FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[982]Knights.[983]Against the grain. F.The Epilogue at the CourtWecannot tell whether wee are fallen among Diomedes[984]birdes or his horses,—the one received some men with sweet notes,[985]the other bit all men with sharpe teeth. But, as Homer's gods conveyed them into cloudes whom they would have kept from curses, and, as Venus, least Adonis should be pricked with the stings of5adders, covered his face with the wings of swans, so wee hope, being shielded with your Highnesse countenance, wee shall, though heare[986]the neighing, yet not feele the kicking of those jades, and receive, though no prayse—which we cannot deserve—yet a pardon, which in all humilitie we desire. As yet we cannot tell what we10should tearme our labours, iron or bullion; only it belongeth to your Majestie to make them fit either for the forge or the mynt, currant by the stampe or counterfeit by the anvill. For, as nothing is to be called white unlesse it had beene named white by the first creator,[987]so can there be nothing thought good in the opinion of others unlesse15it be christened good by the judgement of your selfe. For our selves, againe, we are like these torches of waxe, of which, being in your Highnesse hands, you may make doves or vultures, roses or nettles, laurell for a garland or ealder for a disgrace.[988]FOOTNOTES:[984]A king of Thrace who fed his horses with human flesh.[985]"Birds called Diomedæ. Toothed they are, and they have eies as red and bright as the fire: otherwise their feathers be all white. Found they be in one place, innobled for the tombe and Temple of Diomedes, on the coast of Apulia. Their manner is to cry with open mouth uncessantly at any strangers that come aland, save only Grecians, upon whom they wil seem to fawne and make signs of love ... as descended from the race of Diomedes." Holland, X. 44.[986]F. following Do. unnecessarily prints 'wee heare.'[987]Bl.creature. F. first printed 'creator.'[988]Disgrace attached to the elder because it was the tree on which Judas hanged himself. F.George PeeleTHE OLD WIVES' TALEEdited with Critical Essay and Notesby F. B. Gummere, Ph.D.,Professor in Haverford College.CRITICAL ESSAYLife.—George Peele, probably sprung from a Devonshire family, and the son of James Peele, clerk of Christ's Hospital, is known to have been in 1565 a free scholar of the grammar school connected with that foundation. He went to Oxford in 1571; studied at Broadgates Hall, now Pembroke College, and at Christ Church; took his B.A. in 1577, his M.A. in 1579, and went up to London about 1580. At Oxford he already had the name of poet, scholar, and dramatist. He was married, it would seem, as early as 1583, to a wife who brought him some property; this, however, soon vanished, and left the poet dependent upon his wits. Although the stories in theJestsare musty old tales, fastened upon Peele, it is unlikely that they settled on his name without a sense of fitness on the part of a public that had known his ways,—his hopeless lack of pence, his good nature and popularity, his shifts to beg, borrow, and cozen. With Greene, Nashe, Marlowe, and a few lesser lights, he belonged to that group of scholars who wrote plays, translations, occasional poems, pageants, and whatever else would find a market. Now and then, it is almost certain, he appeared as an actor. Of his dissolute course of life, its misery and squalour, there can be no doubt whatever; "driven as myself," says Greene, "to extreme shifts." As early as 1579 Peele had made trouble for his father; he lived in poverty; and the curtain falls upon an ignoble end. Dying before 1598, the poet barely saw his fortieth year.Plays assigned to Peele.—The best plays of Peele areThe Arraignment of Paris, published in 1584, and, in Fleay's opinion, played as early as 1581,—a "first encrease," Nashe calls it, written in smooth metres which doubtless had influence on Marlowe's own verse;The Old Wives' Tale, published 1595; and the saccharineDavid and Bethsabe, beloved of German critics.Edward I., with wofully corrupt text, is good only in parts;The Battle of Alcazar, published anonymously in 1594, is almost certainly Peele's, but does not help his reputation; whileSir Clyomon and Sir Clamydesisquite certainly not Peele's in any way. Fleay,Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama, II. 296, assigns it, along withCommon ConditionsandAppius and Virginia, to R. B. (Richard Bower?), whose initials appear on the title-page of the last-named play. Professor Kittredge, however,Journal of Germanic Philology, II. 8, suggests, as author ofSir Clyomon, Thomas Preston ofCambysesfame. By way of compensation for this loss, Fleay (work quoted, II. 155) attributes to PeeleThe Wisdome of Doctor Doddipoll, published in 1600; there is dialect in the play, but overdone, good blank verse, and an indifferent plot. The song,What Thing is Love, hardly makes foundation enough for the assumption that Peele wrote the play, even with the aid of an enchanter among the characters, and a metre like that ofDavid and Bethsabe. Further, Fleay presents our author withWily Beguiled, possibly, he thinks, a university play; but his proof is not convincing. Kirkman, in a catalogue of plays added to his edition ofTom Tiler and his Wife, 1661, credits George Peele not only withDavid and Bethsabe, but withAlphonsus, Emperor of Germany, while Will Shakespeare has theArraignment of Paris.The Old Wives' Taleis set down as anonymous.In regard to Peele's miscellaneous and occasional poetry there need be noted here only his clever use of blank verse in shorter poems, his charming lyrics, and those noble lines at the end of thePolyhymnia, beginning—"His golden locks time hath to silver turn'd."Peele's Place in the Development of English Drama.—Although we had a text of absolute authority and a minutely accurate life of the author, we should gain with all this lore no real stay for a study, a critical understanding ofThe Old Wives' Tale, regarded as an element in the making of English comedy. Peele and his play, along with any hints of sources and models that are to be heeded, and with whatever help may come from study of his other works, must be fused into a single fact and compared with those "environmental conditions" which influence all literary production. This will determine the equation between art and nature, between the centrifugal forces, which are always expressing themselves in terms ofwhat is called genius or originality, and the centripetal forces of a great literary and popular development. It will determine the relation of Peele's comedy to the line of English comedies.Such a critical process leaves one with two qualities in mind that seem to have had an initial force. They belong to Peele on contemporary testimony confirmed by a study of his works. Tom Nashe, more in eulogy than in discrimination, yet surely not without a dash of critical discernment, calls Peele "the chief supporter of pleasance now living, the atlas of poetry, andprimus verborum artifex...."[989]Nashe undoubtedly flatters, but another of the "college," Greene, in that death-bed appeal to his brother playwrights, was in no mood for flattery; and it is probably sincere, even if mistaken, praise when he calls Peele "in some things rarer, in nothing inferior," to Marlowe, and to that "young juvenall" who may be Nashe or Lodge. In what things Peele was "rarer," Greene fails to say, but a study ofThe Arraignment of Paris, ofDavid and Bethsabe, even of portions ofEdward I., and of theBattle of Alcazar, supports the reputation of Peele as an artist in words, and in prose as "well-languaged"; while inThe Old Wives' Talethere greets the critic, not too openly, it is true, but unmistakably, the quality of humour. Moreover, there are theJestswhich, apocryphal as they doubtless are, and sorry stuff by any reckoning, nevertheless show that to people of his day Peele was counted a merry fellow, a humourist in our sense of the word.[990]Perhaps Shakespeare's jests would seem as stale and flat if we had the anecdotes that passed current among his successors at the playhouse. In any case, George had a sense of humour whichfound utterance in thisOld Wives' Tale; it is not the classical humour ofRoister Doister, not the hearty but clumsy mirth ofGammer Gurton, but rather a hint of the extravagant and romantic which turns upon itself with audible merriment at its own pretences, a hint, not of farce or of wit merely, but of genuine humour, something not to be found in Greene's lighter work,[991]or in Lyly'sMother Bombie, or in any of those earlier plays that did fealty to the comic muse. Such, then, is the contemporary formula for Peele as a power in the making of English drama: "primus verborum artifex," and "chief supporter of pleasance." He was an artist in words, and he had the gift of humour.As regards this artistry in words, it is well known that the conditions of English life, the vigour of speech as quickened by intercourse in the street, the market-place, the exchange, where a spoken word even in traffic and commerce still counted better than a written word, dialogue and conversation better than oratory, and the conditions of the stage itself, with its slender resources of scenery and its confident appeal to the imagination, all helped to push this pomp and mastery of phrase into the forefront of an Elizabethan playwright's qualifications. Probably the spectator at a play felt something of the interest which was then so rife in the world of books and learning,—the interest in words as words, in the course of a sentence as indicating more or less triumph over a still untrained tongue. Nietzsche is extravagant but suggestive in certain remarks that bear upon this verbal artistry in the drama. Speaking of Nature and Art,[992]he insists that the Greeks taught men to like pompous dramatic verse and an unnatural eloquence in those tragic situations where mere nature is either stammering or silent. The Italians went further and taught us to endure, in the opera, something still more artificial and unnatural—a passion which not onlydeclaims, but sings. Tragic eloquence, sundered from nature, feeds that pride which "loves art as the expression of a high heroic unnaturalness and conventionality." "The Athenian," Nietzsche goes on to say with cheerful heresy, "went into the theatre not to be roused by pity and terror, but to listen to fine speeches." One is inclined to think that this desire for fine speeches had a large share in the motive which sent an Elizabethan to the play. Certainly the drama responded to this demand more quickly than to any demand for coherence of plot and delicacy of characterization. Who led in this movement? Most critics brush aside all rivals from the path of Marlowe and credit him alone with the "mighty line," the pomp of diction, the sweep of word and figure, which brought the drama from those puerilities of phrase and manner up to its noble estate. This is true in the sense that Marlowe was infinitely greater as a poet and a tragedian than either Greene or Peele. But asverborum artifexit is probable that Marlowe has had considerable credit which belongs to the others, particularly Peele; and the testimony of Nashe and Greene, who knew the craft, must not be rejected so utterly. Campbell, it is true, praised Peele as "the oldest genuine dramatic poet of our language"; but Symonds, and with him are such scholars as Mr. A. W. Ward, asserts that Peele "discovered no new vein." Symonds is inclined to look on Greene as herald[993]and Marlowe as founder; Peele is a pleasant but unimportant maker of plays and verse. Greene, he thinks, began the school of gentleman and scholars who wrote for the stage at a time when rhyming plays were in vogue; but none of those which Greene wrote has come down to our day. Marlowe now comes imperiously upon the scene, forces his blank verse into favour, and is at last reluctantly admitted by Greene and the others into their "college." So runs the theory of Symonds. Quite opposed to this view of the case is Mr. Fleay, who declares that Marlowe followed George Peele in the article of "flowing blank verse."