The name of this Rhadamanthus of the birch occurs twice in entries of Elizabeth's paymaster, as receiving money for plays acted before her; and a certain proficiency as actors possessed by students of St. John's College at Oxford is ascribed to training given by old Mulcaster at the Merchant Taylors' school.

But no one of the great English public schools has enjoyed so long a fame in this regard as Westminster. According to Staunton, in his _Great schools of England_, Elizabeth desired to have plays acted by the boys, "Quo juventus turn actioni tum p.r.o.nunciationi decenti melius se a.s.suescat," that the youth might be better trained in proper bearing and p.r.o.nunciation. The noted Bishop Atterbury wrote to a friend, Trelawney, Bishop of Winchester, concerning a performance here of Trelawney's son: "I had written to your lordship again on Sat.u.r.day, but that I spent the evening in seeing _Phormio_ acted in the college chamber, where, in good truth, my lord, Mr. Trelawney played Antipho extremely well, and some parts he performed admirably."

In 1695, Dryden's play of Cleomens was acted. Archbishop Markham, head-master one hundred years ago, gave a set of scenes designed by Garrick. In our own day, Dr. Williamson, head-master in 1828, drew attention in a pamphlet to the proper costuming of the performers; and when, in 1847, there was a talk of abolishing the plays, a memorial signed by six hundred old "Westminsters" was sent in, stating it as their "firm and deliberate belief, founded on experience and reflection, that the abolition of the Westminster play cannot fail to prove prejudicial to the interests and prosperity of the school." At the present time the best plays of Plautus and Terence are performed at Christmas in the school dormitory.

It all became excessive, and in Cromwell's time, with the accession of the Puritans to power, like a hundred other brilliant traits of the old English life from whose abuse had grown riot, it was purged away.

Ben Jonson, in _The Staple of Newes_, puts into the mouth of a sour character a complaint which no doubt was becoming common in that day, and was probably well enough justified.

"They make all their schollers play-boyes! Is't not a fine sight to see all our children made enterluders? Doe we pay our money for this? Wee send them to learne their grammar and their Terence and they learne their play-bookes. Well they talk we shall have no more parliaments, G.o.d blesse us!

But an we have, I hope Zeale-of-the-land Buzzy, and my gossip Rabby Trouble-Truth, will start up and see we have painfull good ministers to keepe schoole, and catechise our youth; and not teach 'em to speake plays and act fables of false newes."

Studying this rather unexplored subject, one gets many a glimpse of famous characters in interesting relations. Erasmus says that Sir Thomas More, "adolescens, comoediolas et scripsit et egit," and while a page with Archbishop Moreton, as plays were going on in the palace during the Christmas holidays, he would often, showing his schoolboy accomplishment, step on the stage without previous notice, and exhibit a part of his own which gave more satisfaction than the whole performance besides.

In Leland's report of the theatricals where King James behaved so ungraciously, "the machinery of the plays," he says, "was chiefly conducted by Mr. Jones, who undertook to furnish them with rare devices, but performed very little to what was expected." This is believed to have been Inigo Jones, who soon was to gain great fame as manager of the Court masques. The entertainment was probably ingenious and splendid enough, but every one took his cue from the king's pettishness, and poor "Mr. Jones" had to bear his share of the ill-humour.

In 1629 a Latin play was performed at Cambridge before the French amba.s.sador. Among the student spectators sat a youth of twenty, with long locks parted in the middle falling upon his doublet, and the brow and eyes of the G.o.d Apollo, who curled his lip in scorn, and signalised himself by his stormy discontent. Here is his own description of his conduct: "I was a spectator; they thought themselves gallant men, and I thought them fools; they made sport, and I laughed; they misp.r.o.nounced, and I misliked; and to make up the Atticism, they were out and I hissed." It was the young Milton, in the year in which he wrote the _Hymn on the Nativity._

Do I need to cite other precedents for the procedure at the Sweetbrier? I grant you it cannot be done from the practice of American colleges. The strictest form of Puritanism stamped itself too powerfully upon our New England inst.i.tutions at their foundation, and has affected too deeply the newer seminaries elsewhere in the country, to make it possible that the drama should be anything but an outlaw here. Nevertheless, at Harvard, Yale, and probably every considerable college of the country, the drama has for a long time led a clandestine life in secret student societies, persecuted or at best ignored by the college government,--an unwholesome weed that deserved no tending, if it was not to be at once uprooted.

