While
the pastoral colouring revives the ancient notion of a golden age,
and the chivalrous element is a faint afterglow of medieval days,
a modern touch is perceived in the confessed unreality of the
nature of the romance.
the pastoral colouring revives the ancient notion of a golden age,
and the chivalrous element is a faint afterglow of medieval days,
a modern touch is perceived in the confessed unreality of the
nature of the romance.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v03
And, more than this, the secrets of successful
narrative, its material and its methods, were silently imparted,
while the feature of originality was being implicitly suggested.
They did much, too, in the way of popularising prose as a
medium of narrative. The merits of a simple prose had long been
recognised in France and Italy ; its more modest garb had been
seen to impose no restraint on the progress of the story, while
it was obviously free from that counter-attraction, inevitable in
verse, to the narrative itself. English writers had yet to learn the
charm of a plain and simple prose, devoid of tricks, but, in
employing prose in fiction, they had begun to learn.
This marked development in the methods of narrative soon
led to its employment in one of the main literary businesses of
the time, that of supplying moral treatises for courtly reading.
These works, which aimed at edifying by means of disqui-
sitions on subjects like love and friendship, form a sort of
intellectual counterpart to such works as Vincentio Saviolo his
Practise, which ‘intreated' of the use of rapier and dagger and
was 'most necessarie for all gentlemen that had in regard their
Honors. They were a revival, in some sort, of the medieval
discussions, though scarcely, on the whole, as trivial. Under an
attractive narrative form, they contrived to disseminate southern
culture after the fashion of Castiglione and Guevara.
The great outstanding figure in this line is that of John Lyly,
a native of Kent, and, in his day, a noted son of Oxford. His
career was one of strenuous effort, ill-requited because ill-directed.
His nice, fastidious temperament, which marked him off from the
roaring section of university wits, seems to have rendered him
ineffective in actual life. At Oxford, he missed recognition ; his
ambition to succeed to the Mastership of the Revels was quietly
ignored; while his closing years, passed in penury and neglect,
form a saddening sequel to the efforts of one, who, in his time, had
adorned the stage, had beautified the conversation of exquisites
of learned tendency' and had been the fruitful occasion of much
wit in others.
The work for which he is famous appeared in two instalments.
Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit was 'lying bound on the stacioners
stall’ by the Christmas of 1578; Euphues and his England, the
## p. 345 (#367) ############################################
Lyly's Euphues
345
second part, appeared in 1580. Together, they form an extensive
moral treatise, and, incidentally, our first English novel. The
whole hangs together by the thinnest of plots, which is, indeed,
more a means to an end than an end in itself. Each incident and
situation is merely an opportunity for expounding some point of
philosophy. Euphues, a young man of Athens, arrives at Naples,
where he forms a friendship with young Philautus. He falls
in love with Lucilla, the betrothed of Philautus, and is duly
jilted by that fickle mistress. This is all the action of The
Anatomy of Wit: but the moralising element is something more
considerable. The ancient Eubulus discourses on the follies of
youth; Euphues, himself, on the subject of friendship. The com-
plications brought about by the action of Lucilla lead to much
bitter moralising upon fickleness in general, while Euphues, jilted,
discusses his soul and indites 'a Cooling Carde for all Fond Lovers. '
Over and above all this, the work contains the hero's private
papers, his essays and letters; and opportunities are seized for
inveighing against dress, and for discoursing upon such diverse
subjects as marriage and travel, education and atheism. In
Euphues and his England, the scene changes from Italy to
England. The two friends, now reconciled, proceed to Canterbury,
where they are entertained by one Fidus, a pastoral figure of
considerable attractiveness ; Philautus soon becomes involved
in the toils of love, while Euphues plays the part of a philo-
sophical spectator. The former lays siege to the heart of one
whose affections are already bestowed, and so, with philosophy
for his comfort, he enters upon the wooing of another, with more
auspicious result. This brings the action to a close, and Euphues
leaves England, eulogising the country and the women it contains,
and returns forthwith to nurse his melancholy within his cell at
Silexedra.
