Plays and Puritans | Page 9

Charles Kingsley
(as well as against
Pictorial) was the simple fact that it came from Italy. We must fairly
put ourselves into the position of an honest Englishman of the
seventeenth century before we can appreciate the huge praejudicium
which must needs have arisen in his mind against anything which could
claim a Transalpine parentage. Italy was then not merely the stronghold
of Popery. That in itself would have been a fair reason for others beside
Puritans saying, 'If the root be corrupt, the fruit will be also: any
expression of Italian thought and feeling must be probably
unwholesome while her vitals are being eaten out by an abominable
falsehood, only half believed by the masses, and not believed at all by
the higher classes, even those of the priesthood; but only kept up for
their private aggrandisement.' But there was more than hypothesis in
favour of the men who might say this; there was universal, notorious,
shocking fact. It was a fact that Italy was the centre where sins were
invented worthy of the doom of the Cities of the Plain, and from
whence they spread to all nations who had connection with her. We

dare give no proof of this assertion.
The Italian morals and the Italian lighter literature of the sixteenth and
of the beginning of the seventeenth century were such, that one is
almost ashamed to confess that one has looked into them, although the
painful task is absolutely necessary for one who wishes to understand
either the European society of the time or the Puritan hatred of the
drama. Non ragionam di lor: ma guarda e passa.
It is equally a fact that these vices were imported into England by the
young men who, under pretence of learning the Italian polish, travelled
to Italy. From the days of Gabriel Harvey and Lord Oxford, about the
middle of Elizabeth's reign, this foul tide had begun to set toward
England, gaining an additional coarseness and frivolity in passing
through the French Court (then an utter Gehenna) in its course
hitherward; till, to judge by Marston's 'Satires,' certain members of the
higher classes had, by the beginning of James's reign, learnt nearly all
which the Italians had to teach them. Marston writes in a rage, it is true;
foaming, stamping, and vapouring too much to escape the suspicion of
exaggeration; yet he dared not have published the things which he does,
had he not fair ground for some at least of his assertions. And Marston,
be it remembered, was no Puritan, but a playwright, and Ben Jonson's
friend.
Bishop Hall, in his 'Satires,' describes things bad enough, though not so
bad as Marston does; but what is even more to the purpose, he wrote,
and dedicated to James, a long dissuasive against the fashion of running
abroad. Whatever may be thought of the arguments of 'Quo vadis?--a
Censure of Travel,' its main drift is clear enough. Young gentlemen, by
going to Italy, learnt to be fops and profligates, and probably Papists
into the bargain. These assertions there is no denying. Since the days of
Lord Oxford, most of the ridiculous and expensive fashions in dress
had come from Italy, as well as the newest modes of sin; and the
playwrights themselves make no secret of the fact. There is no need to
quote instances; they are innumerable; and the most serious are not fit
to be quoted, scarcely the titles of the plays in which they occur; but
they justify almost every line of Bishop Hall's questions (of which
some of the strongest expressions have necessarily been omitted):-
'What mischief have we among us which we have not borrowed?
'To begin at our skin: who knows not whence we had the variety of our

vain disguises? As if we had not wit enough to be foolish unless we
were taught it. These dresses, being constant in their mutability, show
us our masters. What is it that we have not learned of our neighbours,
save only to be proud good-cheap? whom would it not vex to see how
that the other sex hath learned to make anticks and monsters of
themselves? Whence come their (absurd fashions); but the one from
some ill-shaped dame of France, the other from the worse-minded
courtesans of Italy? Whence else learned they to daub these mud-walls
with apothecaries' mortar; and those high washes, which are so
cunningly licked on that the wet napkin of Phryne should he deceived?
Whence the frizzled and powdered bushes of their borrowed hair? As if
they were ashamed of the head of God's making, and proud of the
tire-woman's. Where learned we that devilish art and practice of duel,
wherein men seek honour in blood, and are taught the ambition of
being glorious butchers of men? Where had we that luxurious delicacy
in
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