Table Of ContentPOPULAR APPEAL IN ENGLISH DRAMA
TO 1850
Also written by Peter Davison
Contemporary Drama and the Popular Dramatic Tradition in England
Songs of the British Music Hall: a Critical Study
Edited by Peter Davison
Shakespeare, Richard II
Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV
Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV
Marston, The Dutch Courtesan
The Fair Maid of the Exchange (with Arthur Brown)
Theatrum Redivivum (17 vols)
Literary Taste, Culture, and Mass Communications (with
Rolf Meyersohn and Edward Shils) (14 vols)
The Library Uournal of the Bibliographical Society) (1971-
'The Flaying of Sisamnes' by Gerard David
POPULAR APPEAL IN
ENGLISH DRAMA
TO 1850
Peter Davison
© Peter Davison 1982
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1982
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First published 1982 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-1-349-05182-3 ISBN 978-1-349-05180-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-05180-9
For Sheila
Contents
'The Flaying of Sisamnes' by Gerard David frontispiece
Preface 1x
1 Introduction 1
2 The Medieval Tradition 12
3 Shakespeare and the Comics 34
4 Jonson and his Contemporaries 79
5 The Muse's Looking-Glass 108
Appendix I: A Chronological List of Plays and Acts Discussed 165
Appendix II: Recordings of Music-Hall Performances Quoted 169
Notes 170
Select Bibliography 204
Index 211
Preface
The origins of this study go back to my doctoral thesis 'Humour as a
Tragic Force in Modern Drama in English' (University of Sydney, 1962)
in which, among other things, I discussed the popular tradition of drama
in the previous hundred years or so, and its influence on contemporary
legitimate drama. This led to my being invited to give a Kathleen
Robinson lecture at the University of Sydney in 1963, 'Contemporary
Drama and Popular Dramatic Forms', in which the routines of Dan Leno,
Arthur Roberts, and Flanagan and Allen were compared with aspects of
the drama of Beckett and Pinter. A little later, in a book on music-hall
songs, I touched on a number of occasions in which the worlds of legiti
mate and illegitimate drama interacted, and, in particular, the effect this
had on the production in Britain of drama involving alienation.1
At about the same time, I was also teaching Jacobean and Caroline
drama and this led to a re-examination of the accusations that this drama
is decadent and escapist. It seemed to me that in Massinger's The Roman
Actor, for example, 2 there was clear comment on the role of the king -
and King James VI and I in particular - and that this was dramatised
through theatre imagery. In addition, Massinger pointed to parallels
between the stage and contemporary life as epitomised in James I's speech
to Parliament of 21 March 1610: 'Kings Actions (euen in the secretest
places) are as the actions of those that are set vpon the Stages, or on the
tops of houses.'3 I also argued that Massinger's use of allusions to
Shakespeare's work did not stem from a lack of inventive power, but
because reference back to the idea of the player in Hamlet, Macbeth and
Richard II enabled him to make more tellingly the points he wished to get
across. Massinger, to adapt his own words, was 'deciphering on the
stage, to the life, what honours wait on good and glorious actions, and the
shame that treads upon the heels of vice' (The Roman Actor, I.i.22-5).
I tried also to argue that even work of a kind so readily dismissed as
showing a 'withdrawal from the pursuit of reality'4 might have a serious
concern with then current political events. Indeed, tragicomedy might
have owed part of its popularity in the time of Beaumont and Fletcher to
the fact that it attempted, through drama, to reconcile conflicts of
ix
Preface
X
absolutes that, in the event, only civil war would resolve. The relation
ship of Phi/aster to contemporary affairs, it was suggested, was not only to
be found in the many parallels between that play and James l's speeches
and writings, but in the link between the publication of Q2 in 1622 and
the bitter Parliament of January 1621-January 1622. The ending of Q2,
with the degradation and brutal baiting of Prince Pharamond, is very
different from the much more restrained conclusion to Q1 of 1620. It was
also suggested that the curious victory over royalty of the buffoon-like
Country Fellow made use of dramatic tradition in an important political
way: 'A poor man that is true is better than an e,arl, if he be false.' 5
In this study I have taken this interest in the relationship of the real and
play worlds back to the late Middle Ages, in particular to Fulgens and
Lucres. I discuss Shakespeare's relationship with the clowns and show
how their material (including the bad pun) was used in the Elizabethan
period. The use of the induction is discussed, in masqqes (by Jonson and
Shirley) as well as in plays, and in the final chapter the origins of the
rehearsal play are traced, and the way Fielding and later dramatists used
this form is analysed. The major break in the English dramatic tradition is
seen as occurring, not with the closing of the theatres in 1642, but some
two hundred years later, with the end of a drama that consciously drew
attention to the nature of theatre. I have tried not to repeat what has
already been well done by S. L. Bethell, Olive Mary Busby, Leonard
Dean, Doris Fenton, Robert J. Nelson, Anne Righter, Thelma
Greenfield, Alan Somerset and Robert Weimann, referring to their work
when it will make my points for me. 6 I agree with much of what Anne
Righter has so lucidly put in her Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play, but
cannot agree with her conclusion:
Europe was moving away from the Renaissance, with its complex
balances and clarity of form, into the Baroque. In England, this
movement spelled the end of a great theatrical tradition. Long before
the closing of the theatres in 1642, the Elizabethan relationship of
actors and audience, a near-perfect accomplishment, a brilliant but
perilous equilibrium, was gone beyond recall. (p. 207)
As my analysis of The Roman Actor (published in the same year as Anne
Righter's book) will suggest, I see the use made of 'the great theatrical
tradition' by Massinger as still lively and significant. That Massinger was
not the playwright Shakespeare was is not to prove that he could not
achieve that 'perilous equilibrium', even though his drama is less
remarkable. Much of this study attempts to argue that 'the idea of the
