The century and a half that separated the death of Chaucer in 1400 from the accession of Elizabeth in 1558 marks the passing of England from feudalism to the full tide of the Renaissance. Most of the English monarchs during this time have been the subject of splendid historical dramas: the two parts of Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, and Richard III by Shakespeare; and Becket, dealing with the life and times of Henry VIII, by Alfred Tennyson. In these plays we find a series of spectacles that will help us to live in imagination in the times when Chaucer and Gower and Langland were writing poetry; Malory was collecting his stories of the old Arthurian romances; Caxton was printing the best of English literature of his own and preceding times; Erasmus and More were awakening the interest of Englishmen in the riches of the literature of Greece and Rome. In this time, also, ballads of Robin Hood were made and sung; village trade guilds presented great cycles of religious plays; other early dramas-moralities, miracles, interludes, comedies, and now and then a bloody tragedy-delighted throngs of people; the homely phraseology of the English Bible permeated the common speech.

CHAUCER'S FRIENDS AND FOLLOWERS The brilliant promise of Chaucer's poetry was not sustained in the years that

followed. It was not until the time of Shakespeare that English literature regained the imaginative and musical beauty that had been manifested in Chaucer's verse, and the humor and keen observation that made his portraits seem real. During the whole intervening period, his influence was felt, but most of his imitators were men of small talent who could only copy some of his devices, not catch the secret of his song.

John Gower. Contemporary with Chaucer, his friend as well as rival, and in his time regarded as his equal, was John Gower, who died in 1408. He wrote in French, Latin, and English. His most important work, the Confessio Amantis (Confession of Love), was written 13861390. It contains more than a hundred stories that center around a lover who wanders in a wood in May and is made by Venus to confess his sins against Love. This confession is arranged according to the medieval idea of the seven deadly sins, with many subdivisions. The confessor (Genius) tells stories illustrating each sin. The poem is an example of the tendency to apply the material and method of theology to the "religion" of love. Gower's style is smooth and correct but lacks the humor and piquancy of Chaucer's. He was fond of moralizing; Chaucer called him the "moral Gower."

Scottish Literature. In Chaucer's century John Barbour wrote in his Bruce of

the deeds of his countrymen in their struggles for independence. Somewhat later a long account of the hero William Wallace was written by an unknown author supposed to have been a minstrel named Blind Harry. These poems recount the deeds celebrated, later on, by Burns:

Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled, Scots wham Bruce has aften led. Other Scottish poets of the fifteenth century wrote dream allegories of the conventional type and some satires.

English Chaucerians. Few readers today care for the voluminous works of John Lydgate (1370-1451), who wrote a Troy Book in thirty thousand lines, and a

LYDGATE IN HIS STUDY

series of tragic stories like the Monk's Tale, called Falls of Princes. Thomas Occleve, who died in 1450, wrote a book of advice to princes, but he is chiefly remembered for his noble lines in praise of Chaucer, and for a portrait of the master which decorated his manuscript and may have been drawn from life. Several poems by unknown authors, written during this period, were afterwards attributed to Chaucer and included in editions of his works.

Literature and Life. All this body of writing illustrates the way in which mere literary tradition may degenerate when it is removed from direct contact with life. We pass now to consider a group of new influences, based on the life of the time, which found expression not in literary masterpieces but in writings that foreshadowed a new period, greater than any that had gone before.

THE EARLY DRAMA

Faire is lady in her bower

And faire the knight in his armour. These lines from an old romance give the point of view of much of the literature we have been discussing. Except in Chaucer's poetry and in Piers Plowman, the ordinary man and woman played little part in the literature read at court or in the great baronial castles. Even the religious and doctrinal writings were the work of scholars. Few people could read; manuscripts were costly. You must try to imagine a time when there were no popular magazines or daily papers, when no books were scattered about the rooms

of people's houses, when everything that the mass of people learned about the life that is removed from narrow personal experience came from things they could hear or see, and not from the world of books. But if few could read, the multitude could hear and see. So ballads were made on a great variety of subjectsan episode in a courtly romance, the adventures, real or imaginary, of a popular hero like Robin Hood, some prodigy in nature or some monstrous crime. They were sung in the servants' hall and at village merrymakings. In the villages, too, plays were presented, stories from the Bible in dramatic form, or a miracle performed by some saint, or a moral allegory, or sometimes a merry interlude. Ballad and rude drama alike were lacking in the artistic perfection that is necessary to great literature, but they expressed the imaginative life of the people from whom they sprang, and they were fertile sources for the songs and stories that were to come.

been the crown of the old literature were utterly forgotten. This meant the loss, not only of the plays and of the traditions of the theater, but also of all knowledge of how to write a drama.

