Renaissance Play 2

drama before shakespeare

 

All the world’ s a stage

And all the men and women merely players

(Shakespeare, As You Like It)

 

The move from self-conscious literary awareness to a broader-based popular appeal is in part due to the work of the ‘university wits’: Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, George Peele, Thomas Nashe and Thomas Lodge, the generation educated at Oxford and Cambridge universities who used their poetry to make theatre, breathed new life into classical models and brought a new audience to the issues and conflicts which the stage could dramatise.

The earliest plays of the period, in the 55s and 56s, establish comedy and tragedy as the types of drama. Both were derived from Latin sources: comedies from the works of Terence and Plautus, tragedies largely from Seneca, with echoes from Greek antecedents in both cases. The mediaeval miracle and mystery plays, and the kind of court ‘interludes’ played for the monarch, also contributed to the development of Renaissance drama. Its broad humour, its use of ballad, poetry, dance and music, its tendency towards allegory and symbolism flow from this native English source. Thus, although drama went through rapid changes in the period, its historical credentials were rich and varied as indeed were its range and impact. It was an age when the need for a social demonstration of an English nationalism and Protestantism climaxed in the public arena of a diverse and energetic theatre. This was the golden age of English drama.

One clear link between late mediaeval morality plays and sixteenth-century theatre is The Four PP, by John Heywood, which dates from the early

54s. The four speakers are a palmer, a pardoner, a ’pothecary, and a pedlar; their ‘drama’ is little more than a debate, but it is a significant precursor of the realistic comedies of later in the century. Heywood’s other works include The Play of the Weather (533) in which the main character is Jupiter. Again a debate drama (Winner and Waster (see page 24) is a poetic equivalent from two centuries before), this has been seen as a precursor of the Jacobean masque (see page 3), but it is quite different in purpose: an entertainment with some appeal to the audience’s intelligence rather than a celebration of the monarchy with an underlying moral purpose, which is what the masque became. The language of this speech by Jupiter provides a useful link between mediaeval English and the more modern language found little more than fifty years later in the early plays of William Shakespeare.

 

And so in all thynges, wyth one voyce agreable, We have clerely fynyshed our foresayd parleament,

To your great welth, whyche shall be fyrme and stable, And to our honour farre inestymable.

For syns theyr powers, as ours, addyd to our owne, Who can, we say, know us as we shulde be knowne?

(The Play of the Weather)

Henry Medwall’s comic interlude Fulgens and Lucrece (497) is generally held to be the most successful of such early Tudor dramas.

Ralph Roister Doister (about 552) by Nicholas Udall, and Gorboduc (56) by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville are generally taken to be the first comedy and tragedy respectively. Gammer Gurton’s Needle (acted at Cambridge in 566; author unknown) introduced a farcical element within a local domestic scenario more closely related to the daily life of the audience. What is fundamentally important in these first plays, as opposed to many direct translations from the classics, is that the early models were rapidly superseded. What emerges is the essential Englishness of the characters and settings, despite continuing adherence to classical models in the works of some major playwrights. Gorboduc, for instance, replaced the awkward distancing of the characters speaking in rhymed verse with the blank verse which became the standard form of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.

Classical writers, from Greek and Latin, are somewhere in the background of all English literature, from Chaucer up until the twentieth century. Their presence cannot be ignored, and their influence – direct or indirect – cannot be overvalued. Drama was in fact moving away from these models and establishing its own style and form. Classical influences reached a threefold climax around 59 with the great tragedies of Christopher Marlowe, the major Senecan-influenced play The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd, and the best reworking of a Plautus comedy in The Comedy of Errors by an emerging young dramatist called William Shakespeare.

In The Spanish Tragedy (592), Hieronimo makes many long speeches, questioning and justifying his actions. At the end of the play, he memorably ‘bites out his tongue’ as part of a climax of bloodshed which will come to be typical of the tragedy of revenge. Shortly before the end, he proclaims his grief to his on-stage listeners:

No, princes, know I am Hieronimo, The hopeless father of a hapless son,

Whose tongue is tun’d to tell his latest tale, Not to excuse gross errors in the play.

 

I see your looks urge instance of these words, Behold the reason urging me to this:

 

See here my show, look on this spectacle:

Here lay my hope, and here my hope hath end: Here lay my heart, and here my heart was slain: Here lay my treasure, here my treasure lost: Here lay my bliss, and here my bliss bereft:

But hope, heart, treasure, joy and bliss,

All fled, fail’d, died, yea, all decay’d with this.

