Part 3
For the next two or three years Dekker appears to have occupied himself again chiefly with prose. In 1608 appeared _The Bellman of London_, which is a sort of unconventional cyclopedia of thieving and vagabondage, containing much curious information about the shady side of Elizabethan life. Its importance in relation to Dekker’s fondness for the same subject-maker in his plays, however, is somewhat lessened when we discover that the work is partly appropriated from a book first published about forty years before, in 1567, entitled _A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursitors, vulgarly called Vagabonds_; by Thomas Harman. _The Bellman of London_ seems to have been successful; for it was followed the next year by a second book of the same kind, _Lanthorn and Candle-light; or, The Bellman’s Second Night Walk_: also in part taken from Harman. In 1609 _The Gull’s Horn-book_, which has already been referred to, was published,--by far the most important and interesting of all Dekker’s prose works. Its value will be apparent from the passages already quoted, but to anyone who wishes to realise intimately the everyday life of the time, and its relation to Dekker’s own environment, the book is simply indispensable. The initial conception, like most of Dekker’s conceptions, was not original. The idea of it is taken from a Dutch book which Dekker had thought of translating into English verse, but, finding difficulties in the way, he decided instead to write a new prose work on the same lines. The earlier parts of the book are the least reliable, as here Dekker made free use of the Dutch original; but from Chap. iv., “How a Gallant should behave Himself in Paul’s Walk,” onwards, the book is probably as true as it is humorously realistic in its descriptions, forming a delightful prose complement to the plays. The rest of Dekker’s prose works, interesting as they are in themselves, have not enough bearing upon the plays to warrant me in any lengthy examination of them. Between the two “Bellman” books appeared _The Dead Term; or, Westminster’s Complaint for Long Vacations and Short Terms_, which, amid some extravagance, contains a great deal in the way of description of London life, which is picturesque and historically valuable. In 1609 two other works followed or preceded _The Gull’s Horn-book_. The most valuable of the two is entitled, _Work for Armourers; or, the Peace is Broken_, which contains some suggestive autobiographical references to Dekker’s delight in history, to the hard lot of poetry and the drama, and to many other matters, interesting, personally, in approaching its main fancifully treated thesis of the struggle between _Poverty and Money_. _The Raven’s Almanack_, the second of the two, is chiefly a budget of stories, with “A Song sung by an Old Woman in a Meadow,” which has something of Dekker’s rougher lyrical quality in it.
In 1611 Dekker and Middleton came together again, and wrote conjointly _The Roaring Girl_, a vigorous comedy, whose heroine, Moll Cutpurse, goes about in the guise of a gallant, and wreaks summary vengeance upon offenders. In spite of her aggressive masculinity, she is somehow made in her way really attractive. Some of the scenes, as those in the “Sempster’s” shop, and those in which the Gallipots and Tiltyards go duck-hunting, are full of contemporary colour. The Mayoralty Pageant of 1612 has already been mentioned. In that year also appeared an absurd semi-allegorical dramatic fantasy by Dekker, founded upon Machiavelli’s “Belphegor,”--_If this be not a Good Play the Devil is in it_, in which Devils, Zanies, Friars, Dancing Girls, and other human and superhuman elements are wrought into a curious medley of utter nonsense with real humour and fancy. From 1613 to 1616, Oldys informs us that Dekker was in prison again. An interesting and pathetic letter exists from him to Alleyne, who must have acted generously towards him throughout; the letter is dated “King’s Bench, Sept. 12, 1616.” It is significant that in the first year of his re-imprisonment, he issued a very remarkable book of prayers, entitled _The Four Birds of Noah’s Ark_, to the profound eloquence and power of devotional expression in which, as in “A Prayer for a Soldier,” Mr. Swinburne has paid a well-deserved tribute. With _A Strange Horse-Race_, published also in 1613, were included the singular piece of humour,--“The Devil’s last Will and Testament,” and another prose fantasy, “The Bankrupt’s Banquet.” A much more notable work is _Dekker his Dream_, which is mainly in verse. It is a rough and unpolished piece of work, most interesting autobiographically, but full of vigorous and sometimes very imaginative descriptions, and with occasional fine passages, as two lines, taken almost at random, will testify:--
“Each man was both the lion and the prey, And every corn-field an Aceldema.”
