PAGE 26
Plays and Puritans
by
And was there no poetry, true idyllic poetry, as of Longfellow’s ‘Evangeline’ itself in that trip round the old farm next morning; when Zeal-for-Truth, after looking over every heifer, and peeping into every sty, would needs canter down by his father’s side to the horse-fen, with his arm in a sling; while the partridges whirred up before them, and the lurchers flashed like gray snakes after the hare, and the colts came whinnying round, with staring eyes and streaming manes; and the two chatted on in the same sober businesslike English tone, alternately of ‘The Lord’s great dealings’ by General Cromwell, the pride of all honest fen-men, and the price of troop-horses at the next Horncastle fair?
Poetry in those old Puritans? Why not? They were men of like passions with ourselves. They loved, they married, they brought up children; they feared, they sinned, they sorrowed, they fought–they conquered. There was poetry enough in them, be sure, though they acted it like men, instead of singing it like birds.
Footnotes:
{1} The North British Review, No. XLIX.–1. ‘Works of Beaumont and Fletcher.’ London, 1679.–2. ‘Works of Ben Jonson.’ London, 1692– 3. ‘Massinger’s Plays.’ Edited by William Gifford, Esq. London, 1813.–4. ‘Works of John Webster.’ Edited, etc., by Rev. Alexander Dyce. Pickering, London, 1830. 5. ‘Works of James Shirley.’ Edited by Rev. A. Dyce. Murray, 1833.–6. ‘Works of T. Middleton.’ Edited by the Rev. A. Dyce. Lumley, 1840.–7. ‘Comedies,’ etc. By Mr. William Cartwright. London, 1651.–8. ‘Specimens of English Dramatic Poets.’ By Charles Lamb. Longmans and Co., 1808–9. ‘Histriomastix.’ By W. Prynne, Utter-Barrister of Lincoln’s Inn. London, 1633.–10. ‘Northbrooke’s Treatise against Plays,’ etc. (Shakspeare Soc.), 1843.–11. ‘The Works of Bishop Hall.’ Oxford, 1839.–12. ‘Marston’s Satires.’ London, 1600. 13. ‘Jeremy Collier’s Short View of the Profaneness, etc., of the English Stage.’ London, 1730.–14. ‘Langbaine’s English Dramatists.’ Oxford, 1691.–15. ‘Companion to the Playhouse.’ London, 1764.–16. ‘Riccoboni’s Account of the Theatres in Europe. 1741.
{2} ‘The Third Blast of Retreat from Plays and Theatres.’ Penned by a Play-poet.
{3} This was written sixteen years ago. We have become since then more amenable to the influences of French civilisation.
{4} What canon of cleanliness, now lost, did Cartwright possess, which enabled him to pronounce Fletcher, or indeed himself, purer than Shakspeare, and his times ‘nicer’ than those of James? To our generation, less experienced in the quantitative analysis of moral dirt, they will appear all equally foul.
{5} C. Lamb, ‘Specimens of English Dramatic Poets,’ p. 229. From which specimens, be it remembered, he has had to expunge not only all the comic scenes, but generally the greater part of the plot itself, to make the book at all tolerable.