Shakspere and Montaigne | Page 4

At the side of
his other wares, the pedlar, eager for profit, offered the new and
much-desired achievements of the Muse to the dwellers in the smallest
village, in the loneliest farm.
Moreover, the cunning stationers had their own men, to whom they lent
'a dossen groates worth of ballads.' If these hucksters--as Henry Chettle
relates--proved thrifty, they were advanced to the position of 'prety
(petty) chapman,' 'able to spred more pamphlets by the State forbidden,
then all the bookesellers in London; for only in this Citie is straight
search, abroad smale suspition, especially of such petty pedlars.' [2]
Chettle speaks strongly against these 'intruders in the printings misserie,
by whome that excelent Art is not smally slandered, the government of

the State not a little blemished, nor Religion in the least measure
hindred.'
Besides the profit to be derived from the Press by the malcontent
travelling scholars, there was yet another way of acquiring the means of
sustenance and of making use of mental culture; and in it there existed
the further advantage of independence from grumbling publishers. This
was the Stage. For it no great preparations were necessary, nor was any
capital required. A few chairs, some boards; in every barn there was
room. Wherever one man was found who could read, there were ten
eager to listen.
A most characteristic drama, 'The Return from Parnassus,' depicts some
poor scholars who turn away from pitiless Cambridge, of which one of
them says--
For had not Cambridge been to me unkind,
I had not turn'd to gall a
milky mind. [3]
After having long since completed their studies, they go to London to
seek for the most modest livelihood. Bitter experience had taught these
disciples of learning that the employment for which they waited could
only be gained by bribery; and bribe they certainly could not, owing to
their want of means. Some of them already show a true Werther-like
yearning for solitude:--
We will be gone unto the downs of Kent....
STUDIOSO.
So shall we shun the company of men,
That grows more hateful as
the world grows old.
We'll teach the murm'ring brooks in tears to
flow,
And sleepy rocks to wail our passed woe. [4]
Another utters sentiments of grief, coming near the words of despair of
Faust. There is a tone in them of what the Germans call

Weltschmerz:--

Curs'd be our thoughts, whene'er they dream of hope,
Bann'd be those
haps that henceforth flatter us,
When mischief dogs us still and still
for aye,
From our first birth until our burying day. [5]
In the difficult choice of a calling which is to save them from need and
misery, these beggar-students also think of the stage:--
And must the basest trade yield us relief?
So Philomusus, in a woebegone tone, asks his comrade Studioso; and
the latter looks with the following envious words upon the players
whose prospects must have been brighter and more enticing than those
of the learned poor scholars:--
England affords those glorious vagabonds,
That carried erst their
fardles on their backs,
Coursers to ride on through the gazing streets,

Sweeping it in their glaring satin suits,
And pages to attend their
masterships:
With mouthing words that better wits have framed,

They purchase lands, and now esquires are made. [6]
Shakspere, as well as Alleyn, bought land with the money earned by
their art. For many, the stage was the port of refuge to which they fled
from the lonely habitations of erudition, where they--
... sit now immur'd within their private cells,
Drinking a long lank
watching candle's smoke,
Spending the marrow of their flow'ring age

In fruitless poring on some worm-eat leaf. [7]
Many of these beggar students sought a livelihood by joining the
players. That which the poor scholar had read and learnt in books old
and new; all that he had heard from bold, adventurous warriors and
seamen returning from foreign lands or recently discovered islands; in
short, everything calculated to awaken interest and applause among the
great mass, was with feverish haste put on the stage, and, in order to
render it more palatable, mixed with a goodly dose of broad humour.
The same irreconcilable spirit of the Reformation, which would not

tolerate any saint's image in the places of worship, also destroyed the
liking for Miracle Plays. The tendency of the time was to turn away
from mysteries and abstract notions, and to draw in art and poetry
nearer to real life. Where formerly 'Miracles and Moralities' were the
delight of men, and Biblical utterances, put in the mouth of prophets
and saints, served to edify the audience, there the wordy warfare and
the fisticuffs exchanged between the Mendicant Friar and the Seller of
Indulgences [8] or Pardoner, whose profane doings were satirised on
the stage, became now the subject of popular enjoyment and laughter.
Every question of the day was boldly handled, and put