Dekker did not emerge again as a playwright until 1622, when he appears with still another collaborator, the last man whom one would have expected him to work with,--Massinger. They wrote together _The Virgin Martyr_, which is, as might be expected, a patchwork of incongruous qualities. Dekker probably supplied both the weakest and the strongest parts of the play, the atrocious humorous passages, equally with the exquisitely tender scene, for instance, between Dorothea, the Virgin Martyr, and Angelo, “a good spirit, serving Dorothea in the habit of a Page.” This is the scene which won from Charles Lamb in his “Specimens of the Elizabethan Dramatists,” his unbounded tribute to Dekker’s genius; and as the scene can be turned to there, I need not repeat it here, as I should otherwise be inclined to do.
There is no record of the next five years of Dekker’s life. In 1628 and 1629 he again wrote the Mayoralty pageants under title _Britannia’s Honour_, and _London’s Tempe_, which at best contain glimpses of his true quality. In 1631, _Match Me in London_, a comedy of court intrigue in civic life, has something of his real genius again. It was in the dedicatory note of this play, to “The Noble Lover, and deservedly beloved, of the Muses, Ludovick Carlisle, Esquire, Gentleman of the Bows, and Groom of the King and Queen’s Privy-Chamber,” that Dekker so pathetically referred to his voice, “Decaying with my Age.” But comparatively with some of the second-rate pieces of ten, and even twenty years before, there is little sign of decay. _Match Me in London_ shows, it is true, the prose side of Dekker’s dramatic faculty, rather than its side of poetic exuberance; but the piece is as full of Dekker’s old picturesque realism and genial humanity, as ever. The street and shop scenes, supposed to be placed chiefly in Seville, might just as well be in London: Dekker transfers the ‘Counter’ there without hesitation, and except for occasional doubtful attempts at Spanish local colour, the whole play is as native as anything Dekker has done. The plot turns chiefly upon the attempt of the King to corrupt Tormiella, one of the brightest and most taking of all Dekker’s heroines, whose guileless fidelity to her husband is delicately portrayed. The usual sub-plot in which Don John, the King’s brother, conspires for the throne, is less inconsequent than most of Dekker’s supplementary plots, and the whole comedy is managed with a higher sense of dramatic form than Dekker often showed. _Match Me in London_, as being entirely Dekker’s own composition, certainly deserves to rank with his half-dozen best plays, and I am sorry that it was not possible to find room for it in this edition, although the same ground has already been
## partly covered in his other comedies.
I confess I find it hard to understand how anyone can seriously prefer _The Wonder of a Kingdom_, which appeared some few years later, to _Match Me in London_, as Mr. J. A. Symonds has done. In the former we find Dekker for once working without any real pervading humanity; there are touches of his usual heartiness in it, but as a whole it is a heartless production--more a cold study of motives and passions than a sympathetic re-creation of them in forms of art. It was highly appropriate, indeed, that Dekker long before had been chosen as a champion to meet Ben Jonson, for the two men mark very clearly two types of poet and artist. Jonson in his plays worked largely from the mere curiosity about men’s passions and motives, he wrought conceptions which sprang too often from an analytical interest, rather than the emotional human impulse which drives the poet to reflect men’s strifes and destinies for simple love’s sake. With Dekker it was different. Without perhaps consciously realising it, he worked mainly from this impulse of the heart, putting himself passionately into all that he characterised, in his exuberant, careless way. For once, however, in _The Wonder of a Kingdom_, he seems to have laid aside something of his natural kindliness. The episode of old Lord Vanni’s intrigue with Alphonsina is repulsive, unvisited as it is by even ordinary comedy retribution. It is only fair to allow, however, that Dekker’s kindlier quality crops up in some scenes of the play, and Hazlitt’s testimony to Gentili, “that truly ideal character of a magnificent patron,” may be set against the comment of the German critic, Dr. Schmidt, who has said very truly,--“That the youthful fire which fills _Fortunatus_ is in this drama extinguished.”
