CHAPTER II.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

WE come now to a period in the history of English literature in which wit and humour in the form of verse became comparatively rare and poor;-when poetry to a great extent was lost in drama, and when the dramatists generally resorted to prose when they wished to exchange the language of passion and of sentiment for that of fun. There were poets pure and simple in those days, as in our own: there were Spenser, with his wondrous allegory; Haryngton, with his polished epigram; Drayton, with his patriotic outbursts; and Raleigh, Breton, and Drummond, with their sugared' lyrics. But, if we except Spenser, all the great poets of the age were also dramatists, and largely confined their verse to the expression of their higher fancies, leaving (so to speak) their lower ones to find a humbler outlet in the way of prose. You notice this in almost every writer of that time. They did not wholly banish wit and humour from their measured utterances, as will be seen directly, but they certainly kept their richest, their most unctuous, as well as their most pointed sayings, for the scenes in which blank verse or heroic verse were disregarded, in favour of the unrhythmic speech of every day.

Especially was this the case with Shakespeare,* whose most brilliant wit-combats and most rollicking humourflights are couched in prose. It is in prose that Beatrice and Benedick conduct their piquant railleries; and it is in prose that Dogberry rolls out his exquisite absurdities. The most delightful pages in Shakespearean drama are of this character, and the gleaner of Shakespearean wit and humour

* Born 1564, died 1616.

in the form of verse has, in comparison, but little to reward him for his pains. At the same time, his search is not entirely fruitless. For example: every one will remember— indeed, most of us must know by heart-such passages as that in which Jaques describes his meeting with a fool i' the forest, and that other equally familiar one in which Hotspur recounts his interview with a certain lord upon the battlefield. Less known-because the play is rarely acted now, and, I fear, but little read-are the many witty passages in Love's Labour's Lost, a play in which Shakespeare's exuberant youthfulness found so lively and exhilarating a vent. There the verse in which the greater portion of the work is cast is charged with explosive repartee and scorching sarcasm. As in Sheridan's comedies, everyone speaks in the same language, and that language one of constant quip and quiddity. Take, for example, this description by Biron of his brother courtier Boyet,-a description which may be accepted as applying accurately to a certain type of gallant of Elizabeth's time:

This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons peas,
And utters it again when God doth please:
He's wit's+ pedlar, and retails his wares

At wakes and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs,
And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know,
Have not the grace to grace it with such show.
This gallant pins the wenches to his sleeve;
Had he been Adam, he'd have tempted Eve.
He can carve, too, and lisp! Why, this is he
That kissed away his hand in courtesy ;
This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice,
That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice
In honourable terms; nay, he can sing
A means most meanly; and, in ushering,
Mend him who can. The ladies call him sweet;
The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet.

* Published in 1598.

† Pronounced as if dissyllables.

i.e. Make a gesture of recognition with the little finger. § i.e. The tenor, in music.

This is the flower that smiles on every one,
To show his teeth as white as whale's bone:
And consciences, that will not die in debt,
Pay him the due of honey-tongued Boyet.

What fun there is, too, in the interlude in A Midsummer Night's Dream! What humour there is in Quince's utterances as Prologue! What a 'witty partition' is the Wall through which Pyramus and Thisbe are to speak! There is rich humour in all the scenes in The Taming of the Shrew with which Shakespeare's name has been associated; but it is humour of the kind that calls for longer extract than can be afforded here. We are fain, indeed, to content ourselves with but one more specimen of our great poet's work in this vein, in the shape of one of the numerous songs scattered over the dramas. This one, like the lines above, is from Love's Labour's Lost, and is a graphic as well as a humorous picture of life in winter:

When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail ;
When blood is nipped, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-who!

Tu-whit, tu-who! a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keelf the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow,

And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,

And Marian's nose looks red and raw;
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit!

Tu-who! a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

With these quotations, which give, of course, a very faint

* Pronounced as if dissyllables.

† Skim.

+ Apples.

reflection of Shakespeare's comic power, we must leave a subject which, if discussion of the poet's prose were in our plan, would yield many a page of hearty and enthusiastic comment. As it is, Falstaff is lost to us, and so are Aguecheek and Belch and Touchstone (save in his snatch of parody on the lines to Rosalind), and a hundred other characters in which the myriad-minded dramatist embodied his humorous and witty notions.

Spenser was a first-rate poet, but not, certainly, a firstrate humourist. Yet he has left behind him at least one obvious satire in his Prosopopoia; or Mother Hubbard's Tale, the best passage in which is that in which the priest tells the fox, who is anxious to take orders, how to obtain a living in the church:

First, when ye have in handsome wise
Yourselves attirèd as you can devise,
Then to some nobleman yourself apply,
Or other great one in the worldè's eye,
That hath a zealous disposition

To God, and so to his religion.

There must thou fashion eke a goodly zeal,
Such as no carpers may contrayr reveal,
For each thing feigned ought more wary be.
There thou must walk in sober gravity,
And seem as saint-like as St. Radegund;
Fast much, pray oft, look lowly on the ground,
And unto every one do court'sy meek.
These looks (nought saying) do a benefice seek;
And be thou sure one not to lack ere long.
But if thee list unto the court to throng,

And there to hunt after the hoped prey,

Then must thou thee dispose another way;

For there thou needs must learn to laugh, to lie,
To face, to forge, to scoff, to company,

To crouch, to please, to be a beetle-stock
Of thy great master's will, to scorn, to mock.
So mayst thou chance mock out a benefice,-

* Born, 1552; died, 1599. Prosopopoia was printed in 1591.

Unless thou canst one conjure by device,-
Or cast a figure for a bishopric;

And, if one could, it were but by a school trick.
These be the ways by which without reward
Livings in courts be gotten, though full hard,
For nothing there is done without a fee.
The courtier needs must recompensèd be
With a benevolence, or have in gage
The primitias of your parsonage.

Do not thou, therefore, seek a living there,
But of more private persons seek elsewhere,
Whereas thou mayst compound a bettèr penny;
For some good gentleman that hath the right
Unto his church for to present a wight

Will cope

with thee in reasonable wise,

That if the living yearly do arise

To forty pound, that then his youngest son
Shall twenty have, and twenty thou hast won.

This is not very brilliant satire, but it shows us-what, indeed, we knew to be the case- that Spenser was not compact of imagination only, but had a keen scent for the actualities of life, and a certain aptness in commenting on them. Elsewhere, the general tendency of his poetry is, it need hardly be said, rather didactic than otherwise; there is little in it of spontaneous humour, and scarcely anything of wit.

Haryngton, who died thirteen years after Spenser, was the epigrammatist of his time, and a much more polished and pointed one than Heywood. Every one knows his. famous couplets on Treason and Fortune, and his hardly less familiar quatrain 'Against Writers who Carp at other Men's Books.' The following, 'On Enclosing a Common,' is a favourable specimen of his usual manner:

A lord, that purposed for his more avail
To compass in a common with a rail,

* Sir John Haryngton; born 1561, died 1612. His Epigrams most Elegant and Witty were published in 1633.