BENEFICIAL EFFECTS OF THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA 237 amount of money, the miracle play was comprehensible by the least educated, and accessible to the humblest. Regarded merely as literature, its pretensions. and its performances alike are insignificant. In but one country of Europe was it able to rise to the dignity of poetry, and that chiefly in the department of moralities, where personified virtues and vices afforded more ample field for dramatic invention and poetical embellishment than the conventional and stereotyped figures of Scriptural characters and saints. An unusually fortunate conflux of circumstances, the coincidence in a corner of Europe of a great age of dramatic literature with an exalted condition of religious feeling, made the Spanish sacramental Auto in Calderon's hands a permanent addition to letters, though one incapable either of development or revival. Elsewhere it remained sterile, in so far as visible addition to literature was concerned, but indirectly its effects were highly important. It preserved a conception of the drama in the minds of humble people throughout rude ages, it expanded their views and helped them to realise bygone times and distant regions of the world. It is interesting, for example, to find "drombodaryes" provided for the journey of the Three Kings of the East, with the announcement that they will cover a hundred miles a day. If the actual contribution to the stock of knowledge was small, the stimulus afforded to curiosity was great. The peculiar system of its production seemed admirably though unintentionally adapted to make it a theme of living interest to large bodies of men. Each guild had its own piece; every craftsman participated more or less in its production, esteemed its success a personal satisfaction, and scrutinised the performance of his competitors with the interest not merely of a spectator but of a rival. The mere text was the least part; costume, rehearsal, and representation conspired to keep a considerable portion of the community for a time in an ideal world. Hence a taste for the drama was kept alive which, when the performance of the miracle play was checked by the Reformation, reacted in another direction, and became the nutriment of the popular drama which might otherwise, as in Italy, have remained the amusement of courts and polite society. The good burghers of York, whom we have seen chafing at Dean Hutton's inevitable decision that the miracle play must be performed there no more, were in the best possible frame of mind to form the audience of a Shakespeare. Nor is it, perhaps, entirely an accident that Shakespeare himself came from the neighbourhood of one of its principal seats, the good town of Coventry, where it was occasionally performed even in his own day; where a dramatic tradition of some sort must have existed; which contributed players to the splendid festivals at Kenilworth Castle; where, in after years, Sarah Kemble became Sarah Siddons; and which witnessed the birth of Ellen Terry. CHAPTER VIII THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY Invention of printing in the fifteenth century General intel THE necessity for treating the poetry of Lydgate along with the poetry of Gower, and for offering a connected view of the English religious drama throughout the entire period of its existence, has compelled us to infringe strict chronological order, and trench largely upon the not too opulent literature of the fifteenth century. No opportunity, however, has as yet presented itself for a general survey of a period by no means devoid of interesting features, although, paradoxical as this may seem, one of the most memorable is its barrenness. By a single achievement the fifteenth century rendered greater service to literature than any previous age had performed, or than any future age can hope to rival. This, obviously, is the invention of printing; of all the one requiring the least genius in the inventor. Nothing can be more humiliating to the pride of human intellect than to observe the tardiness of mankind in making so simple a discovery; how Greeks and Romans and Saracens stumbled on the brink of it without ever stumbling upon it; how the Chinese actually did make it without turning it to account (as it does not seem to have exerted the least influence upon Chinese literature); how mediæval Europe remained in utter ignorance of the Chinese feat, and was at last led to printing by the path of wood-engraving. The discovery, then, is no special credit to the intelligence of the fifteenth century; although, like the other marvel of the age, the discovery of America, which ought to have been made long before, it is a reproach to the intelligence of preceding generations. While ever grateful to the age for two such performances, we cannot allow that they contribute much to redeem it from that sterility of original genius which, until we approach its close, is its most distinguishing characteristic. This would not have been anticipated by one qualified to take a comprelectual sterility hensive view of the situation at the end of the preceding epoch. The fourteenth of the age century had not merely produced great writers, but writers who had accomplished not only great but novel things, and who seemed to have launched literature upon new paths of excellence. Petrarch in his lyric poetry, indeed, had left no room for a successor; but his epistles and philosophical treatises opened up long vistas. Boccaccio might well have founded a school of INTELLECTUAL STERILITY OF THE AGE 239 novelists, and both his epical poetry and Chaucer's invited imitation; while the latter poet had shown what an immense and unused field lay open for the delineator of popular manners. Froissart had indicated one equally rich in the delineation of courts and camps on the familiar side; and Villani had