Although the two remaining plays which Dekker wrote with Ford, _The Sun’s Darling_ and _The Witch of Edmonton_, were not published till 1656 and 1658 respectively, they were certainly written and performed long before _Match Me in London_, probably helping to fill up the five blank years following that in which _The Virgin Martyr_ appeared. _The Sun’s Darling_ is a charming conception, inadequately wrought out, but nevertheless full of facile and exuberant poetic quality. The lyrics, especially, the best of which are undoubtedly Dekker’s, are so fresh and full of impulse that one inclines to think that they date back to the first half of his life. Some of these have found their way, infrequently, into the anthologies, as that beginning, “What bird so sings, yet so does wail,” and again the delightful country song, in which one can forgive the mixture of musk-roses and daffodils, haymaking and hunting, lambs and partridges, in defiance of all rustic tradition, for the sake of its catching tune:--
“Hay-makers, rakers, reapers and mowers, Wait on your Summer Queen. Dress up with musk-rose her eglantine bowers, Daffodils strew the green....”
The hero of this Moral Masque, as the authors term it,--Raybright, “The Sun’s Darling,” is shown in progression through the seasons under the Sun’s guidance, which he perverts in his restless pursuit of sensuous pleasure. All these scenes are full of suggestions of beauty, but they are imperfectly realised. Exquisite passages occur, however, as in the scene where Spring, Health, Youth, and Delight appear to Raybright, and Spring, wooing him in vain, proffers him the bay-tree:--
“That tree shall now be thine, about it sit All the old poets, with fresh laurel crowned, Singing in verse the praise of chastity.”
When it is too late, Raybright, filled with love for the Spring, is seized with remorse: so in turn all the seasons pass by, while Humour and Folly lead him always astray. The Sun’s peroration in addressing Raybright at the end of his foiled career is a solemn and profound, if rather fanciful, summing-up of life. Altogether _The Sun’s Darling_ forms a valuable later complement to _Old Fortunatus_, and it is only to be regretted that its authors did not bestow upon it the longer, patient labour which would have made it worthy of its conception.
_The Witch of Edmonton_, the second play in which Ford and Dekker worked conjointly, is so utterly different to _The Sun’s Darling_ that one finds it difficult to believe that the same hands can have been concerned in its production. Possibly the initial conception was Rowley’s, and though it would not be easy to differentiate his exact share in any special scene or passage, there is a considerable residuum which marks itself off as unlike the work of Dekker or Ford. Dekker’s share is more apparent. The scenes where Cuddy Banks and his fellow villagers disport themselves, some of those where the Witch herself appears, and again those of Susan’s love and sorrow, have by general critical consent been awarded to him. Part of the severer tragedy in the terrible hallucination of Mother Sawyer, however, which has generally been considered Dekker’s, I fancy bears the stamp of Ford. In his essay on Ford, Mr. Swinburne has essayed a comparison of the parts due severally to Dekker and to Ford, which is too important to be overlooked. He would assign the part of Mother Sawyer chiefly to Dekker. “In all this part of the play I trace the hand of Dekker; his intimate and familiar sense of wretchedness, his great and gentle spirit of compassion for the poor and suffering with whom his own lot in life was so often cast, in prison and out.” The part of Susan also, he allots to Dekker; and of the scene where Frank Thorney’s guilt is discovered, he remarks suggestively: “The interview of Frank with the disguised Winifred in this
## scene may be compared by the student of dramatic style with the
## parting of the same characters at the close; the one has all the
poignant simplicity of Dekker, the other all the majestic energy of Ford.”
The dates of publication of the two last plays bring us far beyond the time of Dekker’s death, of which, however, we have no record at all. None of his prose works reach so late a period; the last is _A Rod for Runaways_, published in 1625. Collier, who always made his evidence go as far as possible, himself admits that there is no further trace of him after 1638, the year when Milton wrote _Lycidas_, the year when Scotland was ominously signing the Covenant. In the further oncoming of the Civil War, Dekker disappears altogether, as uncertainly as he first entered the scene.