The significance of the structure is best appreciated by re-
membering that the work is really a compilation, and is, in fact,
entered as such in the Stationers' register. Reminiscences of
Cicero occur, particularly of his De Amicitia and his De Natura
Deorum : but the body of the work is drawn from North's Diall
of Princes (1557), the English translation of Guevara's great
treatise. Euphues, in short, is little more than a re-ordering of
this material, and Lyly betrays his source when he introduces
certain details which, in his work, are obvious anachronisms, but
which, in the pages of Guevara, were in perfect keeping. Apart
from this, the adaptation has been consistently made, and the
works coincide in much of their detail. Dissertations on the
## p. 346 (#368) ############################################
346
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
same subjects-on love and ladies, on friendship and God, occur in
each. Both have letters appended to their close, which letters
treat of identical subjects ; Lyly's names of Lucilla, Livia and
Camilla are taken over from Guevara, while the 'Cooling Carde'
of Euphues finds its counterpart in that letter of Marcus Aurelius
against the frailty of women which is embodied in Guevara's
work? . It is only in a few instances that Lyly, while obtaining his
idea from the Spanish work, goes elsewhere for fuller details.
This is, however, the case in his remarks on education, in the
section Euphues and his Ephoebus (1, 264). Guevara, it is true,
embodies this material but Lyly's rendering is more nearly
suggestive of Plutarch's De Educatione Puerorum, though his
indebtedness is but indirect, the actual source being Erasmus's
Colloquia Familiaria (Puerpera).
The character of these sources indicates, clearly enough, Lyly's
didactic aim, in undertaking his Euphues. But, in projecting a
moral treatise, he stumbled on the novel, and, considered as such,
the work, though with many defects, has, also, abundant merit.
It foretells the day of the novel of manners, of the novel involv-
ing a detailed analysis of love. It moves away from the fanciful
idealism of the medieval romance and suggests an interest in con- .
temporary life. Love is no longer the medieval pastime of knights
and ladies ; its subtleties are analysed, its romance and glamour
are seen to lurk within contemporary walls and beneath velvet
doublets. The defects of Euphues, on the other hand, are those of
a writer unconscious of his art. There is a want of action, for the
story is, after all, of but secondary interest. A poverty of inven-
tion is apparent in the parallelism which exists between the action
of the two parts. Again, proportion is wanting; important events
are hurriedly treated; the characterisation is but slight; the
attempt at realism unconvincing. And yet the writer acquires
skill as he proceeds. In the second part, he shows a distinct
advance in artistic conception; there is more action, less moralis-
ing; characters multiply, characterisation improves and variety is
introduced by changes of scene? .
Not the least striking feature of the work, however, is the
peculiar style in which it is written. The style, known as
Euphuistic, won a following in its day, and has since become one
of the most familiar of literary phenomena. It is the least elusive
of styles, being deliberately compounded and, therefore, easily
1 See Landmann, Transactions of the New Shak. Soc. (1885), pp. 255 ff.
? See Bond, Works of Lyly, vol. 1, pp. 141 ff.
## p. 347 (#369) ############################################
Euphuism
347
6
analysed; but, while its grotesque exaggerations have met with
more than appreciation, justice has not always been done to its
real aims and effects. With all its flowers of fancy, it is nothing
more than the ‘painful'expression of a sober calculating scholar,
and is the outcome of a desire to write with clearness and precision,
with ornament and culture, at a time when Englishmen desired
'to heare finer speach then the language would allow. Lyly aimed
at precision and emphasis, in the first place, by carefully balancing
his words and phrases, by using rhetorical questions and by
repeating the same idea in different and striking forms. Allitera-
tion, puns and further word-play were other devices employed to
the same end. For ornament, in the second place, he looked
mainly to allusions and similes of various kinds. He alludes to
historical personages, found in Plutarch and Pliny, to mythological
figures taken from Ovid and Vergil. But his most daring orna-
mentation lies in his wholesale introduction of recondite knowledge;
he draws similes from folklore, medicine and magic, above all from
the Natural History of Pliny, and this mixture of quaint device
and naïve science resulted in a style which appealed irresistibly
to his contemporaries? . It should here be added, however, that
the acquaintance with Plutarch and Pliny, which the elements of
Lyly's style suggest, was not, necessarily, first hand. On the
contrary, it was, almost certainly, obtained through the writings
of Erasmus, which were in the hands of most sixteenth century
scholars and which had already penetrated into the schools. In
them, Erasmus had presented the fruit of his classical reading. His
Similia Colloquia, Apophthegmata and Adagia offered in a clear,
coherent form much that was best in antiquity and they repre-
sented a storehouse of learning which would save Lyly much
seeking in his quest for learned material. In some cases, where
Erasmus reproduces Pliny or Plutarch verbatim, Lyly's indebted-
ness to the great humanist might be doubted; but when Erasmus
takes over his classical material in a somewhat altered form, when
he expands or explains a thought, or falls into slight error or
confusion, the fact that these variations from the original are
faithfully reproduced in Lyly makes the latter's source undoubted.
