[In the essay below, Wolf discusses The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington as a work of mass entertainment.]

Studying the “high art” of the English Renaissance through popular works is hardly a new direction, since sociological, historical and biographical approaches have provided a good start.¹ Yet these are too often audience- rather than text-oriented; studying the popular arts requires and yields an even stricter historicism, and a sense of why and how previously Apocryphal mass culture (as Shakespeare's plays undoubtedly were) becomes part of the secular Testament. The critic functions as an anthropologist, a literary-cultural geologist, so to speak, in addition to being an exegete, sociologist, historian, biographer, editor and even bibliographer of his own and others' commentaries.

Anthony Munday's career and works provide a particularly copious and varied core sample of an age.² Consider that during his lifetime, Munday was a printer's apprentice, a Jesuit seminarian; a spy, pursuivant and informer against those same Catholics he had met in Rome; a hunter of the Puritan propagandist Martin Marprelate for Bishop Whitgift; a writer of pious, bourgeois moral tracts and patriotic pamphlets; a literary executor and chronicler; an author and translator of popular romances; a balladeer and lyric poet; a producer and writer of city pageants; an attacker of the stage; an actor; and, of course, a playwright.³ He can hardly be accused of selectivity in his works, either. One cannot read Renaissance literature for long without finding a reference to his romances Amadis de Gaul and Palmerin of England, and contemporary events become much clearer with the aid of pamphlets like The masque of the League and the Spaniard discovered. Tradesmen's associations needed only to capture the office of Lord Mayor to receive his praise in the annual pageants. Consider only the titles: … the Ironmongers fair field, … the Triumphs of Gold, The Triumphs of old draperie, … the triumphs of ancient drapery in a second yeeres performance, … The Golden fishing, … steel and iron triumphing, The triumphs of the golden fleece …, and The Triumphs of a reunited Britannia. … Nor is modesty his hallmark. Historical writings include two particularly intriguing titles, The strangest adventure that ever happened …, and A briefe chronicle of the successe of times from the creation of the world to this instant. Meagher⁴ has given us a good beginning with the Robin Hood plays, but I should like to suggest some other avenues of inquiry—how we might study a single relatively competent play, Munday's The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington,⁵ and what conclusions we might draw.

The play itself is a patchwork of maudlin melodrama, crude clowning, episodic plotting and improbable characterization. But the structure—the “rehearsal” of a play to be given at court—produces some interesting effects. The two characters providing the framework, Eltham and Skelton, also portray Little John and Friar Tuck in the “play.” This is hardly unusual, given the doubling practices of acting companies, but Munday's handling of Skelton is particularly revealing. Occasionally, whether as Skelton or Tuck, the character falls into “Skeltonics” on the usual subjects—“Age barbarous, times impious, men vicious”—and must be brought back into context by his friend Eltham who, by the way, must also step out of his role to bring Skelton back into his habit.

These digressions suggest several possibilities from the point of view of mass entertainment. We must assume that Munday, giving the audience what it wanted and promising more in the last act, must have felt that a character named “Skelton” should conform to Puttenham's description of him as “in deede but a rude rayling rimer … pleasing only to the popular eare.”⁶ We can hardly characterize Skelton's commentary as socially critical or even as dramatically useful—only as expected, type-cast behavior. Furthermore the ease with which Skelton slips from one role to another suggests 1) a sophisticated audience, used to such manipulations, and 2) Munday's confidence in that audience.

Throughout the play in asides, soliloquies, and particularly in bringing the rehearsal framework forward, the relationship between playwright, actor, character and audience comes sharply into focus. The framework allows the playwright the freedom to insert gratuitous remarks wherever he pleases—in some ways, it loosens the choric comment present in, say, Kyd's Spanish Tragedy. It also makes for a very self-conscious play, as when the clown Much apologizes in an aside, “I'll speak in prose, I miss this verse vilely.” Munday, sure of his limited powers and eager to please, feels free at any moment to speak to his audience and cater to them. He has no compunction to educate or enlighten, and certainly avoids insult—no Jonsonian epistles to the “Reader Extraordinary” for him. One short example will serve. In IV.ii., following one of the frequent “discovery” scenes, Eltham and Skelton step out of character to apologize for not presenting several incidents of the Robin Hood story. That Munday deemed such a statement necessary suggests his audience's knowledge of the story, if not of Drayton's poem, and therefore he must make sure he accounts for the expected—since he does not plan to deliver it. The Epilog, spoken by Skelton, promises a continuation of the story with these events in it. Compare this with the epilogue in The Alchemist, for example, which openly insults the audience.⁷ I suggest here, as a starting point, that Munday feels very close to his audience, and creates a sense of participation by them in making his play. There is no need to invite them into the play, as some modern popular playwrights and directors have done, since they are already there. In other words, we are dealing truly in mass popular culture.

A second aspect of Munday's play is his use of visual effects, and their analogues in “high art.” They appear in The Downfall in their most basic forms, which increases our appreciation of them in more subtle or complex contexts. Consider, for example, a stage direction in III.ii.: Fitzwater opens a curtain and discovers “Robin Hood sleep[ing] on a green bank, and Marian strewing flowers on him.” The visual suggestion is an emblem of natural affection and love, reinforced with later dialogue suggesting spiritual chastity.⁸ If we remember this, and its appearance in a popular play, how would similar settings and postures be taken in A Midsummer Night's Dream or As You Like It? Or taken still further, in Antony and Cleopatra? Or in the opening lines of Donne's Extasie? The almost endless combinations of motif and settings could provide a rich and informative commentary on a visual pattern in Renaissance literature.

