outward comforts," added, "Not that such recreations are unlawful: the mind hath her physic as well as the body." We need hardly mention in this connection Donne's poem in praise of Jonson, which reminds us in turn of Crashaw's poem on Ford's two tragedies. Still higher in the church came these sentiments. We have heard Laud say that there might be good in true comedy. He himself had arranged court entertainments, and from his patronage of the poet Cartwright one might assume that his ideas of good and bad in the drama were rather vague.2 There were certainly many men of the Episcopal church like Herbert, lovers of purity in life; but because on other questions they were so far sundered from their opponents, they cared not to espouse the Puritan cause. Therefore it was left at the last for the practical, every-day character of Puritan Christianity to fight the abuses of the drama. Of whom, then, was this Puritan party composed? It contained men from all walks of life. Many, undoubtedly, were possessed of no culture. But were there not just as many of the actors' party destitute of this high and rare trait, who appreciated nothing but the allurements of the theater? Another class of Puritans, smaller perhaps, was composed of ideal characters like Colonel Hutchinson, who, though gifted with a love of music and culture and a fondness for rural sport, felt the call of life so strongly that he sacrificed, with no loss, be it noted, in the fineness and richness of his character, its pleasures for its stricter purpose. In even loftier natures we find the same tendency. Though the poet Spenser never renounced the drama, he at least censured its degradation; and the poet Milton represented the highest phases of the Puritan movement. With him our survey may fittingly end. It is unnecessary to expound the depth of Milton's scholarship, his love of Greek tragedy and the harmony of his poetic soul. In early life he confessed in L'Allegro and 1 Sermons, II, 378. 2 Laud, Diary, p. 196. See also chapter 15, p. 175. Il Penseroso his fondness for the delights of both tragedy and comedy. And during his temporary absence from Cambridge in 1625 and 1626, when the quarrel was far advanced, he wrote to a friend concerning his recreations in London,1 Excipit hinc fessum sinuosi pompa theatri, Et vocat ad plausus garrula scena suos. Το He must refer here to attendance at the public theaters. be sure, the plays which he describes are classical in nature; but this may have been due to school-boy pedantry, or to the feeling that a description of an English play in Latin verse would be a serious anachronism. At least no one can doubt that he attended the theater. But as the purpose of his life deepened, and as his outlook matured, his approval, if not his love, of the drama lessened. He never lost all faith in its worth. In outlining the ideal course of a boy's education, he provided for the introduction, though late, and "with wariness and good antidote," for a study of the best tragedies and comedies of Greece, Rome and even Italy.2 He allowed this because he believed that it could be made a "wholesome" exercise to elevate the mind. But even at the university, as he sat at plays sanctioned by the "reverend prelates," the high ideals of the minister's calling that were later voiced in Lycidas, made him revolt against the younger clergy's participation in the vileness of those plays.3 In later life, consequently, consciousness of the corruption which youth imbibed from the "writings and interludes of libidinous and ignorant poetasters" grew upon him, and his convictions deepened. 4 Milton, however, saw the good of poetry, and even at the end was confident that by a proper exercise of authority the magistrates could render the theater a means both of recreation and instruction—a supplement to the pulpit. He 1 Elegia Prima, Ad Diodatum, lines 27 et seq. 2 On Education, III, 472-4. Written in 1644. 3 An Apology for Smectymnuus, III, 114. Pub. 1642. 4 Reason for Church Government, 1641, Book II, vol. II, p. 480. himself had been inspired to higher things by writings which others held vicious, and therefore, even amid the immorality of the Restoration stage, he did not hesitate to dress his thoughts once more in dramatic form, as he had already done in Comus, and to affirm his belief that tragedy was "the gravest, moralest and most profitable of all other poems." But though Milton never lost faith in his ideal drama, he, like many other Puritans, was probably so disgusted with the last feeble attempts of the English stage that he welcomed the forcible closure of 1642. Reform had been proved impossible. In Peele's time there was an effort, as has been seen, to rid the stage of its immorality; the Play of Plays promised, and all defenders wished, such purification. But to accomplish it was a task for Hercules, as Gosson said, and no Hercules appeared. Instead of amendment came only darker days; and those who held the Puritan ideals of life saw no remedy but total suppression of the dramatic art. |