 

[Shows his dead son.]

 

This repeated bewailing of loss is also used by Shakespeare in Richard III, one of his early tragedies (c.592), when the queens bemoan their loss:

queen margaret Tell o’er your woes again by viewing mine.

I had an Edward, till a Richard kill’d him; I had a husband, till a Richard kill’d him:

Thou hadst an Edward, till a Richard kill’d him; Thou hadst a Richard, till a Richard kill’d him.

duchess of york I had a Richard too, and thou didst kill him;

I had a Rutland too: thou holpst to kill him.

queen margaret Thou hadst a Clarence too, and Richard kill’d him.

This contrasts with the lighter language of comedy, full of sexual play and even geography, as Dromio of Syracuse describes a woman to Antipholus in Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors (c.589) as ‘One that claims me, one that haunts me, one that will have me’:

antipholus of syracuse Then she bears some breadth?

dromio of syracuse No longer from head to foot than from hip to hip. She is spherical, like a globe. I could find out countries in her.

antipholus of syracuse In what part of her body stands Ireland?

dromio of syracuse Marry, sir, in her buttocks. I found it out by the bogs.

antipholus of syracuse Where Scotland?

dromio of syracuse I found it by the barrenness, hard in the palm of her hand.

As this shows, Shakespeare’s audience was quite happy to laugh at fat ladies, lavatorial humour and legendary Scottish meanness!

William Shakespeare moves rapidly on from his classical models. Christopher Marlowe, however, who was to achieve great success as a playwright, used his classical background to create rich, rolling, heroic verses whose heightened rhetoric matched the hugely spectacular dramatic

 

intentions of the writing. Hero and Leander, a long poem on a classical subject, contains the famous line:

Whoever loved who loved not at first sight?

This is indicative of Marlowe. Romantic, rhetorical, subversive, radical and powerfully memorable, all his writing is exciting, stretching the bounds of language and imagination to new limits, making his heroes overreach themselves and suffer the consequences. Critics have, at different times, stressed the tragic end of Marlowe’s heroes or, conversely, the spectacular subversiveness of their aims: like all great writers, Christopher Marlowe can be interpreted and reinterpreted by readers and audiences of every age.

Every age, sometimes every decade, has different heroes. It is instructive to compare the Marlovian dramatic hero of the late 58s and early

59s with the Shakespearean hero that evolved after Marlowe’s early death (in a pub brawl; some say because he was a spy). Marlowe’s heroes are larger than life, exaggerated both in their faults and their qualities. They want to conquer the whole world (Tamburlaine), to attain limitless wealth (Barabas, the Jew of Malta), to possess all knowledge (Doctor Faustus). The verse they speak is correspondingly powerful, rhetorical, rich in metaphor and effect.

Continuing with geographical references, Tamburlaine, victorious over his enemies, rejoices in the ‘divine’ Zenocrate, and tells her how he would redraw the map of the world:

Zenocrate, were Egypt Jove’s own land,

Yet would I with my sword make Jove to stoop. I will confute those blind geographers

That make a triple region in the world, Excluding regions which I mean to trace, And with this pen reduce them to a map, Calling the provinces, cities, and towns, After my name and thine, Zenocrate:

Here at Damascus will I make the point That shall begin the perpendicular . . .

(Tamburlaine the Great, Part One)

Barabas, similarly, is quite explicit about his role, his greed, and his religion:

Thus, loving neither, will I live with both, Making a profit of my policy;

And he from whom my most advantage comes, Shall be my friend.

 

This is the life we Jews are us’d to lead; And reason too, for Christians do the like.

(The Jew of Malta)

Faustus sells his soul to the devil, Mephistopheles. But, all through the play, Faustus is torn by doubts and fears; he is one of the first tragic heroes to go through such intellectual torment. Here, he speaks to himself:

Now, Faustus, must thou needs be damn’d, And canst thou not be sav’d:

What boots it, then, to think of God or heaven? Away with such vain fancies, and despair; Despair in God, and trust in Belzebub:

Now go not backward; no, Faustus, be resolute:

Why waverest thou? Oh, something soundeth in mine ears, ‘Abjure this magic, turn to God again!’

Ay, and Faustus will turn to God again. To God? he loves thee not;

The god thou servest is thine own appetite, Wherein is fix’d the love of Belzebub:

To him I’ll build an altar and a church,

And offer lukewarm blood of new-born babes.

