CHAP. VI. Outline of the plot of IGSORANUS. The dénouement The final scene. James delighted with the per Loruiance. tum una, Alphonso, quem dixi, vendidit; qui, quod careret liberis, illam non nisi quadrimulam pro filia sibi adoptavit sua; mihi vero, jam servus ejus, ne cuiquam vulgarem hoc, graviter interdixit. Celavi igitur; neque illam, post mortem Alphonsi heri, nisi jam primum video.' Such is the story which Bannacar now, for the first time, unfolds. The nurse, he further explains, had died on board the vessel; her name was-Ursula! The father's name was-Manlius!! The daughter's name was-Isabella!!! If any doubt still lingered in the mind of the listener, it was completely effaced when Bannacar produced an amber ornament bearing the initials A and I, in which Theodorus at once recognised a trinket that he had given to Isabella when a child, the letters being designed to symbolise her projected marriage with Antonius. This ornament Bannacar had himself removed from the person of the dying nurse. All his doubts and scruples being now removed, Theodorus is as anxious to see the nuptials of the lovers celebrated as he had before been adverse to their union. Everything terminates in the happiest manner. Ignoramus, on hearing a full explanation of the details from Trico, and being paid back his gold pieces, withdraws from all pretence at further interference. Bannacar and Trico are both praised for their conduct and handsomely rewarded. The last act, does not however conclude until Ignoramus has once more been made the sport of the audience, being unmercifully chaffed for his bad Latin by Vince, Dorothea's roguish page, who pins a 'fox's tail' to his back and hoots him from the stage. Cupes and Trico now come forward, rehearsing in epigrammatic dialogue the parts they have borne throughout the drama. Radiant with exultation at his success, each fills a goblet and drains it,-first calling upon one and all of the audience to do the like,-to the health of our lord THE KING, 'pius, felix, et semper augustus'. And Clare Hall rings forth applause as the curtain finally descends. There he sat, the pedant king, with his courtiers and the lights of the land' about him; and as the long drama unrolled, during a performance that extended over fully five hours', it was perceived with no little satisfaction both by the actors and the audience, that, so far at least as royalty was concerned, the piece had proved a decided success. We can picture to ourselves how he leered and laughed, until his fat sides shook and he was fain to lean on Somerset's' shoulder 1 Tabor states with respect to the second performance that it begun about 8 of the clock' and 'ended about one.' Cooper, Annals, 111 85. Fulke Greville, lord Brook, in his Five Years of King James (ed. 1613), p. 60, attributes James' visit to Somerset's persuasions. This for support, as Ignoramus fled from his intending assailants CHAPL or as Polla pursued her recalcitrant husband across the stage. In the selection of the performers, it is evident that not only The actor the best talent but the most influential, that is to say, the aristocratic, element in the university, had been carefully incorporated. The part of Ignoramus was played by Parkinson, a fellow of Clare Hall; Theodorus, by Hutchinson, another member of the same society; Antonius, by Holles (afterwards lord Holles) of Christ's; Rosabella, by Preston's good-looking pupil, Morgan, whom he had vainly striven to deter from such a part' and from all share in such a performance; the part of Surda, which the decorous Fairclough had declined, was taken by Compton of Queens',-afterwards earl of Northampton; that of Trico, by Lake of Clare Hall, afterwards secretary of state; Dulman was Towers, of Queens', afterwards bishop of Peterborough; Torcol was Bargrave of Clare Hall, afterwards dean of Canterbury; Bannacar was Love, afterwards master of Corpus. character of To say that the piece was coarse may seem superfluous, Greet when we consider that it was modelled on Plautus and that the pung. it was a composition of the seventeenth century,-of a time when, according to the testimony of Ben Jonson (given only nine years before) 'in dramatic poetry, nothing but ribaldry, profanation, blasphemy, all license of offence to God and man' was 'practised". Measured therefore by the standard of the age, Ignoramus probably scarcely seemed marked out for the special censure of the moralist, but it is impossible here to would further account for no ladies save those of the Howard family being present. 1 As regards abuses to which the assumption of such parts had given rise at Oxford sco Prynne, Histriomastix, p. 211. Thomas Gond (the son of Roger Goad) when giving, on onth, his account of the circumstances under which he refused to license the publication of the lis triomastir, did well remember that, as to his argument of the unlawfulness for a man to put on woman's apparel, he put Mr Prynne this ques tion: Suppo-e, Mr Prynue, you yourself, as a Christian, were perse- Sce Prynne's affirmation that it Preface to lolpone, in 1606, The clerical element or the actors. Milton's description of formances CHAP. VI. give any notion of the double-entendres, the équivoques, and the broad obscenities with which the original text abounds, and over which its Latin dress flung, in those days, a very imperfect veil'. Nor can we forget that most of those who took part in the performance were already consecrated to the clerical life, a feature which did not escape the observation. of the satirist from Oxford, where more stringency, in this respect, prevailed'. It is related that, some years after, when king James was at Castle Abbey, he recognised in the preacher in the pulpit the collegian who had so ably sustained the part of the sycophantic clerk of Ignoramus'. With facts for er like these before us, the justice and reasonableness of that Puritan aversion to which Milton, in after years, gave such pregnant expression, come home to us very forcibly; and the incongruities which startle us as we compare the actors and their parts in Ignoramus, can hardly be better described than in the words of his sternly ironical reminiscence