In summing up this strange life and its dramatic outcome, it is easily seen what is to be said on the adverse side. Dekker had, let us admit, great defects. He was the type of the prodigal in literature,--the kindhearted, irresponsible poet whom we all know, and love, and pardon seventy times seven. But it is sad to think that with a little of the common talent which every successful man of affairs counts as part of his daily equipment, he might have left a different record. He never attained the serious conception of himself and his dignity as a worker which every poet, every artist must have, who would take effect proportionate to his genius. He never seemed to become conscious in any enduring way of his artistic function, and he constantly threw aside, under pressure of the moment, those standards of excellence which none knew better than he how to estimate. But after all has been said, he remains, by his faults as well as by his faculties, one of the most individual, one of the most suggestive, figures of the whole Elizabethan circle. Because of the breath of simple humanity in them, his works leave a sense of brightness and human encouragement whose charm lingers when many more careful monuments of literary effort are forgotten. His artistic sincerity has resulted in a picture of life as he saw it, unequalled for its sentiment, for its living spirit of tears and laughter, as well as for its outspoken truth. His homely realism brings before us all the pleasant everyday bustle of the Elizabethan streets--the craftsmen and prentices, the citizens at their shop doors, the gallants in the Middle Aisle of St. Paul’s. The general feeling is that of a summer’s morning in the pleasant Cheapside of those days--more like the street of a little market-town than the Cheapside of to-day--where in the clear sunny air the alert cry of the prentices, “What do you lack?” rings out cheerily, and each small incident of the common life is touched with vivid colour. And if the night follows, dark and haunted by grim passions and sorrows, and the King’s Bench waits for poor poets not far away, this poet who had known the night and the prison only too well! sang so undauntedly, that the terrors of them fell away at the sound.
As he had this faith in the happy issue out of his own troubles, so Dekker looked unflinchingly as a poet upon the grim and dark side of human life, seeing it to emerge presently, bright in the higher vision of earth and Heaven. Much that at first seems gratuitously obscene and terrible in his dramatic presentation may in this way be accepted with the same vigorous apprehension of the comedy and tragedy of life, which he himself showed. The whole justification of his lifework, indeed, is to be found in these words of his, from the dedicatory epistle to _His Dream_, which we may well take as his parting behest:--“So in these of mine, though the Devil be in the one, God is in the other: nay in both. What I send you, may perhaps seem bitter, yet it is wholesome; your best physic is not a julep; sweet sauces leave rotten bodies. There is a Hell named in our Creed, and a Heaven, and the Hell comes before; if we look not into the first, we shall never live in the last.”
ERNEST RHYS.
[Illustration]
NOTE: Students of Dekker will find Pearson’s Edition of his Plays in 4 Vols., published in 1873, and Dr. Grosart’s edition of his Non-Dramatic Works, in 5 Vols., published in the Huth Library, 1885-6, sufficient for all ordinary purposes. There are no notes, however, in Dr. Grosart’s reprint, and the notes to the plays in Pearson’s edition are few and far between. Mr. Swinburne’s article on Dekker (_Nineteenth Century_, January, 1887), will be found valuable also.
THE OLD FORTUNE THEATRE.
(_See Frontispiece._)
The original Fortune Theatre was built on the site of an old timber house standing in a large garden near Golden Lane, Cripplegate, and said to have been formerly a nursery for Henry the Eighth’s children, who were sent to this then suburban spot for the benefit of the air. Edward Alleyn the actor acquired the lease of the house and grounds on December 22, 1599, and, early the following year, supported by the Lord Admiral (the Earl of Nottingham), to whose company of players he belonged, he, in conjunction with Henslowe, his father-in-law, employed Peter Streete to build there “a newe house and stadge for a Plaiehowse” for the sum of £440.
Alleyn notes his acquisition of the lease and his expenditure upon the new theatre in the following terms:--
“What the Fortune cost me Novemb., 1599 [1600].