[994]There can be no question, moreover, that certain critics have exalted Greene too high and put Peele too low. Peele had quiteas much as Greene to do with the refining and energizing of English dramatic diction, a process aptly described by Thomas Heywood in hisApology for Actors:[995]"Our English tongue ... is nowby this secondary meanes of playingcontinually refined, every writer striving in himselfe to adde a new florish unto it." Plots remained clumsy, crude; but what change in the diction of plays! InAppius and Virginiathere is still puerile diction and jog-trot metre,—"They framèd also after this, out of his tender side,A piece of much formosity, with him for to abide."From this to blank verse and compressed or energetic diction, as (Jeronimo),—"My knee sings thanks unto your Highness bounty,"—is a progress involving vast reformings, and some deformings,[996]in diction and in metre, of such sweep that Elizabethans put these qualities first when they went about to judge a play. "Your nine comœdies," writes Harvey to Spenser, come nearer to Ariosto's, "eyther for the finenesse of plausible Elocution, or the rareness of Poetical Invention," than theFaery Queeneto theOrlando Furioso. In this ennobling of diction, Peele may not have led the column of playwrights, but he was certainly in the van. His achievement must not be dashed by a comparison with Shakespeare, who covered up absurdities of plot—as in theMerchant of Venice—by brilliant characterization, where this earlier group depended upon the art of words.[997]For the related art of brave metres, of a "flowing blank verse" in plays, we have no space to argue upon the claims of leadership. Enough is done for the matter if one remembers that Peele, who wrote admirable blank verse before Marlowe was out of his teens, had nothing to learn from the greater poetabout the management of this metre in and for itself.[998]Certainly he got more music out of the pentameter than any earlier dramatist had done; witness such a movement as,—"What sign is rainy and what star is fair,"or,—"And water running from the silver spring."The Old Wives' Tale, an Innovation in Comedy.—It may be conceded that Peele "discovered no new vein" in diction and in metre, although his work in each was of a high order, not far removed from leadership. Different is the case when one considers his claims for innovation in comedy. He was the first to blend romantic drama with a realism which turns romance back upon itself, and produces the comedy of subconscious humour. The tragedies, and even the miracle plays, while extravagant in form, had not been altogether unnatural in action. The supernatural in that age was not unnatural. The unnatural was mainly confined to the diction. Gradually, as every one knows, the romantic element, in a wide sense, got upper hand and ruled the English drama. InThe Old Wives' Talethis romantic spirit comes in, not as a new element, but as a new kind of "art" grafted upon the "nature" of the rough and comic stock; and to the reader's surprise draws away all unnaturalness from the dialogue, which is now plain, natural, commonplace.[999]Realism in diction was no new thing; romance in plot was not an innovation; it was the clash, the interplay, the subjective element, the appeal to something more than a literal understanding of what is said and done, a new appeal to a deeper sense of humour—here lay the new vein discovered by George Peele. The romantic drama, we repeat, was known; witness that little group of "folk-lore romances," as Mr. Fleay calls them,Common Conditions,Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes, andAppius and Virginia; the two former are full of adventures, of amorous knights and wandering ladies, a Forest of Strange Marvels, an Isleof Strange Marshes, what not. In all of them, however, the romance is presented in unnatural diction, to suit such unnatural doings, and justifies those bitter words of theSecond and Third Blast of Retrait from Plaies and Theaters,[1000]that "the notablest lier is become the best Poet ... for the strangest Comedie brings greatest delectation ... faining countries neuer heard of, monsters and prodigious creatures that are not...." A milder romantic drama, but without the humour which we mean, is Greene'sOrlando Furioso. The other plays, however, have no humour at all except the traditional humour of the Vice; and of the three representatives, Conditions, who finally turns pirate, is certainly a far merrier person than Haphazard inAppiusor Subtle Shift inSir Clyomon. There is realistic setting inCommon Conditions, with some lively dialogue, and a distinctly catching song and chorus[1001]of tinkers, at the opening of the play. It is "business" here, however, not that dramatic irony, springing from contrast of romantic plot and realistic diction, which makes a sufficiently timid beginning inThe Old Wives' Tale, and grows so insistent inThe Knight of the Burning Pestle. Moreover, Peele's realistic work shows the control and consciousness of a higher art. There are no peasants like Hodge inGammer Gurton, Corin inSir Clyomon, and Hob and Lob inCambyses.[1002]There is an outburst or two of yokel wit in Peele's play; but there is no breaking of heads, no chance for the clown to sing a song while drunk, as Hance does in the interlude ofLike Wil to Like. These signs of a subtler conception of his art should be placed to Peele's credit; for while an obvious dialect marks Hodge and Corin and the rest, Clunch and Madge speak a plain English, reminding one irresistibly of the milk-woman's talk with Piscator: it smacks of cottage and field and hedge-rows and, as Nashe would say, has "old King Harrie sinceritie." There is a difference as between the exaggerated "hayseed" of a comic paper and the finer drawing in one of Hardy's peasants. Exaggeration would spoil thesense of contrast between honest Madge and the high pretences of the plot. In Huanebango there is girding not only at Harvey, but at the romance hero in general; this big-mouthed, impossible fellow, with Corebus as a foil, foreshadows, however dimly, the far more clever presentation of an English Don Quixote in the person of Ralph.A second element of humour in this realistic treatment of romance is the use of an induction, or rather of a combination of the induction and the play within the play, as a means of expressing dramatic irony. Although the induction springs from the prologue, and although the opening ofThe Old Wives' Taleis technically an induction, like many another of the time, it has to our thinking a distinctly new vein. What Schwab[1003]calls the first example of the use of an induction—inThe Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune—makes both induction and play connected parts of a whole. It is a dramatic device, wholly objective in character, external, with no demand upon the sense of contrast. Different, but hardly a new idea,[1004]is the induction as employed by Greene inAlphonsusandJames IV.; here is a return to the old notion of the prologue, a justifying of the playwright's way. Will Summer, the pet jester,[1005]who ushers in Nashe's play, calls himself outright a kind of chorus. In the oldTaming of a Shrew, printed in 1594, Sly, while only a casual commentator upon the play, is entirely outside of the main action, which, as Schwab points out, thus becomes an actual play within the play. Still, even in these cases, the contrast is objective and direct. The induction is a clever device to heighten interest in the play. Before, it had served the playwright as an expression of his purpose in the main drama; later, as with Ben Jonson, it voiced his critical opinions. Whether objective or subjective, however, the contrast between play and induction is direct. Quite different is that induction, which Schwab rightly calls remarkable, inThe Knight of the Burning Pestle; and different, too, is that earlier attempt, which Schwab unaccountably fails to mention, inThe Old Wives' Tale. These both appeal to asense of humour awakened by the interplay of theme and treatment, of character and situation. In Peele's play this involution of epic, drama, and comment—a seeming confusion which has distressed many of the critics—really heightens the dramatic power of the piece. The induction is double. First come a bit of romance, with the lost wanderers in the wood, and a realistic foil in their own dialogue—by no means the "heavy prose" of Collier's censure. Secondly comes outright realism with Clunch, Madge, the bread and cheese, and the old joke about bedfellows, cleverly followed by Madge's abrupt raid upon romantic ground. She is well started, but stumbling, when the other actors break in; and the inner play, not without some confusion and mystification, runs its course. Perhaps the sense of huddling, abruptness, confusion, is intentional as part of an old wives' tale indeed; perhaps, again, this must be laid to the charge of Peele's carelessness in "plotting plaies." Be that as it may be, the interplay of these elements makes a new kind of comedy; and the humour of this play, crude and tentative as it seems when compared with the humour of Uncle Toby[1006]and of those lesser lights that revolve in the orbit of the Quixotic contrast, differs from earlier essays of the sort in that it is not a separate element of fun, but rather something which exists in solution with the comedy itself.The Old Wives' Talelies midway between the utter lack of coherence in Nashe's play and the subtlety of Beaumont and Fletcher. Will Summer is often irrelevant and tiresome; the main action, on which he comments, is now pathetic, now farcical, now merely spectacular; but in our play the thread of romance runs throughout unbroken and keeps the piece in a sort of unity, while the comment, whether direct or hinted, has a vastly finer vein of irony. The romantic side of folk-lore has its due withal, as in the test of fidelity at the end between Eumenides and Jack, with the proposed division of Delia—acasusalways acceptable to such an audience, and here of acute though subordinate interest. Moreover, Peele has a kind of reticence and control in his art; he suggests in a whisper what Will Summer would have roared into commonplace and horse-play.The Background of Folk-Lore.