I do not advocate, Fastidiosus, a return to the ancient state of things, which I doubt not was connected with many evils; but is there not reason to think a partial revival of the old customs would be worth while? It was not for mirth merely that the old professors and teachers countenanced the drama. To the editors of _David's Harp_ I have sent this pa.s.sage from Milton, n.o.blest among the Puritans, and have besought them to lay it before their consistory: "Whether eloquent and graceful incitements, instructing and bettering the nation at all opportunities, not only in pulpits, but after another persuasive method, in theatres, porches, or whatever place or way, may not win upon the people to receive both recreation and instruction, let them in authority consult." The German schoolmasters and professors superintended their boys in the representation of religious plays to instruct them in the theology which they thought all-important; in the performance of Aristophanes and Lucian, Plautus and Terence, mainly in the hope of improving them in Greek and Latin: and when the plays were in the vernacular, it was often to train their taste, manners, and elocution. Erasmus and the Oxford and Cambridge authorities certainly had the same ideas as the Continental scholars.

So the English schoolmasters in general, who also managed in the plays to give useful hints in all ways. For instance, Nicholas Udal, in the ingenious letter in _Ralph Roister Doister_, which is either loving or insulting according to the position of a few commas or periods, must have meant to enforce the doctrine of Chaucer's couplet:

"He that pointeth ill, A good sentence may oft spill."

Madame de Maintenon was persuaded that amus.e.m.e.nts of this sort have a value, "imparting grace, teaching a polite p.r.o.nunciation, and cultivating the memory"; and Racine commends the management of St.

Cyr, where "the hours of recreation, so to speak, are put to profit by making the pupils recite the finest pa.s.sages of the best poets." Here is the dramatic instinct, almost universal among young people, and which has almost no chance to exercise itself, except in the performance of the farces to which we are treated in "private theatricals." Can it not be put to a better use? It would be a c.u.mbrous matter to represent or listen to the _Aulularia_, or the _Miles Gloriosus_, or the [Greek: Eirhene], in which Dr. Dee and his Scarabeus figured so successfully. The world is turned away from that[1]; but here is the magnificent wealth of our own old dramatic literature, in which is contained the richest poetry of our language. It was never intended to be read, but to be heard in living presentment. For the most part it lies almost unknown, except in the case of Shakespeare, and him the world knows far too little. Who does not feel what a treasure in the memory are pa.s.sages of fine poetry committed early in life?

[Footnote 1: The developments of the last forty years show this judgment to be erroneous.]

Who can doubt the value to the bearing, the fine address, the literary culture of a youth of either s.e.x that might come from the careful study and the attempt to render adequately a fine conception of some golden writer of our golden age, earnestly made, if only partially successful?

I say only partially successful, but can you doubt the capacity of our young people to render in a creditable way the conceptions of a great poet? Let us look at the precedents again. When Mademoiselle de Caylus, in her account of St. Cyr, speaks of the representation of _Andromaque_, she writes, "It was only too well done." And prim Madame de Maintenon wrote to Racine: "Our young girls have played it so well they shall play it no more"; begging him to write some moral or historic poem. Hence came the beautiful masterpiece _Esther_, to which the young ladies seem to have done the fullest justice, for listen to the testimony. The brilliant Madame de Lafayette wrote: "There was no one, great or small, that did not want to go, and this mere drama of a convent became the most serious affair of the court."

That the admiration was not merely feigned because it was the fashion, here is the testimony of a woman of the finest taste, Madame de Sevigne, given in her intimate letters to her daughter, who, in these confidences, spared no one who deserved criticism:

The king and all the Court are charmed with _Esther_. The prince has wept over it. I cannot tell you how delightful the piece is. There is so perfect a relation between the music, the verses, the songs, and the personages, that one seeks nothing more.

The airs set to the words have a beauty which cannot be borne without tears, and according to one's taste is the measure of approbation given to the piece. The king addressed me and said, "Madame, I am sure you have been pleased." I, without being astonished, answered, "Sire, I am charmed. What I feel is beyond words." The king said to me, "Racine has much genius." I said to him, "Sire, he has much, but in truth these young girls have much too; they enter into the subject as if they had done nothing else." "Ah! as to that," said he, "it is true." And then his Majesty went away and left me the object of envy.