First for the leas to Brew, £240.
Then for the building the playhouse, £520.
For other privat buildings of myn owne, £120.
So in all it has cost me for the leasse, £880.
Bought the inheritance of the land of the Gills of the Ile of Man, which is the Fortune, and all the howses in Whight crosstrett and Gowlding lane, in June, 1610, for the some of £340.
Bought in John Garretts lease in revertion from the Gills for 21 years, for £100.
So in all itt cost me £1320.
Blessed be the Lord God everlasting.”
It was at the Fortune that Alleyn’s fame as an actor reached its height. He was especially popular in the character of Barabas in Marlowe’s _Jew of Malta_, which he revived at the new theatre. Here also many of the plays written in the whole or part by Dekker were originally performed, as Dekker generally wrote for the Lord Admiral’s company, who played regularly at the Fortune under Alleyn and Henslowe’s management, while the Lord Chamberlain’s company, with whom Shakespeare and Burbadge were associated, played at the Globe.
Some twenty years after the erection of the theatre Alleyn records in his diary under date December 9, 1621, “This night, att 12 of ye clock, ye Fortune was burnt.” The year following the theatre was rebuilt, and leased by Alleyn to various persons, he having then decided to retire from the stage. On the suppression of the theatres by the Puritans the inside of the Fortune was destroyed by a company of soldiers, and the lessees failed to pay their rent, whereby a considerable loss was sustained by the authorities of Dulwich College, in whom the property of the Fortune was vested. This eventually led to the Court of Assistants ordering the more dilapidated portions of the theatre to be pulled down, and to their leasing the ground belonging to it for building purposes. So recently, however, as the year 1819, the front of the old theatre was still standing, as represented in the frontispiece to the present volume--a reduced copy of an engraving in Wilkinson’s “Londina.”
[Illustration]
_THE SHOEMAKER’S HOLIDAY;_
_OR A PLEASANT COMEDY OF_
THE GENTLE CRAFT.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
_The Shoemaker’s Holiday, or a Pleasant Comedy of the Gentle Craft_, was first published in 1599, as we learn from a passage in Henslowe’s Diary; but the earliest known edition is the quarto of 1600, which describes the play as “acted before the Queen’s most excellent Maiestie New-years day at night last, by the right honourable the Earle of Nottingham, Lord High Admirall of England, his seruants.” Other editions followed in 1610, 1618, and 1657. Of modern editions, Germany has produced the only one which is at all reliable, and upon this edition, admirably collated and edited by Drs. Karl Warnke and Ludwig Proescholdt, and published at Halle in 1886, the present reprint is based, the excellence of text, notes and introduction, leaving little beyond the modernising and some elucidation here and there to be done.
Dekker appears to have had a collaborator in the play in Robert Wilson, the actor, who is said to have created the part of Firk on its performance, but although Wilson may have provided some of the situations and dialogue, the credit of the play as a whole is undoubtedly Dekker’s. _The Shoemaker’s Holiday_ is the first of Dekker’s plays, in order of publication, which has survived, although according to Henslowe he began to write for the stage in 1596.
The conception of Simon Eyre, the Shoemaker, is taken from a real person of that name, who, according to Stow, was an upholsterer, and afterwards a draper. He built Leadenhall in 1419, as referred to by Dekker in Act V., Sc. 5, became Sheriff of London in 1434, was elected Lord Mayor in 1445, and died in 1459. About his character nothing certain is known. “It may well be,” say the editors of the Halle edition, “that long after Eyre’s death the builder of Leadenhall was supposed to have been a shoemaker himself, merely because Leadenhall was used as a leather-market. This tradition was probably taken up by the poet, who formed out of it one of the most popular comedies of the age.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
TO ALL GOOD FELLOWS, PROFESSORS OF THE GENTLE CRAFT,[3] OF WHAT DEGREE SOEVER.
[3] Shoemaking was called “the Gentle Craft,” possibly in part because the patron saints of shoemakers, St. Crispin and St. Hugh, were said to be of noble, and even royal, blood; possibly because of the sedentary nature of the occupation.