—Finally, the veryOld Wives' Taleitself, with its background of folk-lore, that tryst of ancient splendour with modern poverty and ignorance on the territory of a forgotten faith, is a thing of quietly humorous contrasts. Several elements are to be considered in the charming little medley which Peele has made from the folk-lore of his day—"that curiousmélangeof nursery tales," as Mr. Joseph Jacobs calls it. The enchanter and his spells, the stolen daughter and her brothers' quest, make a familiar central group. Perhaps Madge set out to tell the story ofChilde Rowland, familiar to Elizabethans,[1007]althoughJack the Giant Killerhas his claims. Thefee-fa-fum, as every one knows, occurs also in Shakespeare'sLear. The help of the White Bear—a transformation, like the saws and prophecies, sufficiently familiar in these tales—is similar to that of Merlin inChilde Rowland; but the ghost of Jack reminds one of the other story. Mr. Jacobs quotes Kennedy that in a parallel Irish tale "Jack the servant is the spirit of the buried man." One has only to make this substitution, and the vicarious gratitude of the Giant Killer[1008]is better explained. Perhaps, too, Peele has borrowed some of his thunder and lightning, as well as Huanebango'sfee-fa-fum, from the giants; and the disenchantment at the hands of an invisible hero may belong, in part, to this tale. Two other folk-tales may be named—The Well of the World's End, mentioned, if a slight emendation be allowed, inThe Complaynt of Scotland, andThe Three Heads of the Well—as known, in some form, to Peele, and used directly in the story of the two daughters. The familiar theme of the so-called "death index"[1009]is touched but slightly; and perhaps it is unnecessary to go to theRed Ettinfor a parallel to Huanebango and Corebus, who respectively refuse and give a piece of cake to the helpful old man. The theme is common in folk-lore.It is interesting to note that Beaumont and Fletcher show a liking for folk-tales, as well as for traditional songs and ballads, in that play, which by its induction and general spirit most closely resembles thisOld Wives' Tale. More dignified sources were long ago pointed out by Warton, who remarked that "the names of some of the characters ... are taken from theOrlando Furioso." Meroe, in Apuleius, was invoked. But it seems clear enough that English folk-lore must be the mainstay of critics who think all is done for a work of literature when they have found out every possible and impossible source for plot, sideplot, and allusion.Literary Estimate.—The marvel, after all, is not that these materials are huddled and confused in the combination; the confusion is part of the artistic process, and if the figures move across the stage without firm connection one with the other, that, too, is done after the manner of the old tale. We are on romantic ground, and are to see by glimpses. Here is no comedy of incident, in the usual meaning of the term, no comedy of intrigue or of manners. It is rather a comedy of comedies, a saucy challenge of romance, where art turns, however timidly, upon itself. Perhaps Peele wrote this play, as Dryden wroteAll for Love, to please himself. Unquestionably, until Mr. Bullen made a plea for mercy,The Old Wives' Talehad been shamefully treated. Collier[1010]calls it "nothing but a beldam's story, with little to recommend it but heavy prose and not much lighter blank verse," a most inadequate summary from any point of view. The play, he thinks, has "a disgusting quantity of trash and absurdity." Dyce, while regarding Peele's "superiority to Greene" as "unquestionable," is not enthusiastic aboutThe Old Wives' Tale. Mr. Ward speaks[1011]of "the labyrinthine intricacy of the main scenes," knows not whether to call it farce or interlude, and would pass it by save for the suggestion ofComus. But Mr. Bullen very properly objects to this unfair comparison. Symonds, to be sure, uses it even more unfairly.The Old Wives' Tale, he makes bold to say, is the sow's ear to Milton's silk purse.[1012]With an unusual blindness to literary perspective,Symonds goes on to judge this flickering little candle of romance, folk-lore, and half-roguish, half-ironical suggestion, by the sun-blaze of Milton's high seriousness and full poetic splendours. Peele, it seems, does not "lift his subject into the heavens of poetry.... The wizard is a common conjurer. The spirit is a vulgar village ghost." Why not, pray? What should they be for the purposes of this old wives' tale? What would be left, say, of Chaucer's charming little story, that "folye, as of a fox, or of a cok and hen," if one were to pulverize it with such critical tools? Peele is not trying to raise comedy into the heavens; he left that for his betters; and the ineffectual Delia is a long remove from Hermia and Helena in the "wood near Athens." What Peele, George Peele of the dingy jests, probably tried to do, and what he surely succeeded in doing, was to bring a new and more subtle strain of humour into the drama.Itur in antiquam silvam.Realism left shabby and squalid things, alehouse wit, and laid hold of a sweeter life. Reckless, good-natured scholar, George fairly followed the call which haunted so many academic outcasts, the call which Marlowe and Greene and Dekker answered with those sweet songs of country life, and which led Peele to the making of this play. He wove romance and realism into a fabric that may well show a coarse pattern and often very clumsy workmanship, but, on the whole, it is a pleasing pattern and a new. Moreover, it is all made of sound English stuff. The tales he used for his main drama were familiar to English ears; the persons of his framework play were kindly folk of any English village, and the air of it all is as fresh and wholesome as an English summer morning.Sources, Title, Text.—The sources of the play, so far as one may speak of sources, are indicated in general above, and in particular by notes to the following text. The plural form of the title ought probably to be singular, in spite of common usage, the glossealdra cwéna spel(Wright,Voc.), and 1 Timothy iv, 7; Mr. Fleay, perhaps as a concession to Madge, printsOld Wifes' Tale(Biog. Chron. Eng. Drama, II. 154).[1013]He puts the date of composition "clearly 1590," on the theory that Harvey—Huanebango—ishere satirized by Peele as a consequence of Harvey's attack upon Lyly in 1589,—circulated then in manuscript though not printed until 1593. Lämmerhirt[1014]argues, but not conclusively, that the play was written before 1588,—partly because of the allusions to Harvey, and partly because style and form point to an early period in the author's development. Until a surer date can be established, however, 1590 will serve as the time of composition for this play.The Old Wives' Tale, says Dyce, "had sunk into complete oblivion, till Steevens ... communicated to Reed the account of it which appeared in theBiographia Dramatica." In 1783 Steevens writes to Warton: "All I have learned in relation to the original from which the idea of Milton'sComusmight be borrowed, I communicated to Mr. Reed.... Only a single copy of his [sic]Old Wives' Talehas hitherto appeared, and even that is at present out of my reach...."[1015]As to the rhythmic structure, E. Penner notes[1016]that of 964 lines of this play 192 are five-stress or ordinary heroic verse, 7 are hexameters, and 100 short verses. The rest is prose.The best edition is, of course, that of Bullen, in 3 vols., 1888-[B]; but there were excellent editions by Dyce, one in 1828 ff., and another in 1861-[Dy.]. The present text ofThe Old Wives' Taleis from the 1595 quarto in the British Museum; the title-page is, with the exception of the vignettes, a fair representation of the original.F. B. Gummere.FOOTNOTES:[989]"To the Gentlemen Students of both Universities," prefixed to Greene'sMenaphon, a well-known passage. Little, if anything, can be made of Meres when (Haslewood, II., 153) he couples Peele now with Ariosto, now, as tragical poet, with Apollodorus Tarsensis. He does not name Peele among the writers of comedy. Later, inHave with You to Saffron Walden(Grosart, III. 196), Nashe, with no mention of Peele, concedes to Greene mastery, above all the craft, in "plotting of plaies." This dramatic art of words, by the way, must not be confused with Euphuistic feats. Greene, Nashe, even Harvey, turned with Sidney against mere "playing with words and idle similies," and Peele is anything but a follower of Guevara.[990]Merrie conceited Jests of George Peele, Gentleman, sometimes a Student in Oxford Wherein is shewed the course of his life, how he lived: a man very well knowne in the Citie of London and elsewhere....There was an edition in 1607, hardly ten years after Peele's death.[991]The Looking Glasse for London and Englandhas some boisterous comedy, but no humour. InGeorge-a-Greene, good play that it is, the ballad material is taken quite seriously. InFriar Bacon and Friar Bungaythere is exquisite idyllic work, a dash of passable, though quite traditional, comedy, but no trace of the peculiar element, presently to be described as the dominant note of treatment inThe Old Wives' Tale.[992]Fröhliche Wissenschaft, p. 109 f. So in hisGeburt der Tragödie, p. 89, speaking of the prologue as used by Euripides, which told in advance the action of the play, Nietzsche asserts that the Athenians were less interested in the plot than in the pathos of situations and the rhetoric of the players.[993]"The romantic play, the English Farsa, may be called in a great measure his discovery."Shakespeare's Predecessors, p. 580.[994]"A matter in which he certainly anticipated Marlowe,"Biog. Chron.II. 151.[995]Ed. Shakespeare Society, 1841, p. 52.[996]Peele is not of the extreme group whose feats in diction remind one of what Dr. Johnson said about the metaphysical poets, that "their wish was only to say what they hoped had never been said before."[997]Gosson, in a well-known passage, puts brave language first among dramatic attractions: "sweetness of words, fitness of epithets, with metaphors, allegories...."[998]Lämmerhirt counts nearly 84 per cent of the verses in theArraignment of Parisas rhymed;David and Bethsabehas less than 7 per cent, andThe Battle of Alcazarbarely 3 per cent.[999]The diction ofThe Old Wives' Talediffers from Lyly's comic prose much as Nashe's style in his pamphlets differs from the periods of Lyly'sEuphues.[1000]Ed. W. C. Hazlitt, Roxburgh Library, 1869, p. 145.[1001]See the song inAppius, "Hope so and hap so."—InMisogonus, the Vice appears as a domestic fool.[1002]Compare the French and broken English inThree Lords and Three Ladies of London, the dialect of Boban the Scot in Greene'sJames IV., and the inevitable Welshman.[1003]Das Schauspiel im Schauspiel, Wien and Leipzig, 1896.[1004]"A newmotiv," says Schwab. Fleay (work quoted, I. 266) thinksThe Old Wives' Talefairly parodies the induction inJames IV.[1005]See a similar bit of horse-play inWily Beguiled.[1006]The delicate irony of later triflings with romance—as in Wieland'sOberon—is, of course, quite out of the question.[1007]SeeEnglish Fairy Tales, J. Jacobs, edition of 1898, pp. 243, 245. A monograph could be written on the folk-lore of this play, where, it is to be conjectured, Peele has followed no single tale, but has combined parts of separate stories, and flung in bits of rhyme and fragments of superstition, as fancy bade him.[1008]English Fairy Tales, p. 104. This theme of theThankful Deadis extremely common. It is found in an old English romance,Sir Amadace, and has been treated by Max Hippe, in Herrig'sArchiv, Vol. LXXXI, p. 141.[1009]Jacobs,English Fairy Tales, Notes, p. 252. See also Frazer'sGolden Bough.[1010]Annals of Stage, etc., III. 197.[1011]Eng. Dram. Lit.I. 372.[1012]Shakespeare's Predecessors, p. 563 ff. Mr. Jacobs thinks that both poets went to folk-lore for their materials.Childe Rowlandis the probable source.[1013]It is entered on the Stationers' Registers to Raphe Hancock, April 16, 1595,the owlde wifes tale. Cf. "an olde wives tale," Greene,Groatsw.(Grosart XII. 119).—Gen. Ed.[1014]G. P. Untersuchungen, etc., Rostock, 1862, pp. 62 ff.[1015]Biogr. Mem. of the late Jos. Warton, DD., London, 1806, p. 398.[1016]Metrische Untersuchungen zu George Peele, in theArchiv fur das Studium d. neueren Spracben, etc. (1890), LXXXV. 279.

