Such spokes as th' Ancient of the Parish use Without the consent of some great Proverb-monger, She Wit. Why, she will flout the devil, and make blush And hath his brain-pan fraught with bitter jests Let him stand ne'er so high in's own conceit, Yet she'll not leave him then, but like a tyrant There came a Farmer's Son a wooing to her, [Act ii., Sc. 1.1] 2["God knows" omitted.] He left his Love; she had so laced his lips, He could say nothing to her but "God be with ye." Then she'll begin to buffet him with mocks. [Act ii., Sc. 3.] Master Goursey proposes to his Son a Wife. Frank Goursey. Ne'er trust me, father, the shape1 of marriage, Which I do see in others, seems so severe, I dare not put my youngling liberty Under the awe of that instruction; And yet I grant, the limits of free youth And swear, when I did marry, I was mad. Old Goursey. But, boy, let my experience teach thee this ; (Yet in good faith thou speak'st not much amiss); When first thy mother's fame to me did come, Thy grandsire thus then came to me his son, [Act ii., Sc. 4.] Wandering in the dark all night. O when will this same Year of Night have end? "["Shape" should be "shackles Let not this thief-friend misty veil of night [Act v., Sc. 1.] The pleasant Comedy, from which these Extracts are taken, is contemporary with some of the earliest of Shakspeare's, and is no whit inferior to either the Comedy of Errors, or the Taming of the Shrew, for instance. It is full of business, humour and merry malice. Its night-scenes are peculiarly sprightly and wakeful. The versification unencumbered, and rich with compound epithets. Why do we go on with ever new Editions of Ford, and Massinger, and the thrice reprinted Selections of Dodsley? what we want is as many volumes more, as these latter consist of, filled with plays (such as this), of which we know comparatively nothing. Not a third part of the Treasures of old English Dramatic literature has been exhausted. Are we afraid that the genius of Shakspeare would suffer in our estimate by the disclosure? He would indeed be somewhat lessened as a miracle and a prodigy. But he would lose no height by the confession. When a Giant is shown to us, does it detract from the curiosity to be told that he has at home a gigantic brood of brethren, less only than himself? Along with him, not from him, sprang up the race of mighty Dramatists who, compared with the Otways and Rowes that followed, were as Miltons to a Young or an Akenside. That he was their elder Brother, not their Parent, is evident from the fact of the very few direct imitations of him to be found in their writings. Webster, Decker, Heywood, and the rest of his great contemporaries went on their own ways, and followed their individual impulses, not blindly prescribing to themselves his tract. Marlowe, the true (though imperfect) Father of our tragedy, preceded him. The comedy of Fletcher is essentially unlike to that of his. 'Tis out of no detracting spirit that I speak thus, for the plays of Shakspeare have been the strongest and the sweetest food of my mind from infancy; but I resent the comparative obscurity in which some of his most valuable co-operators remain, who were his dear intimates, his stage and his chamber-fellows while he lived, and to whom his gentle spirit doubtlessly then awarded the full portion of their genius, as from them toward himself appears to have been no grudging of his acknowledged excellence. THE FAIR MAID OF THE EXCHANGE. A COMEDY 2 [PUBLISHED 1607]. BY THOMAS HEYWOOD Cripple offers to fit Frank Golding with ready made Love Epistles. Frank. Of thy own writing? Crip. My own, I assure you, Sir. Frank. Faith, thou hast robb'd some sonnet-book or other, And now would'st make me think they are thy own. 1 [Missed-way.] 2[Edited by Barron Field, Shakesp. Soc. 1845.] Crip. Why, think'st thou that I cannot write a Letter, Ditty, or Sonnet, with judicial phrase, As pretty, pleasing, and pathetical, Frank. I think thou canst not. Yet, Sirrah, I could coney-catch the world, Were I disposed. Frank. I prithee, how? Crip. Why, thus, There lived a Poet in this town But rolls, and scrolls, and bundles of cast wit, And then were I an admirable fellow. Frank. This were a piece of cunning. Crip. I could do more; for I could make enquiry, Where the best-witted gallants use to dine, Follow them to the tavern, and there sit In the next room with a calve's head and brimstone, Collect their jests, put them into a play, And tire them too with payment to behold What I have filch'd from them. This I could do. [Act iii., Sc. 2.] After this specimen of the pleasanter vein of Heywood, I am tempted to extract some lines from his "Hierarchie of Angels, 1634;" not strictly as a Dramatic Poem, but because the passage contains a string of names, all but that of Watson, his contemporary Dramatists. He is complaining in a mood half serious, half comic, of the disrespect which Poets in his own times meet with from the world, compared with the honours paid them by Antiquity. Then they could afford them three or four sonorous names, and at full length; as to Ovid, the addition of Publius Naso Sulmensis; to Seneca, that of Lucius Annæas Cordubensis; and the like. Now, says he, Our modern Poets to that pass are driven, Those names are curtail'd which they first had given; And, as we wish'd to have their memories drown'd, We scarcely can afford them half their sound. Degree of Master, yet could never gain To be call'd more than Robin: who, had he (With credit too) gone Robert to his grave. Marlowe, renown'd for his rare art and wit, Could ne'er attain beyond the name of Kit; Although his Hero and Leander did Merit addition rather. Famous Kid Was call'd but Tom. Tom Watson; though he wrote Able to make Apollo's self to dote Upon his Muse; for all that he could strive, Yet never could to his full name arrive. Tom Nash (in his time of no small esteem) Could not a second syllable redeem. The full title of this Play is "The Fair Maid of the Exchange, with the Humours of the Cripple of Fenchurch." The above Satire against some Dramatic Plagiarists of the time, is put into the mouth of the Cripple, who is an excellent fellow, and the Hero of the Comedy. Of his humour this extract is a sufficient specimen; but he is described (albeit a tradesman, yet wealthy withal) with heroic qualities of mind and body; the latter of which he evinces by rescuing his Mistress (the Fair Maid) from three robbers by the main force of one crutch lustily applied; and the former by his foregoing the advantages which this action gained him in her good opinion, and bestowing his wit and finesse in procuring for her a husband, in the person of his friend Golding, more worthy of her beauty, than he could conceive his own maimed and halting limbs to be. It would require some boldness in a dramatist now-a-days to exhibit such a Character; and some luck in finding a sufficient Actor, who would be willing to personate the infirmities, together with the virtues, of the Noble Cripple. |