what is psychologically appropriate to a given character—requires that, as George Whetstone puts it, 'grave old men should instruct, yonge men should show the imperfections of youth, strumpets should be lascivious, boyes unhappy, and clownes should be disorderly'. But whether the action be merry or mournful, grave or lascivious, the ultimate object is edification, even as the bee sucks honey from flowers and weeds alike. 'By the rewarde of the good, the good are encowraged in well doinge; and with the scowrge of the lewde, the lewde are feared from evil attempts.' Comedy, no doubt, aims at delight, but it is a delight which, on the Horatian principle, is mingled with the useful. This appears to have been the especial theme of the Play of Plays and Pastimes, in which the actors essayed their own defence on the boards of the Theatre. Unfortunately this piece is only known by Gosson's unfriendly account of its plot in Playes Confuted.[1] It was in the form of an allegorical morality, in which was shown the dependence of Life on Delight and Recreation as a protection from Glut and Tediousness, and how Zeal, in order to govern Life aright, must be reduced to Moderate Zeal and work hand in hand with Delight, using comedies for which it is prescribed 'that the matter be purged, deformities blazed, sinne rebuked, honest mirth intermingled, and fitte time for the hearing of the same appointed'. It is the note of humanism, again, which is prominent in the group of critical writings of which the first and most important is Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poetry (c. 1583). It is reasonable to suppose that this treatise had its origin in the train of ideas awakened by the Puritan outcries. Gosson had dedicated The Schoole of Abuse to Sidney, and as Gabriel Harvey told Spenser, was 'for hys labor scorned; if at leaste it be in the goodnesse of that nature to scorne'. Certainly the Defence can hardly be regarded as a direct contribution to the controversy. Sidney was not particularly concerned to uphold the contemporary stage, and occupied himself rather with answering a general attack upon poetry contained in The Schoole of Abuse, which had been merely incidental to Gosson's principal argument. But in the course of his discussion he comes to examine tragedy and comedy as branches of imaginative literature, and the definitions which he frames are conceived once more in the full spirit of humanism. He speaks of 'high and excellent tragedy, that openeth the greatest wounds, and showeth forth the ulcers that are covered with tissue; that maketh kings fear to be tyrants and tyrants manifest their tyrannical humors; that with stirring the
- ↑ Gosson, P. C. 201.