(Doctor Faustus)

Marlowe was one of the first major writers to affirm what can be identified as a clearly homosexual sensibility, and his historical tragedy Edward II examines sexual choice and preference in relation to the questioning of authority, power, and love in a way which few other writers were able to do until the twentieth century. Marlowe has been described as a ‘sexual political thinker’ whose writings successfully question and reveal, through a process of estrangement, the terms of the contemporary debate. Here King Edward asserts his role as king, against the threats of his nobles, in honouring his beloved Gaveston:

king edward I cannot brook these haughty menaces: Am I a king, and must be over-rul’d?

Brother, display my ensigns in the field; I’ll bandy with the barons and the earls, And either die or live with Gaveston.

gaveston I can no longer keep me from my lord.

king edward What, Gaveston! welcome! Kiss not my hand: Embrace me, Gaveston, as I do thee: . . .

(Edward the Second )

 

It is King Edward’s love for Gaveston which brings about his downfall. A similar homosexual relationship between King Richard and his lover is significantly not mentioned in Shakespeare’s Richard II. In his imprisonment, Edward reaches a tragic dignity in the face of humiliation and disgrace:

Immortal powers, that know the painful cares That waits upon my poor distressed soul,

Oh, level all your looks upon these daring men

That wrongs their liege and sovereign, England’s king! O Gaveston, it is for thee that I am wrong’d,

For me both thou and both the Spencers died; And for your sakes a thousand wrongs I’ll take. The Spencers’ ghosts, wherever they remain, Wish well to mine; then, tush, for them I’ll die.

Marlowe’s plays explore the boundaries of the new world and the risks that mankind will run in the quest for power, for knowledge, for love. His plays are full of spectacular action, bloodshed, and passion, to match the language he uses. When Doctor Faustus must yield his soul to the Devil, Mephistopheles, at the end of the tragedy, it can be interpreted as a moment of self-knowledge – an epiphany of how weak, how transient, how empty is man’s life on earth, especially in relation to the eternal and the powerful. This transience of human life is echoed again and again in Elizabethan writing, and the ‘two hours’ traffic of our stage’ becomes the symbol and emblem of man’s role in the world. The Chorus proclaims:

Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,

with the warning not

To practise more than heavenly power permits.

(Doctor Faustus)

 

from the street to a building – the

elizabethan theatre

 

By the time Marlowe was writing, a new type of audience had been created for a different kind of theatrical performance. Earlier in the century, the mystery and morality plays had been performed almost anywhere, outside, often moved from location to location by wagon. In contrast, ‘interludes’ –little more than dramatic verse – were performed for the elite at court or in

 

manor houses. In the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign, these two groups came together to form an audience mixed across the classes, professions and trades. Fixed theatres were established in London and while most, like the Globe, were open to the sky, a small number, such as the later Blackfriars, were completely enclosed. This entailed daytime performances without lights or a stage curtain and very few, if any, props, though the actors were dressed in rich costumes. There were no scene changes in the modern sense and the action moved fluidly from one scene to the next without an apparent break. The platform stage – known as a thrust stage – was pushed out into the audience who stood around it on three sides with a few privileged persons seated on the edge of the stage. This entailed a much closer intimacy between the actors and their audience and made more sense, for instance, of the soliloquy as an aside to the dramatic action. It also required a greater imaginative effort by the audience compared with the modern theatre, but this was perhaps not so difficult for spectators who had

previously watched performances on wagons.

Alongside the development of theatres came the growth of an acting culture; in essence it was the birth of the acting profession. Plays had generally been performed by amateurs – often men from craft guilds. Towards the end of the sixteenth century there developed companies of actors usually under the patronage of a powerful or wealthy individual. These companies offered some protection against the threat of Puritan intervention, censorship, or closure on account of the plague. They encouraged playwrights to write drama which relied on ensemble playing rather than the more static set pieces associated with the classical tradition. They employed boys to play the parts of women and contributed to the development of individual performers. Audiences began to attend the theatre to see favourite actors, such as Richard Burbage or Will Kempe, as much as to see a particular play.

Although the companies brought some stability and professionalism to the business of acting – for instance, Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s, subsequently the King’s, Men, continued until the theatres closed (642) – they offered little security for the playwright. Shakespeare was in this respect, as in others, the exception to the rule that even the best-known and most successful dramatists of the period often remained financially insecure.

