aquavitae men who thronged the city's troubled streets. For Amsterdam was universally known as the asylum of religious anarchy, playing the part in European history that Rhode Island once played here. So we hear the threat of Malipiero, disgusted with English selfishness: Well, if I live, I will to Amsterdam, And add another [sect] to the two hundred Almost as familiar to the theater public was the city, Geneva, the home of the famous prints, the black-dressed weavers— in short, the antithesis of everything sprightly;2 and to a less degree Rotterdam, on whose streets the fustian weavers, having been "smoked" out of England, as Dekker said, trundled their barrows. And of course the schismatics in these places were as vicious and depraved as the dramatists found them elsewhere. Still more interesting, to Americans at least, are the allusions found to the Pilgrim Fathers. Some are mere passing references. In the Witches of Lancashire the irate father-in-law threatens to ship his son for New England unless immediate amendment came. Once it was the settlers' strictness that attracted a writer, and again their unconventionality in the use of the marriage ceremony. It was Cartwright, however, who maligned them most bitterly. In the Ordinary, two knaves, finding England too warm for them, with oaths of mutual fidelity planned to sail for 5 1 Gentleman of Venice, III, 1. Other references, Chaste Maid in Cheapside, III, 2; Anything for a Quiet Life, II, 1; The Witch, I, 1; Bird in a Cage, IV, 1; The Renegado, I, 1; The Court Beggar, III, I; Covent Garden, IV, 2; The Alchemist with its Amsterdam parson; Hey for Honesty, IV, 1. The Chances, III, I; also, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, p. 226; Elder Brother, IV, 4; Fair Maid of the Inn, II, 3; The Masque of 1640; The Witch, I, 1; City Match, V, 1; News from Plymouth, IV, p. 160. 8 The Fawn, II, I; If this be not a good Play, V, end. For reference to weavers of Flanders see News from the New World, and News from Plymouth, IV, p. 170. 4 Witches of Lancashire, III, p. 214. Б City Match, IV, 3; II, 2. the colony.1 Some concessions they saw would have to be made to the whims of the colonists; but these were of slight consequence, as the ensuing dialogue will show, and well worth the while to gain for them a home where good works were strictly prohibited. They are good silly people; souls that will Surely Cartwright, the divine, knew little of the Pilgrim Fathers. They may have been distinguished by the cut of their beards or the shape of their ruffs; they may, too, have barked, if he wished to call it that, at the bishops; but never had they nosed treason against the king, or shown themselves, save under the hands of the playwrights, silly dupes. The high attainments of some of the New England pastors, and the whole history of the later resistance, shows the shallowness of Cartwright's estimate of their abilities. Where dramatists had made no distinction between the Puritans and sects not really connected with them, it is not to be expected that they should distinguish, save in name, between the different branches of the Puritan party in England. In the Parson's Wedding, for example, Crop, the Brownist, appears on the stage to collect a debt of Jolly. He is kept at the door while the debtor tells scandalous stories of Crop's late Puritan wife, and then ignominiously hustled down stairs before he has more than half expressed his mind on the subject of idolatry, superstition and Bible texts.2 Browne must have been a well-known person to 1 V, 5. 2 III, 5; also, News from Plymouth, IV, 170; The Wits, I, 2; and Taylor's Hempseed. playgoers, for in one play mere reference to his home, Northampton, is considered sufficient by the author;1 but the Brownist on the stage was merely one of the familiar type. The same reception was extended to the Presbyterian branch of the party. "We of our Ministery," said the Gipsy chaplain, "as well as those o' th' Presbyterie, take wives and defie Dignitie."2 Nor was the Scottish church forgotten. We have already mentioned the mask performed in 1640, and its allusions to Knox. And while Ferdinand in The Court Beggar is feigning madness, he mistakes the doctor for a "thrifty Covenanter," and addresses him:3 Sir Presbeter That can better pugnare than orare. "The groaning wives of Edinburgh," and Archie, the court jester from Scotland and the avowed enemy of bishops, are each one remembered. Thus gradually the reader is led into the civil turmoil in those passages that concern the Petition of Right, the Committee-men, and the Commonwealth informers, and in them we see that the close of the quarrel is drawing nigh." 1 City Match, II, 2. 5 Jovial Crew, II, p. 390; Hey for Honesty, IV, I. 3 Court Beggar, III, 1. 4 News from the New World, p. 342; Staple of News, III, 1. 5 See, Magnetic Lady, III, 4; Parson's Wedding, p. 509; Court Beggar, V, 2; Parson's Wedding, IV, 1. Hey for Honesty is a play containing many allusions to late historical events-for example, to Marston Moor, the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, the siege of Bristol, the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee, etc. But one of the characters is for the King and the Prayer Book still, which may indicate that it came out, in its first form, before the King's death. CHAPTER 3. REVIEW OF THE DRAMATISTS' REPLY. After analyzing in this fashion the scores on which the Puritans were attacked, and gaining, it is hoped, a fair conception of the frequency as well as of the malignity of the stage's retaliation, we may perhaps be able to account for the demonstration. The dramatists were practical people with a living to earn, and although personal spite alone would have furnished a sufficient motive to attack, they would never have risked their prosperity to gratify it. Had these slaps at the Puritan not been popular, they would never have been indulged in. The people from whom the theater's habitués largely came, particularly in the closing years of the period, cared little enough for their natural enemies, the Puritans. It was not, however, the vulgar classes alone that delighted in this ridicule. To be sure, we read that in 1623 "The Spanish and French ambassadors were gratified with their reception at Cambridge, but declined the play, on being told that the argument was chiefly about a Jesuit and a Puritan."1 But these dignitaries probably objected to the Catholic, rather than to the Puritan element of the play. At any rate, the immoral court of James I felt no personalities against itself in the gibes at the Precisians, and even in the more sober court of his successor the same style of play was popular. The supply, of course, followed the demand. In 1636 his Majesty was entertained during a visit at Oxford by a play entitled The Floating Island. It was written by William Strode, the University orator, and in its lyrical parts, for it approached a mask in character, was set to music by Henry Lawes.2 The play makes dull reading now, but its significance for us is that it 1 State Papers, 1623, p. 517. See the title page of the play, printed in 1655. attacks the Puritans, if not in a very clever fashion.1 The part of the Puritan is played by Melancholico, the Malcontent, who has much to say concerning the distress of the godly and the prosperity of the wicked, and who is led to marry the appropriately named Concupiscence by the following presentation of the joys of wedlock: Then in her company You have a world and more to contradict, The play is long and heavy; but if the audience at Oxford enjoyed the humor of Melancholico, and if such prominent men would join in its production, it is not strange that the London prentices and roarers found the more amusing plays of professional dramatists enjoyable. The attack was continuous; and, after it had once gained its headway, except in the slight local color given by occasional mention of particular men or localities, we can trace no marked development in its course. The reply reached a white heat in the early years of James' reign-the best period of Jonson, Dekker, Middleton and their immediate contemporaries; and the allusions may even have been more numerous then than they later were. For, as will be shown, certain authors were later prominent whose plays, being largely romantic, had comparatively little to say of religious dissensions, and also certain others who cared little to draw from this storehouse of amusement. But of course many of the old plays were still given; the clowns still improvised; and some of the most vigorous of the retorts came at the close of the period-those of Brome, Cartwright, Mayne and others. The edicts of closure, therefore, silenced a stage bitterly hostile to the party in power. But the best of the satires came not in the last years of the drama. To construct a Puritan character well required a certain sort of genius, such as Jonson displayed in perfec1 Especially, IV, 2; IV, 3; IV, 15. 2 The Antipodes, II, 2. |