of what he himself recalled of like performances 'in the colleges,'—' of the young divines and those of next aptitude to divinity' whom he had seen so oft upon the stage, writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antic and dishonest gestures of Trinculocs, buffoons, and bawds, prostituting the shame of that ministry which either they had, or were night having, to the eyes of courtiers and court ladies with their grooms and mademoiselles. There, while they acted and over-acted, among other young scholars, I was a spectator: they thought themselves gallant men, and I thought them 1 In the subsequent editions, prepared for the use of the Westminster scholars, most of these coarsenesses aro expunged. * Oxford had good comedies, but not such benefactours, | For Cam bridge byshopps whitlers had, and preachers for their actours.' Verses comparing the royal reception at Oxford with that at Cambridge: Nichols, Progresses of James I, 111 73. So too Corbet, Their plays had sundry grave wise factors, | A perfect diocess of actors | Upon the stage; for I am sure that There was both bishop, pastor, curat.' Corbet's Poems (ed. Gilchrist), p. 13. It is altogether infamous, yea unlawfull, for any clergie-men whatsoever or their chil dren, and for any who intend to enter into orders, either voluntarily or com pulsorily, for reward or without reward, to act a part upon the stage, either in any publicke or private enterludes. Prynne, Histriomastix, p. 862. John Reynolds, the eminent head of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in his Overthrow of Stage Plays, did much to discourage these performances. 3 Kennet, Chronicle, p. 211. fools; they made sport, and I laughed; they mispronounced, CHAP. VL and I misliked; and, to make up the Atticism', they were out, and I hissed". approval. But whatever may be our estimate of the merits of the t play itself, the after effects of its performance are undeniable and may indeed be said to be discernible almost to the end. of James' reign. It not only threw a halo of success over The moral the royal reception and put the King in a thoroughly good temper for the remainder of his stay, but it disposed him to look upon everything connected with the university with the genial indulgence of one whose special hobby has been skilfully trotted out. The King was exceedingly pleased many times,' wrote Chamberlain to Carleton; he visited all the colleges save two or three, and commends them above Oxford. It is true that Oxford, in her chagrin, declared o that Majesty went to sleep over the physic act', and evinced perceptible relief even when Ignoramus itself came to an end; but the triumphant reply of Cambridge was, that, the king, after an ineffectual endeavour to persuade the actors to come to London, was fain, before two months were well the moral over, to visit Cambridge again, in order to see the play acted a second time. Leave it,' retorted the author of the Cambridge rejoinder to Corbet, 'you cannot say The king did go from yon in March And come again in May. The registrary of the university at this time was James Thor's Tabor, the painstaking antiquary whose handwriting is the d familiar to those who have had occasion to consult our academic archives, and who was himself no contemptible contributor to our knowledge concerning the antiquities of the 1 ἐχόρευες, ἐγὼ δ' ἐχορήγουν· ἐγραμ μάτευες, ἐγὼ δ ̓ ἐκκλησίαζον έτριτα γωνίστεις, ἐγὼ δ' ἐθεώρουν· ἐξέπιπτες, ἐγὼ δ' ἐσύριττον. Demosthenes, de Corona (ed. Reiske), p. 315, Apology for Smectymnuus, Works, m 267. State Papers (Dom.) James I, Vol. LXXX 51, Cambridge an wholesome phy. sicke Acte which brought the kinge asleep. See 'A Courtier's Censure," etc. Nichols, Progresses, 111 73, But Ignoramus pleased best the kinge when it was done.' Ibid. This Ansurer, written by Lake, is printed in Corbet's Poems (ed. Gilchrist), p. 21. CHAP. VI. town. To him we are indebted for the following brief account of the second visit, which well deserves to be quoted in its entirety: sity lines Humble demeanour authorities. 'Upon Saturday, the 13 Maii, 1615, news was brought that his majesty would be at Cambridge that night, and that in the way he meant to hunt a buck; so that at 2 of the clock the school bell and St Mary's bells rung to call the The univer university together. The vice-chancellor set the scholars towards Spital-End; they reached to the Armitage St Ann, and above them up to the town to Trinity College, the bachelors of arts, then the gentlemen fellow-commoners, then the senior regents and non-regents, then the doctors, who stood in Trinity College gatehouse. His majesty came from Thetford, whither the buck led him, and where awhile he had rested himself, and so came about four of the clock; the scholars all saluted him with Vivat Rer. Mr mayor and of the town his fraternity stood on the hill by the spital-house, where Mr mayor, without either state or reverence, when his majesty came right against the place where he stood, stepped to his coach-side, and then kneeled down, and delivered his majesty a fair pair of perfumed gloves with gold laces, and the prince another, telling his majesty their corporation was poor, and not able to bestow any matter of value upon his majesty, and therefore invited him to accept of those, which his majesty took, and gave him his hand to kiss, and so he took his horse and rode before the king's mace-bearer to Trinity Reception College with his mace over his shoulder... His majesty made no stay till he came at Trinity College walk, where him and the prince and his nobility alighted their coach; and being within Trinity College, against the first rails, Dr Gwyn, deputy vice-chancellor, made an oration to him, giving him thanks for his love to them, that he was pleased so suddenly to come to them again, and highly extolling his majesty and virtues. The vice-chancellor and Heads kneeled while this speech was delivering, and the king stood, and prince and nobility by him. And then, the speech ended, his majesty went towards his lodge; and then, about the middle alley, the orator made another oration; which ended the king and A pair of gloves. • We are very poor.' at Trinity. |