In the humanist world following Erasmus, man is at the centre of the universe. Man becomes largely responsible for his own destiny, behaviour and future. This is the new current of thought which finds its manifestation in the writing of the 59s and the decades which follow. The euphoria of Elizabeth’s global affirmation of authority was undermined

7 | The Renaissance 18–1660

 

in these years by intimations of mortality: in 59 she was 57 years old. No one could tell how much longer her golden age would last; hence, in part, Spenser’s attempts to analyse and encapsulate that glory in an epic of the age. This concern about the death of a monarch who – as Gloriana, the Virgin Queen – was both symbol and totem, underscores the deeper realisation that mortality is central to life. After the Reformation, the certainties of heaven and hell were less clear, more debatable, more uncertain.

 

renaissance prose

 

What is Truth; said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer

(Sir Francis Bacon, Of Truth)

 

In prose, the classical influences found in poetry and drama are reflected in different ways. There is the flowery style of John Lyly’s Euphues (578–8). This work gives its name to an over-elaborate style, which is well exemplified in Euphues’s speech to his beloved:

Gentlewoman, my acquaintance being so little I am afraid my credit will be less, for that they commonly are soonest believed that are best beloved, and they liked best whom we have known longest. Nevertheless, the noble mind suspecteth no guile without cause, neither condemneth any wight without proof. Having therefore notice of your heroical heart I am the better persuaded of my good hap. So it is, Lucilla, that coming to Naples but to fetch fire, as the byword is, not to make my place of abode, I have found such flames that I can neither quench them with the water of free will neither cool them with wisdom. For as the hop, the pole being never so high, groweth to the end, or as the dry beech, kindled at the root, never leaveth until it come to the top, or as one drop of poison disperseth itself into every vein, so affection having caught hold of my heart, and the sparkles of love kindled my liver, will suddenly though secretly flame up into my head and spread itself into every sinew.

This elaboration contrasts with the much more economical, yet rhetorical, style of Sir Francis Bacon.

What is Truth; said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer. . . . The knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it; is the sovereign good of human nature.

 

Other early seventeenth-century dramatists

The great flourishing of drama as a popular form in the 59s left an enormous number of plays, and a generation of playwrights who are major writers but who have been overshadowed by the ever-present figure of William Shakespeare.

The distinction between tragedy and comedy, in writers other than Shakespeare, becomes more and more distinct during the first twenty-five years of the seventeenth century. The world of Jacobean tragedy is a dark world of corruption, perversion, blood and passion. The world of comedy is more localised, ‘city comedy’, based on the city of London and its people, with their obsessions, above all, with money and sex.

The major figures in Jacobean drama (Shakespeare and Ben Jonson aside) are Thomas Middleton, John Webster, Thomas Dekker, Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (usually in collaboration), Thomas Heywood, and Philip Massinger. In the Caroline period (after the accession of Charles I in 625) – although Jonson was still writing – the most significant (tragic) dramatist was John Ford.

Almost all playwrights in this period wrote some of their works in collaboration with other writers: such was the demand for new plays that collaboration was one means of keeping up with demand. Shakespeare is thought to have had collaborators on Pericles (not included in the First Folio, but in the second issue (664) of the Third Folio) and on Henry VIII, and there are several apocryphal plays in which he might have had a hand. Sir Thomas More is the best known of these. The Two Noble Kinsmen is sometimes included in the Shakespeare canon, sometimes not. It is not included in any of the folio editions of Shakespeare’s plays, but has now more or less been accepted as a collaboration between Shakespeare and John Fletcher.

Fletcher’s name is usually associated with Francis Beaumont, and The Maid’ s Tragedy (6–) is among the most notable of their joint works. Both wrote plays individually, Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle (67–8) being one of the most adventurous experiments in comedy of the time. As Ralph, an apprentice, sets himself up as the ‘Knight’ with a pestle (a kitchen implement used for grinding herbs) rather than a sword, there are comments from ‘the audience’ which create different levels of performance, as stage and ‘audience’ interact. There are also some neat jokes against the old-fashioned language of knights.

ralph My elder prentice Tim shall be my trusty squire, and little George my dwarf. Hence, my blue apron! Yet, in remembrance of my former

 

trade, upon my shield shall be portrayed a Burning Pestle, and I will be called the Knight of the Burning Pestle.

wife Nay, I dare swear thou wilt not forget thy old trade; thou wert ever

meek.

ralph Tim!

tim Anon.