FOOTNOTES:[982]Knights.[983]Against the grain. F.

[982]Knights.

[983]Against the grain. F.

Wecannot tell whether wee are fallen among Diomedes[984]birdes or his horses,—the one received some men with sweet notes,[985]the other bit all men with sharpe teeth. But, as Homer's gods conveyed them into cloudes whom they would have kept from curses, and, as Venus, least Adonis should be pricked with the stings of5adders, covered his face with the wings of swans, so wee hope, being shielded with your Highnesse countenance, wee shall, though heare[986]the neighing, yet not feele the kicking of those jades, and receive, though no prayse—which we cannot deserve—yet a pardon, which in all humilitie we desire. As yet we cannot tell what we10should tearme our labours, iron or bullion; only it belongeth to your Majestie to make them fit either for the forge or the mynt, currant by the stampe or counterfeit by the anvill. For, as nothing is to be called white unlesse it had beene named white by the first creator,[987]so can there be nothing thought good in the opinion of others unlesse15it be christened good by the judgement of your selfe. For our selves, againe, we are like these torches of waxe, of which, being in your Highnesse hands, you may make doves or vultures, roses or nettles, laurell for a garland or ealder for a disgrace.[988]

FOOTNOTES:[984]A king of Thrace who fed his horses with human flesh.[985]"Birds called Diomedæ. Toothed they are, and they have eies as red and bright as the fire: otherwise their feathers be all white. Found they be in one place, innobled for the tombe and Temple of Diomedes, on the coast of Apulia. Their manner is to cry with open mouth uncessantly at any strangers that come aland, save only Grecians, upon whom they wil seem to fawne and make signs of love ... as descended from the race of Diomedes." Holland, X. 44.[986]F. following Do. unnecessarily prints 'wee heare.'[987]Bl.creature. F. first printed 'creator.'[988]Disgrace attached to the elder because it was the tree on which Judas hanged himself. F.

[984]A king of Thrace who fed his horses with human flesh.

[985]"Birds called Diomedæ. Toothed they are, and they have eies as red and bright as the fire: otherwise their feathers be all white. Found they be in one place, innobled for the tombe and Temple of Diomedes, on the coast of Apulia. Their manner is to cry with open mouth uncessantly at any strangers that come aland, save only Grecians, upon whom they wil seem to fawne and make signs of love ... as descended from the race of Diomedes." Holland, X. 44.

[986]F. following Do. unnecessarily prints 'wee heare.'

[987]Bl.creature. F. first printed 'creator.'

[988]Disgrace attached to the elder because it was the tree on which Judas hanged himself. F.

George PeeleTHE OLD WIVES' TALEEdited with Critical Essay and Notesby F. B. Gummere, Ph.D.,Professor in Haverford College.

Edited with Critical Essay and Notesby F. B. Gummere, Ph.D.,Professor in Haverford College.