And if this indebtedness be proved in the case of variations, a
further debt may be inferred even where identity of expression
appears in the classical writers, in Erasmus and Lyly? .
But this elaborated style, this 'curtizan-like painted affectation'
1 See Bond, Works of Lyly, vol. 1, pp. 141 ff.
2 See De Vocht, H. , De Invloed van Erasmus op de Engelsche Tooneelliteratuur der
aviº en xviie eeuwen (eerste deel), 1908.
## p. 348 (#370) ############################################
348
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
of Euphuism, did not originate with Lyly himself; he only
‘hatched the egges that his elder friendes laide. ' Its immediate
origin lay in a certain stylistic tendency then fashionable in
England. An almost identical craze had existed, a little earlier,
in Spain, namely, in Guevara's alto estilo, which, however, had
lacked the English device of alliteration. But the English fashion
did not come from Spain, though North’s Diall of Princes has
often been credited with having effected the introduction : while
this translation may have increased the vogue, it cannot have set
the fashion. In the first place, North had employed a French
version of Guevara's work for the purposes of translation, and
this was a medium likely to dissolve any peculiarities of style in
the original. And, secondly, many of the features of Euphuism,
its parallelism and repetitions, its rhetorical questions and classical
allusions, had already appeared in Lord Berners's Froissart (1524),
not only before North, but before Guevara had written! This
fashion, of which Berners is thus the first English representa-
tive, can, subsequently, be traced to some extent in Cheke and
Ascham; while, in Pettie's Petite Pallace, already mentioned, all
the structural, and most of the ornamental, characteristics of
Euphuism are present. It only remained for Lyly to expand the
recognised methods of simile-manufacture by adding to Pettie's
collection, based on fact and personal observation, others invented
by himself, and based on fancy.
The ultimate origin of the fashion lay yet further afield, and
is to be traced to that widespread movement for improving the
vernacular which left its mark on almost every European litera-
ture. The coincidence of its effects in the literary styles of
England and Spain must be ascribed to the prevalence of similar
national conditions in both those countries. In each case, it was
the outcome of a perverted classical enthusiasm, which led to the
imitation of late Latin stylists with their many extravagances.
It was due, also, in part, to the necessity for a courtly diction
which arose simultaneously in both countries, in consequence of
the growing interest which centred round the person and court
of the monarch. As a movement, it was by no means isolated ;
nor did its results assume merely one form. Arcadianism and
Gongorism, the conceits of seventeenth century France, and the
pedantic mannerisms of Hoffmanswaldau and Lohenstein in
Germany, are merely the outcome of the same influences, working
at different times on different soils.
Nor are the results of Euphuism on English prose style by any
1 See Wilson, J. D. , John Lyly, chap. L
## p. 349 (#371) ############################################
6
Lyly's Influence
349
means a negligible quantity, though its 'cunning courtship of
faire words,' its tedious redundancies and mass of ornaments,
led to its abandonment, generally speaking, about 1590. Sidney,
by that time, had lamented the fact that his contemporaries
enamelled 'with py'd flowers their thoughts of gold,' and Warner
perceived that in running on the letter we often runne from the
matter. ' But some good came of it all. An attempt had defi-
nitely been made to introduce design into prose; and balance and
harmony were the fitting contributions of an age of poetry to the
development of prose style. Prose diction, moreover, was en-
couraged to free itself from obsolescent words; and further
devices for obtaining lucidity, such as the use of short sentences
and paragraph divisions, were, henceforth, to be generally adopted
by English writers.
Apart from its prose style, the Euphues of Lyly exercised
considerable influence upon its author's contemporaries. On
Shakespeare, to mention only one, its effect is marked. Some of
the dramatist's characters, such as his pairs of friends, the senten-
tious old man Polonius and the melancholy philosopher Jacques,
recall Euphues in different ways. Verbal resemblances also exist:
Shakespeare's utterances on friendship, and his famous bee-
passage, place his indebtedness beyond all doubt, even supposing
his numerous similes drawn from actual or supposed natural
history to be but drafts made upon the common possessions of
the age
Lyly's success with Euphues was not slow in inspiring a number
of followers, and, up to about 1584, works of the moral treatise
kind were constantly appearing. But their authors, as a rule,
were painful imitators, who seemed incapable of original effort.