ralph My beloved squire, and George my dwarf, I charge you that from henceforth you never call me by any other name but ‘the right courteous and valiant Knight of the Burning Pestle’; and that you never call any female by the name of a woman or wench; but ‘fair lady’, if she have her desires, if not, ‘distressed damsel’; that you call all forests and heaths ‘deserts’, and all horses ‘palfreys’.

wife This is very fine, faith. – Do the gentlemen like Ralph, think you,

husband?

citizen Aye, I warrant thee; the players would give all the shoes in their shop for him.

ralph My beloved squire Tim, stand out. Admit this were a desert, and

over it a knight-errant pricking, and I should bid you inquire of his intents, what would you say?

tim Sir, my master sent me to know whither you are riding?

ralph No, thus: ‘Fair sir, the right courteous and valiant Knight of the Burning Pestle commanded me to inquire upon what adventure you are bound, whether to relieve some distressed damsel, or otherwise.’

Jonson, Nashe, Middleton and many others worked on theatrical collaborations. One result of all this is that it can be difficult to attribute authorship to some texts.

The tragedy of revenge, which had been highly successful in the 59s, reaches a kind of climax in The Revenger’ s Tragedy, published in 67. In this scene, the revenger, Vindice, is pleased with his murderous work: pleasure in killing is something of a new development in Jacobean tragedy.

lussurioso Be witnesses of a strange spectacle: Choosing for private conference that sad room, We found the Duke my father geal’d in blood.

1st servant My Lord the Duke! – run, hie thee Nencio,

Startle the court by signifying so much.

[Exit nencio]

vindice [aside] Thus much by wit a deep revenger can, When murder’s known, to be the clearest man.

We’re fordest off, and with as bold an eye, Survey his body as the standers-by.

 

lussurioso My royal father, too basely let blood, By a malevolent slave.

hippolito [aside] Hark,

He calls thee slave again.

vindice [aside] H’ ’as lost, he may.

lussurioso Oh sight, look hither, see, his lips are gnawn With poison.

vindice How – his lips? by th’ mass they be.

lussurioso O villain – O rogue – O slave – O rascal!

hippolito [aside] O good deceit, he quits him with like terms.

For many years, the author’s name associated with this black farce, a chilling parody of the genre which reached its highest point in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, was Cyril Tourneur. Recent research has suggested that the work is more probably by Thomas Middleton. He was an author of considerable range, writing many of the pageants for London’s Lord Mayor’s Shows, as well as two of the major tragedies of the time, both from the 62s – The Changeling (in collaboration with William Rowley) and Women Beware Women. The Changeling uses the setting of a madhouse to bring out some of the contrasts between reason and madness. Here, Isabella speaks to Antonio – the changeling of the title – who pretends to be mad; Lollio is the keeper of the madhouse.

isabella How long hast thou been a fool?

antonio Ever since I came hither, Cousin.

isabella Cousin? I’m none of thy cousins, fool.

antonio Oh Mistress, fools have always so much wit as to claim their kindred.

[Madman within]

Bounce, bounce, he falls, he falls.

isabella Hark you, your scholars in the upper room Are out of order.

lollio Must I come amongst you there? Keep you the fool, Mistress, I’ll go

up, and play left-handed Orlando amongst the madmen.

In the final scene, murder is revealed as the final result of sexual corruption, when the heroine confesses to her husband; just before she and her corruptor, De Flores, die:

beatrice Beneath the stars, upon yon meteor Ever hung my fate, ’mongst things corruptible, I ne’er could pluck it from him, my loathing Was prophet to the rest, but ne’er believ’d;

 

Mine honour fell with him, and now my life. Alsemero, I am a stranger to your bed,

Your bed was coz’ned on the nuptial night, For which your false bride died.

alsemero Diaphanta!

de flores Yes, and the while I coupled with your mate At barley-brake; now we are left in hell.

vermandero We are all there, it circumscribes here.

de flores I lov’d this woman in spite of her heart, Her love I earn’d out of Piracquo’s murder.

tomazo Ha, my brother’s murtherer.

 

This atmosphere of corruption – sexual and moral – is central to Jacobean tragedy, and will explore even further the depths of human weakness in the two decades which follow The Changeling. It was partly this content and partly the political undertones which gave the Puritans considerable grounds for opposing the theatre, and, indeed, censoring it on occasion.

Middleton’s A Game at Chess (624), an allegorical comedy on political themes, putting on stage the figures of the kings of England and Spain, as well as other recognisable aristocratic and political characters, was suppressed by the authorities – after an immensely successful run of nine performances: this was one of the most blatant manifestations of political censorship of theatre. Jonson had had trouble earlier in the century, when some of his writing was considered treasonous, pro-Catholic and anti-Scottish; but the strongest complaint against A Game at Chess came from the Spanish Ambassador.