made an excellent beginning in regular historical narrative. Yet it was long ere any of these men had a successor to be named in the same breath with him. The one world-famous book of the succeeding age, the Imitation of Christ, is the work of a mystic independent of Time, and might have been written in any century of the Christian era. The only two other writers with any claim to genius, the authors of Amadis of Gaul and of the Morte d'Arthur, revert to the ideals of former ages, which Chaucer had derided as obsolete. If they are at all influenced by Boccaccio it is by his early romances, in no respect by the momentous new departure which he had taken in the Decameron. The ideal of the fifteenth century is not literature but scholarship. / Study of classical literature Decline of originality Far more than the eighteenth does it deserve the reproach of an unimaginative age; far more than the nineteenth of an utilitarian one. Many causes, all efficient to a certain extent, might be assigned for this paralysis of creative power; but the principal is without doubt that the superior minds of the age found themselves in the position of disciples. The mediæval ideals had attained their highest development, and, had there been no Black Death and no Great Schism, must still have passed away. It is impossible to say what would have resulted had there not been a force in the background ready to take their place. For a century past classical antiquity had been slowly rising from its grave, and about the beginning of the fifteenth century presented itself as qualified to fill the gap in men's affections and imaginations created by the decay of the feudal, chivalric, and ecclesiastical ideals. This, in the domains of literature and art, it could only achieve if its superiority to the past were admitted, and to admit this was to convert those who might otherwise have been masters into pupils and disciples. In the department of art this was of little practical moment, for although the theory of art might be revolutionised. by the application of new principles, few ancient works were extant to discourage the artist by the constant sentiment of inferiority. He felt, on the other hand, inspirited by his obvious progress beyond the only works of painting and sculpture with which he could compare his own. It was far otherwise with the author who had the masterpieces of antiquity before him, and who must fail equally whether he attempted or renounced the impossible task of excelling them. It cannot be a subject of wonder, then, that originality should depart from literature until the antique spirit, entering and interpenetrating the medieval world, should have produced something different from either. The literary heroes of this transition period were not men of genius, for genius was temporarily extinct, but the editors, commentators, grammarians, and archæologists, whose business it was to bring the newfound treasure to light, and make it available for the entire educated community. The period of their predominance, which might be roughly identified with the century and a half intervening between the commencement of the Great Schism and the sack of Rome, is rightly called the Renaissance, and the men themselves are comprehended under the denomination of Humanists. That, nevertheless, the pursuit of classical studies, although an important, was not the sole cause of the age's deficiency in creative power, appears from the instance of England, where although the progress of humanism was slow, the intellectual sterility was as great as elsewhere. Chaucer's successors, as we have seen, though his enthusiastic disciples, could make little or nothing of the heritage which he had bequeathed to them, and no new ground was broken in any quarter. Something, no doubt, is to be ascribed to the ecclesiastical bigotry of the Lancastrian kings, and their repression of the biblical study and free religious inquiry which were at the time above all things congenial to the national spirit. But this explanation, though true as far as it goes, does not take us very far. From some unknown cause a universal blight had fallen upon the highest faculties of the human intellect, and the DECLINE OF ORIGINALITY 241 only remedy was that adopted by the humanists, to imbibe the spirit of insularity of England were natural obstacles to her receipt of the humanistic impulse which was transforming Italy. When, nevertheless, we consider Chaucer's visits to Italy in the preceding century, his vast obligations to Boccaccio, and the manifest influence of Petrarch and even Dante upon his writings, we cannot but feel surprise at the fewness and slightness of traces of Italy in England until far on in the fifteenth century. The national character and capacity had assuredly sunk to a lower level. In some measure, as already observed, this may be due to the discouragement of Bible reading and religious inquiry in general; but this, if partly a cause, was also in a great degree an effect. It may not be an unreasonable Henry V. After the portrait in the National Portrait Gallery conjecture that the Black Death of the middle of the fourteenth century, sparing Paucity of neither youth nor age, had extinguished the most gifted minds in infancy, and men of genus prevented others from coming into being. Certain it is that, during the first half of the fifteenth century, everything in England outside the royal family is mediocrity. Henry V. is a great and heroic figure, but the ideal of a mediæval sovereign rather than of one of his own day. His brother Bedford, who would have made an excellent king, was doomed to waste his powers in a dreary and hopeless contest with France. The third brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, neither able nor Humphrey, exemplary nor fortunate in public affairs, nevertheless claims distinction as VOL. I Q Duke of |