Another visual motif occurs in V.i., where Warman, the hero's steward and main nemesis as Sheriff of Nottingham, appears in a fallen condition. He begs for help, but receives only a noose to hang himself. He attempts this despite the entreaties of Fitzwater and others, and holds off only because Robin forgives him. Again, the parallels are many. The comparisons (some by Warman himself) to Judas as betrayer of his benefactor hark back to the miracle and morality plays; Despair offering a noose to Red Crosse is prominent in Book I of Spenser's Fairie Queene; despair is Gloucester's spiritual condition in Act IV of King Lear, though this analogue is clearer in The Downfall to Fitzwater. Again, we are dealing with everyday, commonly-shared visual communication—almost as expected as the weekly car chase down the same mountain road in Mannix. When we realize how usual such a motif is, we enrich our understanding of lines such as Hamlet's “Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd / His canon 'gainst [self-] slaughter!” The sin of despair is a very real issue to more than the theologians.

We might also look at The Downfall as a series of “downfalls” and epiphanies. Almost every character in the play—Huntington (later Robin Hood), Marian-Matilda, Ely, Fitzwater, Prince John—has a fall from earthly power to a state of natural grace in Sherwood Forest. In almost every case, the fall is accompanied by a standard, moralizing speech bemoaning the perils of politics and the untrustworthiness of the goddess Fortuna. We should recall the well-established tradition of the Monk's Tale, Lydgate and the Mirror for Magistrates automatically, but other issues present themselves almost immediately. 1) The Downfall is not a de casibus tragedy, but a romance with strong structural affinities to As You Like It.⁹ Munday's casual use of the de casibus structural technique in such a context helps us understand Sidney's theoretical objections to such practices, Jonson's attempts to tighten and unify his plays, and Shakespeare's uncanny but unscholarly compromises. Amid all his manipulations, Munday still needs a deus ex machina, Richard, to provide a satisfactory ending, while more skillfull and careful playwrights do not. Yet apparently his audience did not object. 2) The only mildly villainous character spared a fall is Elinor, the Queen Mother. For all her jealousy, Machiavellian plots and general bitchiness, Munday treats her very gently, and will not allow even a suggestion of disloyalty. Elinor is hardly Gloriana, but evidently Munday would not risk even the possibility of censorship or other official action. His own career indicates his uncomfortable familiarity with the whims of the powerful. 3) The various falls from temporal power are always accompanied by rises on the moral scale. Yet in Munday's hands, however often it happens, this pattern seems (in Jack Burden's terms) a “fact,” but not the “truth.” That he can present it so repetitively may indicate that he thinks it too familiar to embellish or explain. Munday is again satisfied to moralize but not to teach. Compare, for example, Richard II or even Richard III; consider Tamburlaine I and II or especially Edward II. Even so simple a matter as the handling of a commonplace can help us understand why we read and teach Julius Caesar and not The Downfall.

For it is, after all, our job not only to read but also to decide. Not all art is equal, but we must know and explain why; our contexts must be wider, our bases broader, our comparisons more informatively drawn. For an age very seldom decides, or knows, what will survive it and speak for it artistically; succeeding ages, given the buffets of time and chance, do that. If we appoint ourselves the guardians of the literature of past ages, we must guard all of it, realizing that our judgments are as temporary as any others'. Our conclusions about Munday say as much about us as they do about him and his contemporaries. So perhaps, for all its faults, The Downfall is as much a mirror to us as it is a useful source of analogues to other, better-known works, and worthy for that reason. I have suggested that it is part of the foil for more valuable gems, but I speak from my age and education. Let us use a play like The Downfall as we will, but above all let us preserve it for the additional judgment of those who succeed us.

Notes

1. See, for example, Alfred Harbage, Shakespeare's Audience (Columbia, 1941); Louis B. Wright, Middle-Class Culture in Elizabethan England (Cornell, 1958); S. L. Bethell, Shakespeare and the Popular Dramatic Tradition (Duke, 1944); Edwin Miller, The Professional Writer in Elizabethan England (Harvard, 1959); Phoebe Sheavyn, The Literary Profession in the Elizabethan Age (Manchester, 1909); and L.C. Knights, Drama and Society in the Age of Jonson (London, 1937).

2. This basic point has been made by J. C. Meagher, “Hack-Writing and the Huntington Plays,” in Elizabethan Theatre, ed. J. R. Brown and B. Harris, Stratford-upon-Avon Studies, 9 (New York, 1966), 197-220.

3. Julia Celeste Turner, Munday: An Elizabethan Man of Letters (California, 1928), expands at some length on the playwright's career.

4. p. 199.

5. I have confined my discussion to this play alone because of its relatively mild authorship and bibliographical problems. It appears to be Munday's alone, without collaboration from Chettle, and it comes to us in its “public theater” form.

6. See his Arte of English Poesie.

7. The Alchemist, though about ten years younger than The Downfall and written for a Blackfriars audience, is representative of Jonson's attitude toward his viewers, and typifies his contempt for them en masse. The differences between these two works, even on so narrow a basis as the epilogues, may tell us much about the variety of Renaissance taste—and, if we dig deeper, about why The Alchemist is part of the “high art” canon, while The Downfall remains in obscurity.

8. The scene contrasts strongly with Prince John's blatantly sexual innuendos in III.i.

9. A. H. Thorndike, “The Relation of ‘As You Like It’ to the Robin Hood Plays,” Journal of Germanic Philology, 4 (1902), 59/69.