Censorship, at this time, generally reflected anxieties for the stability of the state at a time of considerable political uncertainty. Internal politics in the late 59s were concerned with the possibility of revolt; with foreign powers, such as the Spanish in the 62s, it was felt necessary to maintain diplomatic harmony: a play like A Game at Chess risked causing offence because of the way it satirised the Spanish in a religious and political context.

Some reason for the Puritans’ objections to the ‘immorality’ of the stage can be found in the highly charged passions displayed, for instance, in John Webster’s The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi (both between

69 and 63), tragedies which raise the themes of blood, lust and intrigue to new heights of poetry and violence. It is this rich mixture of shocking themes and vivid language which characterises Jacobean tragedy, and gives it an intensity which no other age has repeated in English drama. In the

 

scene of her death at the hands of Bosola, the Duchess of Malfi accepts her fate: but her servant, Cariola, is less amenable.

duchess

Come, violent death,

Serve for mandragora to make me sleep! –Go tell my brothers, when I am laid out, They then may feed in quiet.

 

[They strangle her]

bosola Where’s the waiting-woman?

Fetch her: some other strangle the children.

[Enter Executioners with cariola]

Look you, there sleeps your mistress.

cariola Oh, you are damn’d Perpetually for this! My turn is next;

Is’t not so order’d?

bosola Yes, and I am glad You are so well prepar’d for ’t.

cariola You are deceiv’d, sir,

I am not prepar’d for ’t, I will not die,

I will first come to my answer; and know How I have offended.

bosola Come, despatch her. –

You kept her counsel, now you shall keep ours.

Bosola is one of the most corrupt figures in Jacobean tragedy. He says, ‘my corruption stems from horse dung’ (he is an ostler). He also memorably describes the negative aspect of politics, in the words:

A politician is the devil’s quilted anvil;

He fashions all sins on him, and the blows Are never heard: . . .

John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’ s a Whore dates from the early 63s. The young love theme of Romeo and Juliet of almost forty years before is transformed into an incestuous love between a brother and sister, Giovanni and Annabella. In a corrupt world, their love is the only pure element; and the tragedy follows their inevitable destiny in an increasingly negative universe. The play is a deliberate challenge to moral values and the decline of virtue; but, equally, it was seen by Puritans as representative of the decadent influence of the Caroline theatre. In their final scene, Giovanni and Annabella’s love recalls Romeo and Juliet’s:

giovanni Kiss me again – forgive me.

annabella With my heart.

 

giovanni Farewell!

annabella Will you be gone?

giovanni

Be dark, bright sun,

And make this mid-day night, that thy gilt rays May not behold a deed will turn their splendour More sooty than the poets feign their Styx!

One other kiss, my sister.

annabella What means this?

giovanni To save thy fame, and kill thee in a kiss.

 

Thus die, and die by me, and by my hand! Revenge is mine; honour doth love command.

 

Domestic tragedy

 

[Stabs her]

A vein of domestic tragedy, set not in the ‘exotic’ locales used by Webster and Ford (usually Italy), is seen in plays like Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness (63), and two anonymous plays of approximately the same period – Arden of Faversham (published 592), and A Yorkshire Tragedy (published 68). These are very English family plays, with a dominant sense of doom and helplessness as the characters try to escape from the amorous and financial problems which beset them.

Between the Arden family tragedy and the plays of John Ford, there is a world of difference: from an English setting to the very frequent Italian setting; from simple language to highly figurative poetic language; from stark, almost documentary, drama to highly complex interaction of character and motive.

There is an increasing use of violence and corruption to illustrate the playwrights’ concerns: but where an early Shakespearean tragedy such as Titus Andronicus revelled in blood and violence (under the influence of Seneca) to thrill the audience, the Jacobean and Caroline tragedies have a deeper purpose: humanity’s weaknesses and corruptibility have seldom found more vivid illustration.

 

City comedy

Jacobean city comedy contains several of the themes of domestic tragedy –unhappy marriages, debts, adultery, and so on. Such comedy makes the audience laugh at these themes and at the characters who enact them. Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’ s Holiday (599) is one of the earliest of city comedies; Thomas Middleton’s A Mad World, My Masters, from the first decade of the new century, and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (63) are among the most successful of the genre.