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THE DRAMATIC DEVELOPMENT
OF THE ENGLISH CYCLES (continued...) |
Part 1 | Part 2
I HAVE
elsewhere attempted to show that the later dramatists did not
invent their art; they worked with what they found, and they
found a dramatic medium of expression to which centuries and
countless influences had contributed. An extended study of the
history of English drama should therefore determine, so far as
possible, the relative priority, not only of the cycles, but
of dramatic stages within the cycles; what each has contributed
to the enfranchisement of the artistic spirit and the development
of the technical factors of the art,--to what extent each has
expressed or modified the realistic, satirical, pathetic, romantic,
or humorous view of life, and in what ways each has reflected
the temper of its time, the manners and the mind of the people
that wrote, acted, and witnessed these early dramas. If I arrange
the plays that bear upon the development of popular drama according
to my conclusions regarding priority of composition, the order,
broadly stated for our present rapid survey, would seem to be:
First, the Cornish and the Old Testament portions of the Chester
and N-Town, then the productions of the second and third periods
of the York, and closely following these the crowning efforts
of the Wakefield or Towneley, then the New Testament plays of
the Chester and N-Town, and finally the surviving portions of
the collections of Digby and Newcastle. This order, which is
roughly historical, has the advantage, as I perceive after testing
it, of presenting a not unnatural sequence of the aesthetic valies
or interests essential to a kind of drama which is rather comic
than tragic:--first the humour of the incidental, then of the
essential or real, and gradually of the satirical; afterwards
the accession of the romantic, pathetic, and sublime; the wonderful,
the allegorical, and the mock-ideal; and finally of the scenic
and sensational. Of course beneath this roof of cumulative art
and colour there is the warp of the original intention: the mystery,
the sacrifice, the lesson. The presence of the serious and supernal
goes without saying; but it is in the increment of other qualities
that the transmutation of the spectacle from liturgy to popular
drama is most readily to be observed.
Of the Old Testament, that is, the earlier
Chester and N-town plays, the most useful for our present purpose
are The Death of Abel and Noah's Flood. With them
may be considered the Cornish version. The Cornish miracles present
us with dramatic situations in the liturgical-epical germ, and
characters in the undifferentiated "rough." The Cain,
for instance, is but boor and niggard; his possibilities for
comedy are undeveloped, but it is impossible that they should
long be repressed. The devils, indeed, who come forward like
a chorus at the end of each important scene, were probably pressed
into the service of merriment; but the dramatic motive for which
they exist is serious, and the part assigned to them is more
consistent than in any of the other cycles. The Chester play
of Cain, a conglomerate running from the Creation to the
death of Abel, is not only one of the crudest of the cycle (much
more so, for instance, than the sacrifice of Isaac based upon
the Brome Play), but one of the most naïve on the subject.
The character of the potential fratricide, with his canny offering
of the earless corn that grew next the way, and his defiant "God,
thou gotteste noe better of me, Be thou never so gryme,"
is manifestly nearer the primitive conception than the Cayme
of York or Wakefield. He is not yet wit, wag, and dare-devil.
The episode in the Chester is didactic, but still realistic;
less imaginative than in the York or Wakefield, but creative.
Evidently more modern than the Chester play, which it somewhat
resembles, is the Cain and Abel of the Ludus Coventriæ
or N-Town. The villain is well-conceived, and elaborated with
pith and humour. He discusses the Almighty with a worldly wisdom
that remotely approaches that of the Wakefield, and he expresses
his opinion of Abel--
- "Among all fools that go
on ground
- I hold that thou be one of the
most:
- To tithe [give to God] the best
that is most sound,
- And keep the worst that is near
lost--
with somewhat the same vivid and natural
use of the vernacular. The action between the brothers is more
elaborate than in Chester, but the dramatic quality depends rather
upon dialogue than development of the situation. Its versification
is certainly not that of the earliest stage of the cycle to which
it belongs, and its lyrical quality might even indicate a later
period of composition than the corresponding plays in the York
and Wakefield; but it is not derived from either of them.
The development of a situation from the
serious to the humorous is admirably illustrated by still another
play of this earlier group. In the dramatisation of the Flood,
the Cornish cycle presents the serious aspect of the naïve
conception. Noah and his wife are on affectionate terms; she
is obedient and helpful. It has not occurred to the writer to
introduce an extraneous interest, as, for instance, that of conjugal
strife. The play is interesting, however, because it displays
some slight ability to discriminate characters. Likewise unconscious
of comic possibilities is the N-Town play of the Flood. Though
probably of latter composition than the corresponding plays in
other cycles, it is, in its greatest part, one of the earlier,
though not of the earliest plays of its own cycle. The characters
(the sons' wives now begin to play a part), pious, prosaic, and
un-interesting, are perfunctorily portrayed, but the construction
of the play is ingenious, especially in its manipulation of the
episode of Lamech, not as an extraneous action, but as a factor
in the organic development of the motive; a hint of a sub-plot.
In the Chester play, on the other hand, the characters are distinct
and consistently developed. The comic episodes are natural and
justifiable, for they serve to display, not to distort, character,
and they grow out of the dramatic action. They are, moreover,
varied, and, to some extent, cumulative. This play is indeed
a vast dramatic advance upon the N-Town. It is approximately
on the same plane of dramatic development as the York play of
The Flood, and should be considered with reference to
it, although in spite of one or two unique resemblances in language
and conception, neither pageant can be reguarded as dependent
upon the other.
It is noteworthy that the York play on
the building of the Ark, one of the earliest of that cycle, is
serious. The play of the Flood, however, which is in a somewhat
later stanza, indulges in an altercation between Noah and his
wife. The humour of this in turn is surpassed by that of the
Chester, so also the technique. While in the York the amusing
episode is sudden and of one sequence, in the Chester the clouds
upon the domestic horizon gather with artistic reluctance, and,
when they burst, refresh the soil in more than one spot. Noah
is not yet the henpecked husband of later comedy, though prophetic
thereof. Peaceably inclined, but capable of a temper, he serves
God and apostrophises the perversity of women. The possibilities
of his wife's character are cunningly unfolded. At first apparently
amenable to reason, her progress toward "curstness"
is a study in the development of character. Few situations in
our early drama are better conceived than her refusal at the
critical moment to enter the Ark unless her gossips are also
taken aboard. Cam's "Shall we all feche her in?"
the drinking song, --a rollicking song, too, with the lilt, "Back
and side, go bare, go bare,"--Noah's collapse of temper
and the alapam auri, all these are good fooling, and must
have left our ancestors thirsty for more. The "business"
is of course enhanced by the multiplication of participants,
by the solicitude of the children, and the apathy of the gossips.
The song, I am afraid, is a later addition; but even without
the appropriateness of diction to the naïve (not vague or
poetic) statement of details marks an essential advance in realism.
This article was originally
published in Plays of Our Forefathers. Charles Mills Gayley.
New York: Duffield & Co., 1907. pp. 144-52.
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