But the instinct to represent a story by means of action was never lost. Even savages who know nothing of book or manuscript or stage have their rude actionstories. Most of these, in primitive times, were connected with religion or the ceremonies expressive of tribal life. Going to war, the triumph of the return from conquest, the propitiation of spirits supposed to control the fertility of the soil, the propitiation of deities that may send death or prosperity at will-all these found expression in rituals that embodied action and therefore were dramatic.

Folk Plays in England. Remains of these old ritualistic ceremonies existed in England in Shakespeare's day, and a few persist even to the present time. The Maypole, the bonfire on Midsummer Eve, such charms as were cited in the first chapter of this story, many customs connected with Halloween, Christmas, and Easter, are examples of such persistence of pagan rituals. Shakespeare speaks of the hobby-horse, a stock character in village festivals. The election of a temporary king or queen to preside over masked revels goes back to remote times. The sworddance was a rude play, in which the characters were grotesques: black-faces, hobbyhorse, Little Boy Blue. In rural England the Mummer's Play is still given at Christmas. The players, who are village characters, go to the house of some notable and give a play in which Saint George and the dragon bear the leading parts. Other characters are Guy of Warwick, Alexander, Hector, Alfred, King Cole, Giant Blunderbore, and of course the grotesques. In some of these plays a character representing Beelzebub takes up a collection in a frying pan. In such plays, of course, the religious origin has long since been lost; they are a curious medley of folklore, popular versions of romance, and sheer love for masked frolics. Closely allied to them are the Robin Hood plays, in which the famous woodsman and outlaw, hero of the

common people, appears with Little John, Friar Tuck, Maid Marian, and other legendary personages.

Early Religious Plays. A hundred years before the Norman Conquest there developed, in various parts of Europe, a simple dramatic representation of the scene at the tomb of Christ on Easter morning. At the side of the altar was a recess, representing the tomb, in which the crucifix had been placed on Good Friday. A priest representing the Angel chanted the first of the four sentences found in the Biblical story of the Resurrection: "Whom seek ye in the sepulcher?" Three other priests, or nuns representing the three Marys, responded, "Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified." Such texts set to music and sung as an addition to the usual form of the mass are called "tropes." The Easter trope was later expanded by the addition of words and music for persons representing the disciples, to whom the Marys reported the words of the Angel, and by the planctus, or complaints, of the Marys. The presentation was simple: the Angel appeared with crowned or veiled head; he held lights, or a palm, or an ear of corn as a symbol of the Resurrection. The Marys were directed to go "as if sad or searching."

A similar trope was introduced at Christmas. Here the first question was, "Whom seek ye in the manger, O shepherds?" The crib was placed beside the altar; the Virgin and the three Wise Men replaced the Angel and the Marys of the Easter service. To these two simple scenes others were

added, so that a series of little dramas representing the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ made impressive the services on the two chief days of the church calendar. Later a series of scenes from the Old Testament developed, the themes being the Fall of Lucifer, the creation and fall of Man, and certain scenes from the earlier parts of the Bible, such as the story of Noah, the sacrifice of Isaac, and the like. The English Cycles. By the middle. of the thirteenth century these dramatic representations of Bible story had been taken from the church service. At first they were presented by the clergy and nuns in the churchyard. As they developed into a cycle, or series of plays, they were transferred to the trade-guilds, each guild presenting one play. In England several of these cycles have been preserved, those given at York, at Wakefield, and at Chester being the most nearly complete. The plays were commonly presented on Corpus Christi Day, which had long been a favorite holiday, with a procession of clergy and laity and civic bodies with tapers, banners, shields of the guilds, and the like. A feature of the procession was the introduction of pageant-tableaux somewhat similar to those that are known today. By

the first quarter of the fourteenth century this procession was common in England, and plays are known to have been connected with it by 1327 at Chester and a few years later at Beverley, York, and Coventry. About twenty-five towns in England have records that show how the series of religious plays became the most popular characteristic of the Corpus Christi procession. At Worcester they were given "to the worship of God and profit and increase of the said city, and also all the crafts contributing to the same." expenses were met by the guilds. At Beverley certain "reverend and worshipful persons" were notified to produce a play or be fined forty pounds. The plays became sources of civic as well as religious and dramatic interest.

The

Presentation of the Plays. The plays were announced by the town crier or by waits. There are records of orders for clearing the streets, etc. On the evening before the play-day, banners with the arms of the city were set up at certain stations; at York, there were twelve of these stations. The stations were designated according to bids, and all houses nearby were decorated with flags and banners. At York the plays began at 4:30