BOOKS.
DEKKER, AND SOME ELIZABETHAN LYRISTS.* THE wisdom of the rule which the somewhat cynical banker- poet Rogers laid down for himself, "always to read an old book when a new one came out," has been sometimes questioned; but its soundness for readers of the present day,. at least, will scarcely be disputed by any lover of genuine literature who turns from the volumes of trash which have been lately pouring forth from the press, to the best plays of Dekker which have been added to the "Mermaid Series," and. the priceless volume of lyrics which Mr. Bullen has unearthed for us from the Elizabethan song-books. Mr. Rhys edits Dekker, and gives us the cream of his works and something more, and his introduction appears to the present writer to contain as sound an estimate of the poet as any that has yet appeared. He is evidently in sympathy with his subject, yet he is not carried away by any excess of enthusiasm, and the faults of Dekker both as a poet and as a man are unflinchingly pointed out, though with that tender regret which all must feel who consider the strange vicissitudes of the dramatist's career, and the gentle courage with which he bore the calamities brought upon him by others or by his own weaknesses, which were not a few. Mr. Bullen has also given us a critical intro- duction to his collection, and it is almost needless to say how- excellent it is. The lyrics are edited with great care, and there is scarcely one of them which does not enshrine in appropriate music some striking or noble thought; and so careful has Mr. Bullen been not to offend the somewhat fastidious taste of the ordinary reader of to-day, that there is not a song in his col- lection which should give a shock to the most dainty and refined even among female students. This is no small thing to say when one considers the extreme outspokenness of nearly all the writers of the age which we call "Eliza- bethan." All lovers of poetry will feel that they owe. to Mr. Bullen a deep debt of gratitude for thus making possible the universal appreciation of true and exquisite lyrists. who, but for him, would probably have remained completely unknown even to the specialist.
Although Dekker is not quite so well known as some of the elder dramatists, and none of his works have ever before been. printed in any cheap form, enough has been said about him by competent critics such as Lamb, Hazlitt, and Mr. Swinburne, as well as Mr. Rhys, to render it extremely difficult, if not gratuitous and impertinent, to add anything to what they have so well and memorably told us. Indeed, it would scarcely be too much to say that Lamb's remark that "Dekker- had poetry enough in him for anything," and the following lines in Mr. Swinburne's admirable sonnet,— " Not Shakespeare's very spirit, howe'er more great, Than thine toward man was more compassionate, Nor gave Christ praise from lips more sweet with pity,"
sum up for us all that is most characteristic in the best work of Dekker, though they do not take account of the manifold faults of the poet. Some of these—inartistic intricacy of plot,. flagging dialogue, frequent laxity of verse, occasional sloven- liness and feebleness of expression, and the lack of firm grip of character, except in one remarkable instance, and possibly another which we shall presently notice—are obvious enough on the most cursory examination of Dekker's plays, and are shared in a greater or less degree by almost all of his dramatic brethren, except the very greatest. We may, therefore, well be spared the ungracious task of dwelling upon them. In spite of them, Dekker will always hold a high rank among English dramatists. There is little of the weird and terrible in his plays ; he has not the intensity and strange power and splendour of Marlowe, Webster, and Tour- neur, nor the theatrical ability of Beaumont, Fletcher, or • (1.) "The Best Plays of the Old Dramatists :"—Thomas Dekker. Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by Ertest Roys. Unexpurgated Edition. London : Vizetelly and Co. 1897.—(2.) More Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Blisabethan Age. Edited by A. H. &Wen. London: John C. Niouno. I:::
Messinger; but his wide and deep sympathy with the oppressed and down-trodden, the leniency with which he regards the frailties of humanity whether in high or low estate, his wise and kindly optimism—not that "barren sophistry of comfort- able moles" which Mr. Matthew Arnold treats with such merited contempt, but that optimism which springs from deep knowledge of and keenest sympathy with human suffering, and is inspired by the strongest desire to offer it all possible allevia- tion, whether by word or deed—his delicate humour, his laughter so near to tears, and his simple, unobtrusive pathos, are unmatched by any save Shakespeare, and win more of our love, if not more of our admiration, than do the more imposing qualities of his greater brethren. With more concentration and greater skill of construction, De,kker's fascinating gifts would, there can be little doubt, have secured for him a greater number of readers than Marlowe or Messinger has in the present day. His exuberant fancy, frequent felicity of phrase, shrewd common-sense, and command of metaphor—qualities especially observable in the " pleasant " comedy of Old Forty,- natus, a play which is modelled on the dramatic masterpieces of Marlowe and Greene, and unites some of their best charac- teristics—together with his fine and flexible blank verse, often modulated with a skill inferior only to Shakespeare's, and hardly inferior even to his in the justly famous lines which so well sum up the human character of our Lord, fully justify the high eulogium of Lamb which we have already quoted. And lest some of our readers should still think this praise excessive, we will ask them to read with the care it deserves, the long speech in which Old Fortunatus makes choice of gold above all other gifts, in the first scene of the first act of the play which bears his name, and is included, in the present selection. To quote the whole of this speech in our present limits would be impossible, but a few lines may be given :—
" Shall I contract myself to wisdom's love ? Then I lose riches ; and a wise man poor, Is like a sacred book that's never read,— To himself he lives, and to all else seems dead. This age thinks better of a gilded fool, Than of a threadbare saint in wisdom's school. My choice is store of gold; the rich are wise. Gold is the strength, the sinews of the world, The health, the soul, the beauty most divine, A mask of gold hides all deformities."