Racine himself says in the Preface to _Esther_:

The young ladies have declaimed and sung this work with so much modesty and piety, it has not been possible to keep it shut up in the secrecy of the inst.i.tution; so that a diversion of young people has become a subject of interest for all the Court;

and what is still more speaking, he wrote at once the _Athalie_, "la chef d'oeuvre de la poesie francaise," in the judgment of the French critics, to be rendered by the some young tyros. When, in 1556, in Christ Church Hall, _Palamon and Arcite_ was finished, outspoken Queen Bess, with her frank eyes full of pleasure, declared "that Palamon must have been in love indeed. Arcite was a right martial knight, having a swart and manly countenance, yet like a Venus clad in armour." To the son of the dean of Christ Church, the boy of fourteen, who played Emilie in the dress of a princess, her compliment was still higher. It was a present of eight guineas,--for the penurious sovereign, perhaps, the most emphatic expression of approval possible.

Shall I admit for a moment that our American young folks have less grace and sensibility than the French girls, and the Oxford youths who pleased Elizabeth? Your face now, Fastidiosus, wears a frown like that of Rhadamanthus; but I remember our Hasty-Pudding days, when you played the part of a queen, and behaved in your disguise like Thor, in the old saga, when he went to Riesenheim in the garb of Freya, and honest giants, like Thrym, were frightened back the whole width of the hall. Well, I do not censure it, and I do not believe you recall it with a sigh; and the reminiscence emboldens me to ask you whether it would not be still better if our dear Harvard, say (the steam of the pudding infects me through twenty years), among the many new wrinkles she in her old age so appropriately contracts, should devote an evening of Commencement-time to a performance, by the students, under the sanction and direction of professors, of some fine old masterpiece?

At our little Sweetbrier we have young men and young women together, as at Oberlin, Antioch, and Ma.s.sachusetts normal schools. I have no doubt our Hermione, when we gave the _Winter's Tale_, had all the charm of Mademoiselle de Veillanne, who played Esther at St. Cyr. I have no doubt our Portia, in the _Merchant of Venice_, in the trial scene, her fine stature and figure robed in the doctor's long silk gown, which fell to her feet, and her abundant hair gathered out of sight into an ample velvet cap, so that she looked like a most wise and fair young judge, recited

"The quality of mercy is not strained,"

in a voice as thrilling as that in which Mademoiselle de Glapion gave the part of Mordecai. I am sure Queen Elizabeth would think our young cavaliers, well-knit and brown from the baseball-field, "right martial knights, having swart and manly countenances." If she could have seen our Antoninus, when we gave the act from Ma.s.singer's most sweet and tender tragedy of the _Virgin Martyr_, or the n.o.ble Caesar, in our selections from Beaumont and Fletcher's _False One_, she would have been as ready with the guineas as she was in the case of the son of the dean of Christ Church.

Our play at the last Commencement was _Much Ado about Nothing_.

It was selected six months before, and studied with the material in mind, the students in the literature cla.s.s, available for the different parts. What is there, thought I, in Beatrice--sprightliness covering intense womanly feeling--that our vivacious, healthful Ruth Brown cannot master; and what in Bened.i.c.k, her masculine counterpart, beyond the power of Moore to conceive and render? It is chiefly girlish beauty and simple sweetness that Hero requires, so she shall be Edith Grey. Claudio, Leonato, Don John, Pedro,--we have clean-limbed, presentable fellows that will look and speak them all well; and as for lumbering Dogberry, Abbot, with his fine sense of the ludicrous, will carry it out in the best manner. A dash of the pencil here and there through the lines where Shakespeare was suiting his own time, and not the world as it was to be after three hundred refining years, and the marking out of a few scenes that could be spared from the action, and the play was ready; trimmed a little, but with not a whit taken from its sparkle or pathos, and all its lovelier poetry untouched.

Then came long weeks of drill. In the pa.s.sage,

"O my lord, When you went onward to this ended action, I looked upon her with a soldier's eye," etc.,

Claudio caught the fervour and softness at last, and seemed (it would have pleased Queen Bess better than Madame de Main tenon) like Palamon, in love indeed. Ursula and Hero rose easily to the delicate poetry of the pa.s.sages that begin,

"The pleasantest angling is to see the fish Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,"

and

"Look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs."