Some affected his style, others worked 'Euphues' into their title-
page, while the majority wrote, as Lyly had claimed to write, for
'the onely delight of the Courteous Gentlewoemen. ' Anthony
Munday's Zelauto (1580) is the first of this school ; it is a
delicate disputation. . . given for a friendly entertainment of
Euphues,' in which Zelauto's praise of England is in emulation
of that of Euphues. In Barnabe Riche's Don Simonides (1581)
Philautus reappears and English manners, once again, form part
of the topics discussed. Melbancke's Philotimus (1583) is made
up of philosophical discussions on the warre betwixt nature and
>
1 Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1, sc. 3. 198; As You Like It, Act I, 80. 3. 69.
Henry V, Act I, sc. 2. 183.
3 See Bond, Works of Lyly, vol. 1, pp. 169–175.
## p. 350 (#372) ############################################
350
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
3
fortune,' and, in Warner's Pan his Syrinx (1584), woman is under
debate, and, as in Euphues, a cooling carde' is drawn up
against the sex. The most notable exponent of this fashionable
type of work is, however, Robert Greene. His character, the date
of his appearance and the attendant circumstances, all made it
inevitable that he should follow the fashion, and work it for what
it was worth. In his Mamillia (1580) he relates how a fickle
Pharicles undeservedly wins Mamillia's hand, a circumstance which
leads on, naturally enough, to questions of love and youthful folly.
Upon these topics Greene, therefore, discourses, and duly recom-
mends what he has to say, by means of zoological similes and
classical precedents. These details of ornamentation he repeats
in succeeding works, in his Myrrour of Modestie (1584), based
upon the story of Susanna and the elders, and in Morando (1587),
a series of dissertations upon the subject of love. In 1587, two
companion works, characterised by the same style, appeared from
his pen. The first, Penelope's Web, consists of a discussion in which
the faithful Penelope, strangely enough, embodies the ideas of the
Italian Platonists in her conception of love, and then goes on to
portray the perfect wife. In Euphues his Censure to Philautus, on
the other hand, the perfect warrior is sketched, Euphues supplying
the picture for the benefit of his friend. But, in spite of this
and other sequels to Lyly's original story, the enthusiasm aroused
by Euphues and the love-pamphlets he engendered had already
begun to subside. Greene was already working in another field;
and Lodge's still more belated pamphlet Euphues Shadow, the
battaile of the sences, 'wherein youthful folly is set down' (1592),
is nothing more than a hardy survival'. It was a work born out
of season ; and, though its author was pleased to describe his
Rosalynde as 'Euphues golden legacie found after his death in
his cell at Silexedra,' such a description was little more than the
whim of one 'who had his oare in every paper boat'—the work
itself belonged to another genre.
Before the vigour of this edifying output had begun to abate,
the literary current was already setting in the direction of the
court romance. The study of codes of etiquette and morality, was,
after all, an unsatisfying diversion, and, to those who looked back
regretfully to the more substantial chivalry of an earlier day, the
romance still made a definite appeal. The earlier romance, how-
ever, had fallen into disrepute by this time; and the Elizabethan
type was drawn up on lines somewhat different, and more in
1 Cf. also J. Dickenson's Arisbas, Euphues amidst his slumbers (1594).
>
## p. 351 (#373) ############################################
Sidney's Arcadia
351
keeping with the fashion of the age. With the retention of
characters of a princely kind and the frequent addition of a
pastoral setting, a fresh situation was devised, that of the nobly
born in a simple life; and this, in its turn, brought about a change
of motive, so that the general theme became that of the separa-
tion and reunion of royal kindred. Therefore, while the earlier
chivalrous and supernatural elements are, for the most part,
absent from the romances of Sidney, Greene and Lodge, in their
Arcadias and Bohemias true nobility shines all the more clearly
through the wrappings of humble pastoral circumstance. And
this was a theme of which Shakespeare made good use in his
romantic plays.
Of all the workers in the field of romance, Sir Philip Sidney
stands out as best qualified by nature and circumstance to
deal with the theme. Amid the shades of Penshurst, the golden
past had entered his soul, and its gentle influence was shed over
his remaining days. He travelled abroad and made friends with
Languet; at home, his sympathies were divided between art and
action. He began life as a courtier in 1575, but his idealistic
temperament proved to be but ill-adapted for an atmosphere of
intrigue. Bickerings with the earl of Oxford and a rebuff from
Elizabeth drove him, in 1579, into rustic retreat at Wilton, whence
he emerged to take up diplomatic work abroad, and to fall before
Zutphen in 1586.
