Holland's Influence on English Language and Literature

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Chapter XVII Elckerlÿc and Everyman

In the numerous morality-plays of the 14th and 15th centuries, the rising democracy celebrates one of its great triumphs. Delivering themselves from the bondage of the feudal system, and growing more civilized and better educated every day, notwithstanding the hierarchic system of the church, the free citizens of the powerful cities, especially in Flanders, self-supporting, self-reliant and self-directing as they were, began to develop their own literature and their own art. Producing their own wealth, proud of their own privileges, strengthening their own power in their guilds, and in their cities, these children of the rising democracy poured out their wonderfully fresh, youthful energy in every department of human life. Instead of the mystery-plays and the miracle-plays of the mediaeval church, the free citizens asked for their morality-plays, not to exclude their religious life but to include their social life in the sphere of their literary education. ‘From a performance within the church building it went on into the church yard or the adjoining close or street, and so into the town at large. The clerics still kept a hand in its purveyance; but the rise of the town guilds gave it a new character, a new relation to the current life, and a larger equipment. The friendly rivalry between the guilds and the craftsmen's pride in not being outdone by other crafts, helped to stimulate the town-play till

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at length the elaborate cycle was formed that began with sunrise on a June morning and lasted until the torch-bearers were called out at dark to stand at the foot of the pageant.’¹

Enormous is the number of morality-plays produced during those first centuries of the rising democracy, at the dawn of modern history, and one of the most famous among them is that of ‘Everyman,’ or, as the original Dutch play is called, ‘Elckerlÿc.’ The full title is, ‘Den Spieghel der Salichheit van Elckerlÿc’ - (The mirror of salvation for every man). This great and simple tragic masterpiece is called ‘the noblest interlude of death, the religious imagination of the middle ages has given to the stage.’² Maintaining the idea that moral and religious life are inseparably connected, this play shows from the beginning to the end its grand tendency and its sublime character, as we read on the title page of the English translation, ‘Here beginneth a treatise how the High Father of Heaven sendeth Death to summon every creature to come and give account of their lives in this world, and is in manner of a moral play.’

The original Dutch play was probably written by a monk, Pieter Dorland (1454-1507) at Diest, about the year 1485, and for the first time printed about the year 1495. In a competition between the guilds of rhetoric at Antwerp in the year 1500, Elckerlÿc got the first prize. In 1536 it was translated into Latin as ‘Homulus,’ and soon afterwards a German bookprinter at Cologne published a German version to which was given a Lutheran tendency.³ Within a very short time after its first appearance it was

1 Ernest Rhys, Poetry and the Drama, in Everyman's Library, Introduction, p. XIV.

2 Ibid, XV.

3 W. de Hoog, Studien, II, 22.

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translated into English, and this became the reason why among the philologists in the nineteenth century, who studied the history of this play, the question arose whether the Dutch or the English version was the original. For several years it was a very spirited controversy between the philologists in the Netherlands. Prof. Moltzer and later De Raef, Prof. Logeman, Pollard and Kalff, maintained from the beginning the priority of the Dutch play. But other men of good fame, as Prof. Cozyn, Van Helten, Te Winkel and De Hoog defended the priority of the English version. At present the question can be considered as decided. The elaborate researches of Prof. Logeman¹ of Ghent and the last studies on this subject of Prof. J.M. Monly² and Prof. Francis A. Wood,³ at the University of Chicago, have left no room for any further doubt about the priority of the Dutch play. According to Prof. Manly, the arguments of Prof. Logeman in 1902 were ‘enough, indeed, in my opinion, to settle the question of priority definitely and finally,’ but ‘unfortunately, as it seems to me, Professor Logeman, in his attempt at an entirely objective treatment, has buried his decisive arguments under a mass of interesting, but indecisive and sometimes erroneous discussions; and this is the reason why his pamphlet was not recognized as containing the final words on the subject.’ Although decided by Prof. Logeman in 1902, the researches of Prof. Wood on this question are entirely independent of those of Logeman, for ‘the main evidence here presented is of a different character’ from that of Prof. Logeman, and the conclusion of Prof. Wood is as

1 H. Logeman, Elckerlyc, Everyman, De vraag naar de Prioriteit, opnieuw onderzocht. Gand., 1902.

2 In Modern Philology, October, 1910.

3 In Modern Philology, October, 1910.

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follows: ‘In conclusion it may be said that, though Everyman in one or two instances may have improved on the original, Elckerlÿc, as a whole, is artistically superior. With the exception of a very few passages where the text is evidently corrupt, Elckerlÿc is written in fairly good language and meter. It is theologically correct and remarkably consistent and logical. It must have been the product of a trained mind. On the other hand, Everyman is faulty in language and meter, wrong in theology, inapt in its biblical allusions, full of inconsistencies, and betrays on every page the hand of an unskilled workman who was not even capable of making a good translation.’

At this conclusion we are not surprised. If two plays so much alike in subject and contents, in English and in Dutch, were written during the 19th century, we should presume the Dutch to be probably a translation from the English, or at least we should not be surprised if this was proved to be the fact. But at the end of the 15th century we feel inclined in such cases to presume the priority of the Dutch, in accordance with the general conditions of those countries during that period of the world's history. Exceptions to this general rule, of course, are possible, and do exist; but in this case we have only another example of Holland's influence on English literature at the end of the 15th century, just the same as in the case of Caxton. Not a Dutch Caxton learned book printing in England, but an Englishman Caxton learned book printing in the Netherlands to introduce it into England. In the same way, an Englishman, although hardly able to do this work, translated the famous masterpiece of Pieter Dorland to introduce it into England.