Pedro got to perfection his turn and gesture in

"The wolves have preyed; and look, the gentle day, Before the wheels of Phoebus, round about Dapples the drowsy east with spots of gray."

With the rough comedy of Dogberry and the watchmen, that foils so well the sad tragedy of poor Hero's heart-breaking, and contrasts in its blunders with the diamond-cut-diamond dialogue of Bened.i.c.k and Beatrice, there was less difficulty. From first to last, it was engrossing labour, as hard for the trainer as the trained, yet still delightful work; for what is a conscientious manager, but an artist striving to perfect a beautiful dramatic picture? The different personages are the pieces for his mosaic, who, in emphasis, tone, gesture, by-play, must be carved and filed until there are no flaws in the joining, and the shading is perfect. But all was ready at last, from the roar of Dogberry at the speech of Conrade,

"Away! you're an a.s.s! you're an a.s.s!"

to the scarcely articulate agony of Hero when she sinks to the earth at her lover's sudden accusation,

"O Heavens! how am I beset!

What kind of catechising call you this?"

I fancy you ask, rather sneeringly, as to our scenery and stage adjuncts. Once, in the great court theatre at Munich, I saw Wagner's _Rheingold._ The king was present, and all was done for splendour that could be done in that centre of art. When the curtain rose, the whole great river Rhine seemed to be flowing before you across the stage, into the side of whose flood you looked as one looks through the gla.s.s side of an aquarium. At the bottom were rocks in picturesque piles; and, looking up through the tide to the top, as a diver might, the spectator saw the surface of the river, with the current rippling forward upon it, and the sunlight just touching the waves. Through the flood swam the daughters of the Rhine, sweeping fair arms backward as they floated, their drapery trailing heavy behind them, darting straight as arrows, or winding sinuously, from bottom to top, from side to side, singing wildly as the Lorelei. The scene changed, and it was the depths of the earth, red-glowing and full of gnomes. And a third time, after a change, you saw from mountain-tops the city which the giants had built in the heavens for the G.o.ds,--a glittering dome or pinnacle now and then breaking the line of white palaces, now and then a superb cloud floating before it, until, at last, a mist seemed to rise from valleys below, wrapping it little by little, till all became invisible in soft gradations of vapoury gloom. I shall never again see anything like that, where an art-loving court subsidises heavily scene-painter and machinist; but for all that, is it wise to have only sneers for what can be brought to pa.s.s with more modest means? Our hall at Sweetbrier is as large as the Christ Church refectory, and handsomely proportioned and decorated. A wide stage runs across the end. We found some ample curtains of crimson, set off with a heavy yellow silken border of quite rich material, which had been used to drape a window that had disappeared in the course of repairs. This, stretched from side to side, made a wall of brilliant colour against the gray tint of the room; and possibly Roger Ascham, seeing our audience-room before and after the hanging of it, might have had a thought of Antwerp. The stage is the one thing in the world privileged to deceive. The most devoted reader of Ruskin can tolerate shams here. The costumes were devised with constant reference to Charles Knight, and, to the eye, were of the gayest silk, satin, and velvet. There was, moreover, a profusion of jewels, which, for all one could see, sparkled with all the l.u.s.tre of the great Florentine diamond, as you see it suspended above the imperial crowns in the Austrian Schatz-Kammer at Vienna. The contrasts of tint were well attended to. Pedro was in white and gold, Claudio in blue and silver, Leonato in red; while our handsome Bened.i.c.k, a youth of dark Italian favour, in doublet of orange, a broad black velvet sash, and scarlet cloak, shone like a bird of paradise.

There was a garden-scene, in the foreground of which, where the eyes of the spectators were near enough to discriminate, were rustic baskets with geraniums, fuchsias, and cactuses, to give a southern air. In the middle distance, armfuls of honeysuckle in full bloom were brought in and twined about white pilasters. There was an arbour overhung with heavy ma.s.ses of the trumpet-creeper. A tall column or two surmounted with graceful garden-vases were covered about with raspberry-vines, the stems of brilliant scarlet showing among the green. A thick clump of dogwood, whose large white blossoms could easily pa.s.s for magnolias, gave background. The green was lit with showy colour of every sort,--handfuls of nasturtiums, now and then a peony, larkspurs for blue, patches of poppies, and in the garden-vases high on the pillars (the imposition!) cl.u.s.ters of pink hollyhocks which were meant to pa.s.s for oleander-blossoms, and did, still, wet with the drops of the afternoon shower, which had not dried away when all was in place. When it comes to rain and dewdrops, dear Dr. Holmes, a "fresh-water college" has an advantage. First, it was given under gas; then, the hall being darkened, a magnesium-light gave a moon-like radiance, in which the dew on the buds glistened, and the mignonette seemed to exhale a double perfume, and a dreamy melody of Mendelssohn sung by two sweet girl-voices floated out about the "pleached bower,"