The Shoemaker's Holiday, which is the first of the selected plays, is an admirable comedy, full of the joyous and boisterous life of the period ; but the play in two parts by which it is succeeded, and which bears the somewhat unfortunate though characteristic enough title of The Honest Whore, is un- doubtedly Dekker's masterpiece, though it owes this dis- tinction chiefly, if not solely, to the character of Candido in the first part, and that of Orlando Friscobaldo in the second. Candido is the incarnation of patience, and his character is well conceived and sustained throughout, and it may be remarked that it is into his mouth that the words which give Praise to Christ are put; but his individuality is by no means so well marked as that of Orlando, a creation as original as the De Flores of Middleton or the Sir Giles Overreach of Messinger, and much more human and .complex than either. His tender- ness, ill-masked by outward sternness, his benevolence and munificence of spirit, his honest indignation against all wrong and oppression, his constant protection of the weak from the strong, his ever-ready tears and laughter, so closely allied in him that they are often simultaneous, and his uncontrollable cheerfulness, to which, however, there is always a background of melancholy (sometimes, indeed, we fancy that his gaiety, like his harshness, is assumed to conceal his real feelings),—all these and other qualities make the good old man dearer to us than any male character out of Shakespeare, except, perhaps, Uncle Toby, of whom he in some respects reminds us. Had Dekker given us nothing but this unique character, he would be entitled to our lasting praise and gratitude. Had we apace, we would dwell on it longer ; but it is perhaps sufficient to refer to it, and Hazlitt's praise is so well known that ours is unnecessary. Of The Witch of _Edmonton, which is the last play in the present selection, we shall content ourselves with remarking that it is a most powerful and interesting domestic drama, and that we think Mr. Rhys is right in claiming for Ford, rather than Dekker, some of the speeches of Mother Sawyer. The massive and vigorous one, for instance, in the opening of the second act, is very much in the manner of some of the utterances of Annabella's exasperated husband, and very unlike anything we know to have been written by Dekker. We must not conclude without some further notice, however inadequate, of Mr. Bullen's charming anthology, which cer- tainly deserves to be treated at far greater length than is now possible in the space remaining to us. Though the volume is by no means of large dimensions, and may be got through in a leisurely day's reading, it is one of the most perfect and important collections of amatory poems with which we are acquainted. All the varying moods, thoughts, and feelings of the lover,—his rapture and his disgust, his high hopes and his deep despair, his alternate praise and abuse of his mistress, his gratitude and his resent- ment, his love and loathing of life, are represented in a series of lyrics which for ease and grace of expression, wealth of thought, and artless verbal melody, have been surpassed only by the very greatest of our lyric poets. Mr. Bullen, indeed, with the pardonable enthusiasm of the editor, would claim for Campion, who is largely represented in the volume, the right to rank with Shelley and Burns ; but it is scarcely necessary to say that he who should expect to find among the poems of Campion, genuine singer though he is, anything like the "Ode to the West Wind," the "Ode to the Skylark," or "Ye banks and braes o' bonny Doon," will assuredly be disappointed. Among so many lovely poems, each with its own special charm, it is difficult to select one for quotation in these columns. Mr. Bullen, in his critical preface, has named many of the finest, and has told us which are his special favourites. All of these amply deserve the warm yet discriminating praise he has bestowed on them ; but there is a song not mentioned by him which has a still greater fascination for us, and whose music lingered in our ears long after we first read it ; and as it is brief, we here give it entire. It is from Campion and Rosseter's Book of Airs :—
" Though you are young, and I am old, Though your veins hot, and my blood cold ; Though youth is moist, and age is dry, Yet embers live when flames do die. The tender graft is easily broke, But who shall shake the sturdy oak? You are more fresh and fair than I; Yet stubs do live when flowers do die. Thou, that thy youth dost vainly boast, Know, buds are soonest nipped with frost; Think that thy fortune still doth cry, 'Thou fool ! to-morrow thou must die.'"
When we read such lyrics as this, and many others of kindred beauty and power in Mr. Bullen's anthology, so perfect in their simplicity and truth of feeling, and never sacrificing sense to sound, and contrast them, as their editor does, with the "poor, thin, wretched stuff" which passes for song nowa- days, we are certainly inclined to exclaim with him,—" 0 what a fall is there, my countrymen !"
Previous page