Life.—George Peele, probably sprung from a Devonshire family, and the son of James Peele, clerk of Christ's Hospital, is known to have been in 1565 a free scholar of the grammar school connected with that foundation. He went to Oxford in 1571; studied at Broadgates Hall, now Pembroke College, and at Christ Church; took his B.A. in 1577, his M.A. in 1579, and went up to London about 1580. At Oxford he already had the name of poet, scholar, and dramatist. He was married, it would seem, as early as 1583, to a wife who brought him some property; this, however, soon vanished, and left the poet dependent upon his wits. Although the stories in theJestsare musty old tales, fastened upon Peele, it is unlikely that they settled on his name without a sense of fitness on the part of a public that had known his ways,—his hopeless lack of pence, his good nature and popularity, his shifts to beg, borrow, and cozen. With Greene, Nashe, Marlowe, and a few lesser lights, he belonged to that group of scholars who wrote plays, translations, occasional poems, pageants, and whatever else would find a market. Now and then, it is almost certain, he appeared as an actor. Of his dissolute course of life, its misery and squalour, there can be no doubt whatever; "driven as myself," says Greene, "to extreme shifts." As early as 1579 Peele had made trouble for his father; he lived in poverty; and the curtain falls upon an ignoble end. Dying before 1598, the poet barely saw his fortieth year.

Plays assigned to Peele.—The best plays of Peele areThe Arraignment of Paris, published in 1584, and, in Fleay's opinion, played as early as 1581,—a "first encrease," Nashe calls it, written in smooth metres which doubtless had influence on Marlowe's own verse;The Old Wives' Tale, published 1595; and the saccharineDavid and Bethsabe, beloved of German critics.Edward I., with wofully corrupt text, is good only in parts;The Battle of Alcazar, published anonymously in 1594, is almost certainly Peele's, but does not help his reputation; whileSir Clyomon and Sir Clamydesisquite certainly not Peele's in any way. Fleay,Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama, II. 296, assigns it, along withCommon ConditionsandAppius and Virginia, to R. B. (Richard Bower?), whose initials appear on the title-page of the last-named play. Professor Kittredge, however,Journal of Germanic Philology, II. 8, suggests, as author ofSir Clyomon, Thomas Preston ofCambysesfame. By way of compensation for this loss, Fleay (work quoted, II. 155) attributes to PeeleThe Wisdome of Doctor Doddipoll, published in 1600; there is dialect in the play, but overdone, good blank verse, and an indifferent plot. The song,What Thing is Love, hardly makes foundation enough for the assumption that Peele wrote the play, even with the aid of an enchanter among the characters, and a metre like that ofDavid and Bethsabe. Further, Fleay presents our author withWily Beguiled, possibly, he thinks, a university play; but his proof is not convincing. Kirkman, in a catalogue of plays added to his edition ofTom Tiler and his Wife, 1661, credits George Peele not only withDavid and Bethsabe, but withAlphonsus, Emperor of Germany, while Will Shakespeare has theArraignment of Paris.The Old Wives' Taleis set down as anonymous.

In regard to Peele's miscellaneous and occasional poetry there need be noted here only his clever use of blank verse in shorter poems, his charming lyrics, and those noble lines at the end of thePolyhymnia, beginning—

"His golden locks time hath to silver turn'd."

Peele's Place in the Development of English Drama.—Although we had a text of absolute authority and a minutely accurate life of the author, we should gain with all this lore no real stay for a study, a critical understanding ofThe Old Wives' Tale, regarded as an element in the making of English comedy. Peele and his play, along with any hints of sources and models that are to be heeded, and with whatever help may come from study of his other works, must be fused into a single fact and compared with those "environmental conditions" which influence all literary production. This will determine the equation between art and nature, between the centrifugal forces, which are always expressing themselves in terms ofwhat is called genius or originality, and the centripetal forces of a great literary and popular development. It will determine the relation of Peele's comedy to the line of English comedies.

Such a critical process leaves one with two qualities in mind that seem to have had an initial force. They belong to Peele on contemporary testimony confirmed by a study of his works. Tom Nashe, more in eulogy than in discrimination, yet surely not without a dash of critical discernment, calls Peele "the chief supporter of pleasance now living, the atlas of poetry, andprimus verborum artifex...."[989]

Nashe undoubtedly flatters, but another of the "college," Greene, in that death-bed appeal to his brother playwrights, was in no mood for flattery; and it is probably sincere, even if mistaken, praise when he calls Peele "in some things rarer, in nothing inferior," to Marlowe, and to that "young juvenall" who may be Nashe or Lodge. In what things Peele was "rarer," Greene fails to say, but a study ofThe Arraignment of Paris, ofDavid and Bethsabe, even of portions ofEdward I., and of theBattle of Alcazar, supports the reputation of Peele as an artist in words, and in prose as "well-languaged"; while inThe Old Wives' Talethere greets the critic, not too openly, it is true, but unmistakably, the quality of humour. Moreover, there are theJestswhich, apocryphal as they doubtless are, and sorry stuff by any reckoning, nevertheless show that to people of his day Peele was counted a merry fellow, a humourist in our sense of the word.[990]Perhaps Shakespeare's jests would seem as stale and flat if we had the anecdotes that passed current among his successors at the playhouse. In any case, George had a sense of humour whichfound utterance in thisOld Wives' Tale; it is not the classical humour ofRoister Doister, not the hearty but clumsy mirth ofGammer Gurton, but rather a hint of the extravagant and romantic which turns upon itself with audible merriment at its own pretences, a hint, not of farce or of wit merely, but of genuine humour, something not to be found in Greene's lighter work,[991]or in Lyly'sMother Bombie, or in any of those earlier plays that did fealty to the comic muse. Such, then, is the contemporary formula for Peele as a power in the making of English drama: "primus verborum artifex," and "chief supporter of pleasance." He was an artist in words, and he had the gift of humour.

As regards this artistry in words, it is well known that the conditions of English life, the vigour of speech as quickened by intercourse in the street, the market-place, the exchange, where a spoken word even in traffic and commerce still counted better than a written word, dialogue and conversation better than oratory, and the conditions of the stage itself, with its slender resources of scenery and its confident appeal to the imagination, all helped to push this pomp and mastery of phrase into the forefront of an Elizabethan playwright's qualifications. Probably the spectator at a play felt something of the interest which was then so rife in the world of books and learning,—the interest in words as words, in the course of a sentence as indicating more or less triumph over a still untrained tongue. Nietzsche is extravagant but suggestive in certain remarks that bear upon this verbal artistry in the drama. Speaking of Nature and Art,[992]he insists that the Greeks taught men to like pompous dramatic verse and an unnatural eloquence in those tragic situations where mere nature is either stammering or silent. The Italians went further and taught us to endure, in the opera, something still more artificial and unnatural—a passion which not onlydeclaims, but sings. Tragic eloquence, sundered from nature, feeds that pride which "loves art as the expression of a high heroic unnaturalness and conventionality." "The Athenian," Nietzsche goes on to say with cheerful heresy, "went into the theatre not to be roused by pity and terror, but to listen to fine speeches." One is inclined to think that this desire for fine speeches had a large share in the motive which sent an Elizabethan to the play. Certainly the drama responded to this demand more quickly than to any demand for coherence of plot and delicacy of characterization. Who led in this movement? Most critics brush aside all rivals from the path of Marlowe and credit him alone with the "mighty line," the pomp of diction, the sweep of word and figure, which brought the drama from those puerilities of phrase and manner up to its noble estate. This is true in the sense that Marlowe was infinitely greater as a poet and a tragedian than either Greene or Peele. But asverborum artifexit is probable that Marlowe has had considerable credit which belongs to the others, particularly Peele; and the testimony of Nashe and Greene, who knew the craft, must not be rejected so utterly. Campbell, it is true, praised Peele as "the oldest genuine dramatic poet of our language"; but Symonds, and with him are such scholars as Mr. A. W. Ward, asserts that Peele "discovered no new vein." Symonds is inclined to look on Greene as herald[993]and Marlowe as founder; Peele is a pleasant but unimportant maker of plays and verse. Greene, he thinks, began the school of gentleman and scholars who wrote for the stage at a time when rhyming plays were in vogue; but none of those which Greene wrote has come down to our day. Marlowe now comes imperiously upon the scene, forces his blank verse into favour, and is at last reluctantly admitted by Greene and the others into their "college." So runs the theory of Symonds. Quite opposed to this view of the case is Mr. Fleay, who declares that Marlowe followed George Peele in the article of "flowing blank verse."[994]There can be no question, moreover, that certain critics have exalted Greene too high and put Peele too low. Peele had quiteas much as Greene to do with the refining and energizing of English dramatic diction, a process aptly described by Thomas Heywood in hisApology for Actors:[995]"Our English tongue ... is nowby this secondary meanes of playingcontinually refined, every writer striving in himselfe to adde a new florish unto it." Plots remained clumsy, crude; but what change in the diction of plays! InAppius and Virginiathere is still puerile diction and jog-trot metre,—

"They framèd also after this, out of his tender side,A piece of much formosity, with him for to abide."