like a song of nightingales. Then toward the end came the scene of the chapel and Hero's tomb. No lovelier form was ever sculptured than that of the beautiful Queen Louisa of Prussia, as she lies in the mausoleum at Charlottenburg, carved by Rauch, asleep on the tomb in white purity. To the eye, our Hero's tomb was just such a block of spotless marble seen against a background of black, with just such a fair figure rec.u.mbent upon it, whose palms and lids and draping the chisel of an artist seemed to have folded and closed and hung,--all idealised again by the magic of the magnesium-light. As the crimson curtain was drawn apart, an organ sounded, and a far-away choir sent into the hush the _Ave Verum_ of Mozart, low-breathed and solemn.

It was not Munich, Fastidiosus. They were American young men and young women, with no resources but those of a rural college, and such as their own taste and the woods and gardens could furnish; but the young men were shapely and intelligent, and the young women had grace and brightness; their hearts were in it, and in the result surely there was a measure of "sweetness and light" for them and those who beheld.

You fear it may beget in young minds a taste for the theatre, now hopelessly given over in great part to abominations. Why not a taste that will lift them above the abominations? Old Joachim Greff, schoolmaster at Dessau in 1545, who has a place in the history of German poetry, has left it on record that he trained his scholars to render n.o.ble dramas in the conscientious hope "that a little spark of art might be kept alive in the schools under the ashes of barbarism."

"And this little spark," says Gervinus, "did these bold men, indeed, through two hundred years, keep honestly until it could again break out into flame." Instead of fearing the evil result, rather would I welcome a revival of what Warton calls "this very liberal exercise."

Were Joachim Greffs masters in our high schools and in the English chairs in our colleges, we might now and then catch a glimpse of precious things at present hidden away in never-opened store-houses, and see something done toward the development of a taste that should drive out the _opera-bouffe_.

Here, at the end, Fastidiosus, is what I now shape in mind. Hippolyte Taine, in one of his rich descriptions, thus pictures the performance of a masque:

The _elite_ of the kingdom is there upon the stage, the ladies of the court, the great lords, the queen, in all the splendour of their rank and their pride, in diamonds, earnest to display their luxury so that all the brilliant features of the nation's life are concentrated in the price they give, like gems in a casket.

What adornment! What profusion of magnificence!

What variety! What metamorphoses! Gold sparkles, jewels emit light, the purple draping imprisons within its rich folds the radiance of the l.u.s.tres.

The light is reflected from shining silk. Threads of pearl are spread in rows upon brocades sewed with thread of silver. Golden embroideries intertwine in capricious arabesques, costumes, jewels, appointments so extraordinarily rich that the stage seems a mine of glory.

The fashionable world of our time has little taste for such pleasures.

This old splendour we cannot produce; but the words which the magnificent lords and ladies spoke to one another as they blazed, were those that make up the Poetry of Fletcher's _Faithful Shepherdess_, Ben Jonson's _Sad Shepherd_, and, finest of all, the _Comus_ of Milton. They are the most matchless frames of language in which sweet thoughts and fancies were ever set. After all, before this higher beauty, royal pomp even seems only a coa.r.s.e excrescence, and all would be better if the accessories of the rendering were very simple. Already in my mind is the grove for _Comus_ designed; the ma.s.s of green which shall stand in the centre, the blasted trunk that shall rise for contrast to one side, and the vine that shall half conceal the splintered summit, the banks of wild-flowers that shall be transferred, the light the laboratory shall yield us to make all seem as if seen through enchanter's incense. I have in mind the sweet-voiced girl who shall be the lost lady and sing the invocation to Sabrina; the swart youth who shall be the magician and say the lines,