall minde or brest. If ought I haue offended you, your Courte or eke your Crowne, From lofty top of Turret hie persupetat me downe: If treason none by me be done, or any fault committed, Let my accusers beare the blame, and let me be remitted.
Similarly, the subsequent conflict in his heart between fondness for his daughter and respect for her and himself is clearly expressed. And her high-spirited demand for death is tempered and humanised by her instinctive recoil when he “proffers a blow”:
The gods forgeue thee, father deare! farewell: thy blow do bend— Yet stay a whyle, O father deare, for fleash to death is fraile. Let first my wimple bind my eyes, and then thy blow assaile, Nowe, father, worke thy will on me, that life I may injoy.