"They framèd also after this, out of his tender side,

A piece of much formosity, with him for to abide."

From this to blank verse and compressed or energetic diction, as (Jeronimo),—

"My knee sings thanks unto your Highness bounty,"—

is a progress involving vast reformings, and some deformings,[996]in diction and in metre, of such sweep that Elizabethans put these qualities first when they went about to judge a play. "Your nine comœdies," writes Harvey to Spenser, come nearer to Ariosto's, "eyther for the finenesse of plausible Elocution, or the rareness of Poetical Invention," than theFaery Queeneto theOrlando Furioso. In this ennobling of diction, Peele may not have led the column of playwrights, but he was certainly in the van. His achievement must not be dashed by a comparison with Shakespeare, who covered up absurdities of plot—as in theMerchant of Venice—by brilliant characterization, where this earlier group depended upon the art of words.[997]For the related art of brave metres, of a "flowing blank verse" in plays, we have no space to argue upon the claims of leadership. Enough is done for the matter if one remembers that Peele, who wrote admirable blank verse before Marlowe was out of his teens, had nothing to learn from the greater poetabout the management of this metre in and for itself.[998]Certainly he got more music out of the pentameter than any earlier dramatist had done; witness such a movement as,—

"What sign is rainy and what star is fair,"

or,—

"And water running from the silver spring."

The Old Wives' Tale, an Innovation in Comedy.—It may be conceded that Peele "discovered no new vein" in diction and in metre, although his work in each was of a high order, not far removed from leadership. Different is the case when one considers his claims for innovation in comedy. He was the first to blend romantic drama with a realism which turns romance back upon itself, and produces the comedy of subconscious humour. The tragedies, and even the miracle plays, while extravagant in form, had not been altogether unnatural in action. The supernatural in that age was not unnatural. The unnatural was mainly confined to the diction. Gradually, as every one knows, the romantic element, in a wide sense, got upper hand and ruled the English drama. InThe Old Wives' Talethis romantic spirit comes in, not as a new element, but as a new kind of "art" grafted upon the "nature" of the rough and comic stock; and to the reader's surprise draws away all unnaturalness from the dialogue, which is now plain, natural, commonplace.[999]Realism in diction was no new thing; romance in plot was not an innovation; it was the clash, the interplay, the subjective element, the appeal to something more than a literal understanding of what is said and done, a new appeal to a deeper sense of humour—here lay the new vein discovered by George Peele. The romantic drama, we repeat, was known; witness that little group of "folk-lore romances," as Mr. Fleay calls them,Common Conditions,Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes, andAppius and Virginia; the two former are full of adventures, of amorous knights and wandering ladies, a Forest of Strange Marvels, an Isleof Strange Marshes, what not. In all of them, however, the romance is presented in unnatural diction, to suit such unnatural doings, and justifies those bitter words of theSecond and Third Blast of Retrait from Plaies and Theaters,[1000]that "the notablest lier is become the best Poet ... for the strangest Comedie brings greatest delectation ... faining countries neuer heard of, monsters and prodigious creatures that are not...." A milder romantic drama, but without the humour which we mean, is Greene'sOrlando Furioso. The other plays, however, have no humour at all except the traditional humour of the Vice; and of the three representatives, Conditions, who finally turns pirate, is certainly a far merrier person than Haphazard inAppiusor Subtle Shift inSir Clyomon. There is realistic setting inCommon Conditions, with some lively dialogue, and a distinctly catching song and chorus[1001]of tinkers, at the opening of the play. It is "business" here, however, not that dramatic irony, springing from contrast of romantic plot and realistic diction, which makes a sufficiently timid beginning inThe Old Wives' Tale, and grows so insistent inThe Knight of the Burning Pestle. Moreover, Peele's realistic work shows the control and consciousness of a higher art. There are no peasants like Hodge inGammer Gurton, Corin inSir Clyomon, and Hob and Lob inCambyses.[1002]There is an outburst or two of yokel wit in Peele's play; but there is no breaking of heads, no chance for the clown to sing a song while drunk, as Hance does in the interlude ofLike Wil to Like. These signs of a subtler conception of his art should be placed to Peele's credit; for while an obvious dialect marks Hodge and Corin and the rest, Clunch and Madge speak a plain English, reminding one irresistibly of the milk-woman's talk with Piscator: it smacks of cottage and field and hedge-rows and, as Nashe would say, has "old King Harrie sinceritie." There is a difference as between the exaggerated "hayseed" of a comic paper and the finer drawing in one of Hardy's peasants. Exaggeration would spoil thesense of contrast between honest Madge and the high pretences of the plot. In Huanebango there is girding not only at Harvey, but at the romance hero in general; this big-mouthed, impossible fellow, with Corebus as a foil, foreshadows, however dimly, the far more clever presentation of an English Don Quixote in the person of Ralph.

A second element of humour in this realistic treatment of romance is the use of an induction, or rather of a combination of the induction and the play within the play, as a means of expressing dramatic irony. Although the induction springs from the prologue, and although the opening ofThe Old Wives' Taleis technically an induction, like many another of the time, it has to our thinking a distinctly new vein. What Schwab[1003]calls the first example of the use of an induction—inThe Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune—makes both induction and play connected parts of a whole. It is a dramatic device, wholly objective in character, external, with no demand upon the sense of contrast. Different, but hardly a new idea,[1004]is the induction as employed by Greene inAlphonsusandJames IV.; here is a return to the old notion of the prologue, a justifying of the playwright's way. Will Summer, the pet jester,[1005]who ushers in Nashe's play, calls himself outright a kind of chorus. In the oldTaming of a Shrew, printed in 1594, Sly, while only a casual commentator upon the play, is entirely outside of the main action, which, as Schwab points out, thus becomes an actual play within the play. Still, even in these cases, the contrast is objective and direct. The induction is a clever device to heighten interest in the play. Before, it had served the playwright as an expression of his purpose in the main drama; later, as with Ben Jonson, it voiced his critical opinions. Whether objective or subjective, however, the contrast between play and induction is direct. Quite different is that induction, which Schwab rightly calls remarkable, inThe Knight of the Burning Pestle; and different, too, is that earlier attempt, which Schwab unaccountably fails to mention, inThe Old Wives' Tale. These both appeal to asense of humour awakened by the interplay of theme and treatment, of character and situation. In Peele's play this involution of epic, drama, and comment—a seeming confusion which has distressed many of the critics—really heightens the dramatic power of the piece. The induction is double. First come a bit of romance, with the lost wanderers in the wood, and a realistic foil in their own dialogue—by no means the "heavy prose" of Collier's censure. Secondly comes outright realism with Clunch, Madge, the bread and cheese, and the old joke about bedfellows, cleverly followed by Madge's abrupt raid upon romantic ground. She is well started, but stumbling, when the other actors break in; and the inner play, not without some confusion and mystification, runs its course. Perhaps the sense of huddling, abruptness, confusion, is intentional as part of an old wives' tale indeed; perhaps, again, this must be laid to the charge of Peele's carelessness in "plotting plaies." Be that as it may be, the interplay of these elements makes a new kind of comedy; and the humour of this play, crude and tentative as it seems when compared with the humour of Uncle Toby[1006]and of those lesser lights that revolve in the orbit of the Quixotic contrast, differs from earlier essays of the sort in that it is not a separate element of fun, but rather something which exists in solution with the comedy itself.The Old Wives' Talelies midway between the utter lack of coherence in Nashe's play and the subtlety of Beaumont and Fletcher. Will Summer is often irrelevant and tiresome; the main action, on which he comments, is now pathetic, now farcical, now merely spectacular; but in our play the thread of romance runs throughout unbroken and keeps the piece in a sort of unity, while the comment, whether direct or hinted, has a vastly finer vein of irony. The romantic side of folk-lore has its due withal, as in the test of fidelity at the end between Eumenides and Jack, with the proposed division of Delia—acasusalways acceptable to such an audience, and here of acute though subordinate interest. Moreover, Peele has a kind of reticence and control in his art; he suggests in a whisper what Will Summer would have roared into commonplace and horse-play.

The Background of Folk-Lore.—Finally, the veryOld Wives' Taleitself, with its background of folk-lore, that tryst of ancient splendour with modern poverty and ignorance on the territory of a forgotten faith, is a thing of quietly humorous contrasts. Several elements are to be considered in the charming little medley which Peele has made from the folk-lore of his day—"that curiousmélangeof nursery tales," as Mr. Joseph Jacobs calls it. The enchanter and his spells, the stolen daughter and her brothers' quest, make a familiar central group. Perhaps Madge set out to tell the story ofChilde Rowland, familiar to Elizabethans,[1007]althoughJack the Giant Killerhas his claims. Thefee-fa-fum, as every one knows, occurs also in Shakespeare'sLear. The help of the White Bear—a transformation, like the saws and prophecies, sufficiently familiar in these tales—is similar to that of Merlin inChilde Rowland; but the ghost of Jack reminds one of the other story. Mr. Jacobs quotes Kennedy that in a parallel Irish tale "Jack the servant is the spirit of the buried man." One has only to make this substitution, and the vicarious gratitude of the Giant Killer[1008]is better explained. Perhaps, too, Peele has borrowed some of his thunder and lightning, as well as Huanebango'sfee-fa-fum, from the giants; and the disenchantment at the hands of an invisible hero may belong, in part, to this tale. Two other folk-tales may be named—The Well of the World's End, mentioned, if a slight emendation be allowed, inThe Complaynt of Scotland, andThe Three Heads of the Well—as known, in some form, to Peele, and used directly in the story of the two daughters. The familiar theme of the so-called "death index"[1009]is touched but slightly; and perhaps it is unnecessary to go to theRed Ettinfor a parallel to Huanebango and Corebus, who respectively refuse and give a piece of cake to the helpful old man. The theme is common in folk-lore.It is interesting to note that Beaumont and Fletcher show a liking for folk-tales, as well as for traditional songs and ballads, in that play, which by its induction and general spirit most closely resembles thisOld Wives' Tale. More dignified sources were long ago pointed out by Warton, who remarked that "the names of some of the characters ... are taken from theOrlando Furioso." Meroe, in Apuleius, was invoked. But it seems clear enough that English folk-lore must be the mainstay of critics who think all is done for a work of literature when they have found out every possible and impossible source for plot, sideplot, and allusion.

Literary Estimate.—The marvel, after all, is not that these materials are huddled and confused in the combination; the confusion is part of the artistic process, and if the figures move across the stage without firm connection one with the other, that, too, is done after the manner of the old tale. We are on romantic ground, and are to see by glimpses. Here is no comedy of incident, in the usual meaning of the term, no comedy of intrigue or of manners. It is rather a comedy of comedies, a saucy challenge of romance, where art turns, however timidly, upon itself. Perhaps Peele wrote this play, as Dryden wroteAll for Love, to please himself. Unquestionably, until Mr. Bullen made a plea for mercy,The Old Wives' Talehad been shamefully treated. Collier[1010]calls it "nothing but a beldam's story, with little to recommend it but heavy prose and not much lighter blank verse," a most inadequate summary from any point of view. The play, he thinks, has "a disgusting quantity of trash and absurdity." Dyce, while regarding Peele's "superiority to Greene" as "unquestionable," is not enthusiastic aboutThe Old Wives' Tale. Mr. Ward speaks[1011]of "the labyrinthine intricacy of the main scenes," knows not whether to call it farce or interlude, and would pass it by save for the suggestion ofComus. But Mr. Bullen very properly objects to this unfair comparison. Symonds, to be sure, uses it even more unfairly.The Old Wives' Tale, he makes bold to say, is the sow's ear to Milton's silk purse.[1012]With an unusual blindness to literary perspective,Symonds goes on to judge this flickering little candle of romance, folk-lore, and half-roguish, half-ironical suggestion, by the sun-blaze of Milton's high seriousness and full poetic splendours. Peele, it seems, does not "lift his subject into the heavens of poetry.... The wizard is a common conjurer. The spirit is a vulgar village ghost." Why not, pray? What should they be for the purposes of this old wives' tale? What would be left, say, of Chaucer's charming little story, that "folye, as of a fox, or of a cok and hen," if one were to pulverize it with such critical tools? Peele is not trying to raise comedy into the heavens; he left that for his betters; and the ineffectual Delia is a long remove from Hermia and Helena in the "wood near Athens." What Peele, George Peele of the dingy jests, probably tried to do, and what he surely succeeded in doing, was to bring a new and more subtle strain of humour into the drama.Itur in antiquam silvam.Realism left shabby and squalid things, alehouse wit, and laid hold of a sweeter life. Reckless, good-natured scholar, George fairly followed the call which haunted so many academic outcasts, the call which Marlowe and Greene and Dekker answered with those sweet songs of country life, and which led Peele to the making of this play. He wove romance and realism into a fabric that may well show a coarse pattern and often very clumsy workmanship, but, on the whole, it is a pleasing pattern and a new. Moreover, it is all made of sound English stuff. The tales he used for his main drama were familiar to English ears; the persons of his framework play were kindly folk of any English village, and the air of it all is as fresh and wholesome as an English summer morning.

Sources, Title, Text.—The sources of the play, so far as one may speak of sources, are indicated in general above, and in particular by notes to the following text. The plural form of the title ought probably to be singular, in spite of common usage, the glossealdra cwéna spel(Wright,Voc.), and 1 Timothy iv, 7; Mr. Fleay, perhaps as a concession to Madge, printsOld Wifes' Tale(Biog. Chron. Eng. Drama, II. 154).[1013]He puts the date of composition "clearly 1590," on the theory that Harvey—Huanebango—ishere satirized by Peele as a consequence of Harvey's attack upon Lyly in 1589,—circulated then in manuscript though not printed until 1593. Lämmerhirt[1014]argues, but not conclusively, that the play was written before 1588,—partly because of the allusions to Harvey, and partly because style and form point to an early period in the author's development. Until a surer date can be established, however, 1590 will serve as the time of composition for this play.The Old Wives' Tale, says Dyce, "had sunk into complete oblivion, till Steevens ... communicated to Reed the account of it which appeared in theBiographia Dramatica." In 1783 Steevens writes to Warton: "All I have learned in relation to the original from which the idea of Milton'sComusmight be borrowed, I communicated to Mr. Reed.... Only a single copy of his [sic]Old Wives' Talehas hitherto appeared, and even that is at present out of my reach...."[1015]As to the rhythmic structure, E. Penner notes[1016]that of 964 lines of this play 192 are five-stress or ordinary heroic verse, 7 are hexameters, and 100 short verses. The rest is prose.

The best edition is, of course, that of Bullen, in 3 vols., 1888-[B]; but there were excellent editions by Dyce, one in 1828 ff., and another in 1861-[Dy.]. The present text ofThe Old Wives' Taleis from the 1595 quarto in the British Museum; the title-page is, with the exception of the vignettes, a fair representation of the original.

F. B. Gummere.

FOOTNOTES:[989]"To the Gentlemen Students of both Universities," prefixed to Greene'sMenaphon, a well-known passage. Little, if anything, can be made of Meres when (Haslewood, II., 153) he couples Peele now with Ariosto, now, as tragical poet, with Apollodorus Tarsensis. He does not name Peele among the writers of comedy. Later, inHave with You to Saffron Walden(Grosart, III. 196), Nashe, with no mention of Peele, concedes to Greene mastery, above all the craft, in "plotting of plaies." This dramatic art of words, by the way, must not be confused with Euphuistic feats. Greene, Nashe, even Harvey, turned with Sidney against mere "playing with words and idle similies," and Peele is anything but a follower of Guevara.[990]Merrie conceited Jests of George Peele, Gentleman, sometimes a Student in Oxford Wherein is shewed the course of his life, how he lived: a man very well knowne in the Citie of London and elsewhere....There was an edition in 1607, hardly ten years after Peele's death.[991]The Looking Glasse for London and Englandhas some boisterous comedy, but no humour. InGeorge-a-Greene, good play that it is, the ballad material is taken quite seriously. InFriar Bacon and Friar Bungaythere is exquisite idyllic work, a dash of passable, though quite traditional, comedy, but no trace of the peculiar element, presently to be described as the dominant note of treatment inThe Old Wives' Tale.[992]Fröhliche Wissenschaft, p. 109 f. So in hisGeburt der Tragödie, p. 89, speaking of the prologue as used by Euripides, which told in advance the action of the play, Nietzsche asserts that the Athenians were less interested in the plot than in the pathos of situations and the rhetoric of the players.[993]"The romantic play, the English Farsa, may be called in a great measure his discovery."Shakespeare's Predecessors, p. 580.[994]"A matter in which he certainly anticipated Marlowe,"Biog. Chron.II. 151.[995]Ed. Shakespeare Society, 1841, p. 52.[996]Peele is not of the extreme group whose feats in diction remind one of what Dr. Johnson said about the metaphysical poets, that "their wish was only to say what they hoped had never been said before."[997]Gosson, in a well-known passage, puts brave language first among dramatic attractions: "sweetness of words, fitness of epithets, with metaphors, allegories...."[998]Lämmerhirt counts nearly 84 per cent of the verses in theArraignment of Parisas rhymed;David and Bethsabehas less than 7 per cent, andThe Battle of Alcazarbarely 3 per cent.[999]The diction ofThe Old Wives' Talediffers from Lyly's comic prose much as Nashe's style in his pamphlets differs from the periods of Lyly'sEuphues.[1000]Ed. W. C. Hazlitt, Roxburgh Library, 1869, p. 145.[1001]See the song inAppius, "Hope so and hap so."—InMisogonus, the Vice appears as a domestic fool.[1002]Compare the French and broken English inThree Lords and Three Ladies of London, the dialect of Boban the Scot in Greene'sJames IV., and the inevitable Welshman.[1003]Das Schauspiel im Schauspiel, Wien and Leipzig, 1896.[1004]"A newmotiv," says Schwab. Fleay (work quoted, I. 266) thinksThe Old Wives' Talefairly parodies the induction inJames IV.[1005]See a similar bit of horse-play inWily Beguiled.[1006]The delicate irony of later triflings with romance—as in Wieland'sOberon—is, of course, quite out of the question.[1007]SeeEnglish Fairy Tales, J. Jacobs, edition of 1898, pp. 243, 245. A monograph could be written on the folk-lore of this play, where, it is to be conjectured, Peele has followed no single tale, but has combined parts of separate stories, and flung in bits of rhyme and fragments of superstition, as fancy bade him.[1008]English Fairy Tales, p. 104. This theme of theThankful Deadis extremely common. It is found in an old English romance,Sir Amadace, and has been treated by Max Hippe, in Herrig'sArchiv, Vol. LXXXI, p. 141.[1009]Jacobs,English Fairy Tales, Notes, p. 252. See also Frazer'sGolden Bough.[1010]Annals of Stage, etc., III. 197.[1011]Eng. Dram. Lit.I. 372.[1012]Shakespeare's Predecessors, p. 563 ff. Mr. Jacobs thinks that both poets went to folk-lore for their materials.Childe Rowlandis the probable source.[1013]It is entered on the Stationers' Registers to Raphe Hancock, April 16, 1595,the owlde wifes tale. Cf. "an olde wives tale," Greene,Groatsw.(Grosart XII. 119).—Gen. Ed.[1014]G. P. Untersuchungen, etc., Rostock, 1862, pp. 62 ff.[1015]Biogr. Mem. of the late Jos. Warton, DD., London, 1806, p. 398.[1016]Metrische Untersuchungen zu George Peele, in theArchiv fur das Studium d. neueren Spracben, etc. (1890), LXXXV. 279.

[989]"To the Gentlemen Students of both Universities," prefixed to Greene'sMenaphon, a well-known passage. Little, if anything, can be made of Meres when (Haslewood, II., 153) he couples Peele now with Ariosto, now, as tragical poet, with Apollodorus Tarsensis. He does not name Peele among the writers of comedy. Later, inHave with You to Saffron Walden(Grosart, III. 196), Nashe, with no mention of Peele, concedes to Greene mastery, above all the craft, in "plotting of plaies." This dramatic art of words, by the way, must not be confused with Euphuistic feats. Greene, Nashe, even Harvey, turned with Sidney against mere "playing with words and idle similies," and Peele is anything but a follower of Guevara.

[990]Merrie conceited Jests of George Peele, Gentleman, sometimes a Student in Oxford Wherein is shewed the course of his life, how he lived: a man very well knowne in the Citie of London and elsewhere....There was an edition in 1607, hardly ten years after Peele's death.

[991]The Looking Glasse for London and Englandhas some boisterous comedy, but no humour. InGeorge-a-Greene, good play that it is, the ballad material is taken quite seriously. InFriar Bacon and Friar Bungaythere is exquisite idyllic work, a dash of passable, though quite traditional, comedy, but no trace of the peculiar element, presently to be described as the dominant note of treatment inThe Old Wives' Tale.

[992]Fröhliche Wissenschaft, p. 109 f. So in hisGeburt der Tragödie, p. 89, speaking of the prologue as used by Euripides, which told in advance the action of the play, Nietzsche asserts that the Athenians were less interested in the plot than in the pathos of situations and the rhetoric of the players.

[993]"The romantic play, the English Farsa, may be called in a great measure his discovery."Shakespeare's Predecessors, p. 580.

[994]"A matter in which he certainly anticipated Marlowe,"Biog. Chron.II. 151.

[995]Ed. Shakespeare Society, 1841, p. 52.

[996]Peele is not of the extreme group whose feats in diction remind one of what Dr. Johnson said about the metaphysical poets, that "their wish was only to say what they hoped had never been said before."

[997]Gosson, in a well-known passage, puts brave language first among dramatic attractions: "sweetness of words, fitness of epithets, with metaphors, allegories...."

[998]Lämmerhirt counts nearly 84 per cent of the verses in theArraignment of Parisas rhymed;David and Bethsabehas less than 7 per cent, andThe Battle of Alcazarbarely 3 per cent.

[999]The diction ofThe Old Wives' Talediffers from Lyly's comic prose much as Nashe's style in his pamphlets differs from the periods of Lyly'sEuphues.

[1000]Ed. W. C. Hazlitt, Roxburgh Library, 1869, p. 145.

[1001]See the song inAppius, "Hope so and hap so."—InMisogonus, the Vice appears as a domestic fool.

[1002]Compare the French and broken English inThree Lords and Three Ladies of London, the dialect of Boban the Scot in Greene'sJames IV., and the inevitable Welshman.

[1003]Das Schauspiel im Schauspiel, Wien and Leipzig, 1896.

[1004]"A newmotiv," says Schwab. Fleay (work quoted, I. 266) thinksThe Old Wives' Talefairly parodies the induction inJames IV.

[1005]See a similar bit of horse-play inWily Beguiled.

[1006]The delicate irony of later triflings with romance—as in Wieland'sOberon—is, of course, quite out of the question.

[1007]SeeEnglish Fairy Tales, J. Jacobs, edition of 1898, pp. 243, 245. A monograph could be written on the folk-lore of this play, where, it is to be conjectured, Peele has followed no single tale, but has combined parts of separate stories, and flung in bits of rhyme and fragments of superstition, as fancy bade him.

[1008]English Fairy Tales, p. 104. This theme of theThankful Deadis extremely common. It is found in an old English romance,Sir Amadace, and has been treated by Max Hippe, in Herrig'sArchiv, Vol. LXXXI, p. 141.

[1009]Jacobs,English Fairy Tales, Notes, p. 252. See also Frazer'sGolden Bough.

[1010]Annals of Stage, etc., III. 197.

[1011]Eng. Dram. Lit.I. 372.

[1012]Shakespeare's Predecessors, p. 563 ff. Mr. Jacobs thinks that both poets went to folk-lore for their materials.Childe Rowlandis the probable source.

[1013]It is entered on the Stationers' Registers to Raphe Hancock, April 16, 1595,the owlde wifes tale. Cf. "an olde wives tale," Greene,Groatsw.(Grosart XII. 119).—Gen. Ed.

[1014]G. P. Untersuchungen, etc., Rostock, 1862, pp. 62 ff.

[1015]Biogr. Mem. of the late Jos. Warton, DD., London, 1806, p. 398.

[1016]Metrische Untersuchungen zu George Peele, in theArchiv fur das Studium d. neueren Spracben, etc. (1890), LXXXV. 279.

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