The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia was begun in 1580,
during Sidney's retreat at Wilton, and was posthumously pub-
lished in 1590. It was primarily intended as merely an expression
of some of the 'many fancies' that lurked in his young head'; it
was 'a trifle, and that triflingly handled'; and as the author sent
his sheets by instalments to his sister, the countess, it was on the
understanding that they should proceed no further. The prime
motive of the work was to indulge his fancy with ideal scenes and
sentiments, such as he had sought for in vain in the debased
chivalry of the court; and fancy leads him on to pastoral scenes,
to the calm of a golden age, as it had led others before him in
similar periods of unsettlement.
Earlier pastoral works existed in Sanazzaro's Arcadia (1504)
and Montemayor's Diana (1552); and to each of these Sidney
is somewhat indebted, while, for occasional incident, he goes
to Heliodorus and others 1. From Sanazzaro he obtains his
Notably Achilles Tatius's Clitophon and Leucippe and Chariton's Chereas and
Callirrhoe; see Brunhuber, Sir P. Sidney's Arcadia und ihre Nachläufer.
1
## p. 352 (#374) ############################################
352
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
title, and, possibly, the trick of infusing something of a personal
element into his work. Although the work of the Elizabethan
is never autobiographical to the extent of the Italian's, yet,
amidst his fancies, there stray some serious and personal thoughts
on religion, philosophy and love, while the pastoral Philisides
shadows forth the friend of Languet. Sidney's debt to Monte-
mayor is, however, less uncertain, as is shown by the striking
parallel which exists between the opening passages of their
respective works. In Diana, Sidney found a precedent for his
mixed pastoral, for his happy blend of eclogue and romance;
by Sanazzaro, on the other hand, the chivalrous element had
been left untouched. Montemayor's conception of romance, more-
over, embodied nothing of the magical, and Sidney follows him in
discarding this piece of medieval machinery. And, once again, the
love-plot in Montemayor's hands having become more than ever
complicated, Sidney, by the employment of bewildering disguises,
and a multiplicity of incident, succeeds in effecting the same
artistic confusion? .
The main interest of Sidney's plot centres in love-intrigue.
Two shipwrecked princes, Musidorus and Pyrocles, after pre-
liminary adventure, fall in love with Pamēla and Philoclea,
daughters of the king of Arcadia, who has taken up his abode
in the depths of a forest. Exigencies of courtship compel the
princes to assume rustic disguises; and Pyrocles, appearing as a
shepherdess Zelmane, soon becomes involved in awkward entangle-
ments. The king falls in love with the pretended shepherdess,
while his queen is attracted by the man whom she recognises
through his disguise. From this compromising position, Pyrocles
is only rescued by the privileged skill of the novelist; explana-
tions and pardons follow, and the sequel is of a felicitous kind.
But the story, as thus outlined, fails to give any idea of the plot's
endless involutions, of its untiring series of alarums and excursions.
Subordinate romances are woven into the main structure; there
are tournaments and fêtes, long-drawn love-scenes and unceasing
adventure with both man and beast. And the movement is further
retarded by numerous experiments in metre, due to Sidney the
Areopagite. There are some choice insertions, like the ditty
beginning ‘My true-love hath my heart,' but, by the side of these,
there are limping hexameters and elegiacs, experiments in terza
rima and ottava rima and occasional exhibitions of the sdrucciolo
or trisyllabic rimes.
1 See Greg, W. W. , Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama (London, 1906).
## p. 353 (#375) ############################################
Its Characteristics
353
As a romance, the work enshrines Sidney's noble ideals of
medieval chivalry. The Grecian heroes embody true knightly
qualities : they are simple and gentle, daring in action and
devoted in love. And the pastoral element gives an ideal setting
to this chivalrous action. Arcadia is a land where morning ‘strows
a
roses and violets on the heavenly floor,' a land of flowering
meadows and quiet pastures, where shepherd boys pipe as though
they should never be old' But, while the romance is thus prodigal
of beauty, it is not without many faults, both of form and style.
