Chaucer,undoubtedly,did excellently in his Troilus and Cressida;of whom,truly,I know not whether to marvel more,either that he in that misty time could see so clearly,or that we in this clear age go so stumblingly after him.Yet had he great wants,fit to be forgiven in so reverend antiquity.I account the Mirror of Magistrates meetly furnished of beautiful parts.And in the Earl of Surrey's Lyrics,many things tasting of a noble birth,and worthy of a noble mind.The "Shepherds'Kalendar"hath much poesy in his eclogues,indeed,worthy the reading,if I be not deceived.That same framing of his {82}style to an old rustic language,I dare not allow;since neither Theocritus in Greek,Virgil in Latin,nor Sannazaro in Italian,did affect it.Besides these,I do not remember to have seen but few (to speak boldly)printed that have poetical sinews in them.For proof whereof,let but most of the verses be put in prose,and then ask the meaning,and it will be found that one verse did but beget another,without ordering at the first what should be at the last;which becomes a confused mass of words,with a tinkling sound of rhyme,barely accompanied with reason.
Our {83}tragedies and comedies,not without cause,are cried out against,observing rules neither of honest civility nor skilful poetry.Excepting Gorboduc (again I say of those that I have seen),which notwithstanding,as it is full of stately speeches,and well-sounding phrases,climbing to the height of Seneca his style,and as full of notable morality,which it does most delightfully teach,and so obtain the very end of poesy;yet,in truth,it is very defectuous in the circumstances,which grieves me,because it might not remain as an exact model of all tragedies.For it is faulty both in place and time,the two necessary companions of all corporal actions.For where the stage should always represent but one place;and the uttermost time presupposed in it should be,both by Aristotle's precept,and common reason,but one day;there is both many days and many places inartificially imagined.
But if it be so in Gorboduc,how much more in all the rest?where you shall have Asia of the one side,and Afric of the other,and so many other under kingdoms,that the player,when he comes in,must ever begin with telling where he is,{84}or else the tale will not be conceived.Now shall you have three ladies walk to gather flowers,and then we must believe the stage to be a garden.By and by,we hear news of shipwreck in the same place,then we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock.Upon the back of that comes out a hideous monster with fire and smoke,and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a cave;while,in the meantime,two armies fly in,represented with four swords and bucklers,and then,what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field?
Now of time they are much more liberal;for ordinary it is,that two young princes fall in love;after many traverses she is got with child;delivered of a fair boy;he is lost,groweth a man,falleth in love,and is ready to get another child;and all this in two hours'space;which,how absurd it is in sense,even sense may imagine;and art hath taught and all ancient examples justified,and at this day the ordinary players in Italy will not err in.Yet will some bring in an example of the Eunuch in Terence,that containeth matter of two days,yet far short of twenty years.True it is,and so was it to be played in two days,and so fitted to the time it set forth.And though Plautus have in one place done amiss,let us hit it with him,and not miss with him.But they will say,How then shall we set forth a story which contains both many places and many times?And do they not know,that a tragedy is tied to the laws of poesy,and not of history;not bound to follow the story,but having liberty either to feign a quite new matter,or to frame the history to the most tragical convenience?Again,many things may be told,which cannot be showed:if they know the difference betwixt reporting and representing.As for example,I may speak,though Iam here,of Peru,and in speech digress from that to the deion of Calicut;but in action I cannot represent it without Pacolet's horse.And so was the manner the ancients took by some "Nuntius,"{85}to recount things done in former time,or other place.
Lastly,if they will represent an history,they must not,as Horace saith,begin "ab ovo,"{86}but they must come to the principal point of that one action which they will represent.By example this will be best expressed;I have a story of young Polydorus,delivered,for safety's sake,with great riches,by his father Priamus to Polymnestor,King of Thrace,in the Trojan war time.He,after some years,hearing of the overthrow of Priamus,for to make the treasure his own,murdereth the child;the body of the child is taken up;Hecuba,she,the same day,findeth a sleight to be revenged most cruelly of the tyrant.Where,now,would one of our tragedy-writers begin,but with the delivery of the child?Then should he sail over into Thrace,and so spend I know not how many years,and travel numbers of places.But where doth Euripides?
Even with the finding of the body;leaving the rest to be told by the spirit of Polydorus.This needs no farther to be enlarged;the dullest wit may conceive it.
But,besides these gross absurdities,how all their plays be neither right tragedies nor right comedies,mingling kings and clowns,not because the matter so carrieth it,but thrust in the clown by head and shoulders to play a part in majestical matters,with neither decency nor discretion;so as neither the admiration and commiseration,nor the right sportfulness,is by their mongrel tragi-comedy obtained.I know Apuleius did somewhat so,but that is a thing recounted with space of time,not represented in one moment:
