Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/371

 Rh child of the Renaissance, whose playwrights wrought under the inspiration of the classical drama of Greece and Rome.

It is to be noted, in the first place, that the Elizabethan theatre was before all things a popular institution. Now if we consider on the one hand the character of the plays presented, and on the other the average culture of the people, that popularity is surprising. It seems to me the explanation is to be found in the natural aptitude of the English people for the drama, an aptitude which shows itself throughout our history. There were hundreds of dramas extant in the Elizabethan time which are now lost to us; if that is so, it is highly probable there were many more belonging to an earlier period similarly lost. The few morality-plays and interludes that have come down to us do not represent the pre-Elizabethan drama. There was no reason for the preservation of obsolete plays; in the more conscious days of Elizabeth’s time, the old plays were rejected and scorned from the art standpoint, and the MSS decayed or were destroyed. The few that have survived probably did so by selection, and so are not representative. The same people who in their youth listened absorbed at the performance of interludes and moralities, in middle-age saw them caricatured in the humours of Bottom and his fellows. But the satire of the interlude in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is levelled at the player rather than the old plays; it is the gibe of the professional at the amateur. All over England before Shakespeare’s time there were companies of players, and they were all amateurs; servants attached to the great houses of the land, who, with allowances for caricature, rehearsed plays in the manner of Bottom and Quince and Snug, and on festive occasions were admitted into the great houses and gave their performances in presence of the company assembled. These players, too, were permitted, by license of their masters, to visit neighbouring towns, and perform there for the sake of the rewards bestowed on them.