Its characters, in the first place, are of a shadowy kind; a
strong suggestion of sheer unreality is inevitable. As regards its
structure, there is an obvious lack of order and restraint, and this
is a feature which, while characteristic of the age, is, perhaps,
exaggerated in the case of the romance with its traditions of
amplitude. In drama and poetry, there existed compelling forces
of law and order, to which the intensity of the one and the grace
of the other were due. But the laws of the prose romance were
yet to be evolved, and in the Arcadia will be found no very logical
development, nor skilful handling of the threads of the narrative.
Its discursive character has already been noted, and one result of
this exhausting method lies in the fact that the work concludes
without decent disposal of all the characters. Nor must humour
be looked for in either situation or phrase. Though a few rustics
like Dametas and Mopsa are introduced by way of an antimasque,
the humorous result apparently desired is not obtained. Sidney's
temperament was melancholy as well as idealistic; his vision did
not include either the ludicrous or the grotesque. The work, how-
ever, has the qualities of an eclectic performance, reflecting the
rich confusion of the renascence mind. Fancy ranges in the
romance from Greece to England, and within its purview the
three ages seem to meet. The landscape, in the first place, has
the bright colouring of renascence paintings—something, too,
of the quieter tones of an English country-side; its temples
and its churches, its palaces and pavilions, suggest a medley
collected from Greece, Italy and England. Then, again, the
ancient and medieval worlds appear to meet the modern.
While
the pastoral colouring revives the ancient notion of a golden age,
and the chivalrous element is a faint afterglow of medieval days,
a modern touch is perceived in the confessed unreality of the
nature of the romance. Romance, hitherto, had been speciously
linked with the real and actual: now, frankly removed to fanciful
realms, it is made to imply an escape from reality-the sense in
which it is accepted by the modern mind.
23
E. L. III.
CH. XVI,
## p. 354 (#376) ############################################
354
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
The style of the Arcadia represents a successful attempt at
a picturesque prose, for the result is picturesque if somewhat
extravagant. Other contemporaries were engaged upon the same
quest, but, while Sidney avoids their several extravagances, he
indulges in others of his own making. He avoids, for instance, the
devices of Euphuism, the more obvious absurdities of bombastic,
pedantic phrase, as well as those tricks of alliteration' and other
'far-fetched helps' which 'do bewray a want of inward touch. '
His excesses, on the other hand, are those of a poet who forgets
that he is now committed to prose. He enters upon a pedestrian
task, unprepared to forego poetical flight; and, freed from the
restraints which verse imposes, he strains even the limits of a
more willing prose. With coherence of structure he is not greatly
concerned. His sentences, long and rambling, are yet incapable
of expressing his wealth of thought, and are, therefore, expanded
by frequent parentheses. When he aims at emphasis, he occasion-
ally employs Lyly's trick of antithesis, or, perhaps, the epigram-
matic effect of the oxymoron? : but his favourite artifice is that of
a jingle of words’, which lacks effect as it lacks dignity.
The same excess characterises his use of ornament, for which
he depends, not upon erudite display, but, rather, upon a free use
of clever conceits in which sentiment is ascribed to inanimate
objects. Sparingly used as an accompaniment to highly-wrought
verse, the device is capable of excellent results, but, when frequently
employed in ordinary prose, it soon becomes smothered by its own
sweetness. Sidney, in short, rides the 'pathetic fallacy' to death ;
he is for ever hearing 'tongues in trees'; and commonplace thought,
arrayed in delicate fancy, often leads to grotesque effect".
Sidney's prose style is, however, not all extravagance, it con-
tains much that suggests the happier moods of a cultured mind.
The famous prayer of Pamela, for instance, reads with a noble
liturgical ring; pregnant apophthegms, scattered here and there,
gleam like jewels of thought“, while even the writer's foibles could
6
1 Thus, a bare house is said to be '& picture of miserable happiness and rich
beggary': maidenly charms are described as “a wanton modesty, an enticing
soberness. '
2 Cf. . in the dressing of her hair and apparel she might see neither a careful art
nor an art of carefulness, . . . a neglected chance. . . could not imperfect her perfection' (see
Arcadia, ed. 1674, p. 244).
3 E. g. a sewing operation is described in the following terms : 'the needle itself
would have been loth to have gone fromward such a mistress but that it hoped to
return thitherward very quickly again, the cloth looking with many eyes upon her,
and lovingly embracing the wounds she gave' (ed. 1674, p. 260).
* Cf. 'all is but lip-wisdom that wants experience': 'the journey of high Honor
lies not in plain ways': 'a lamentable tune is the sweetest musick to a woful mind. '
## p. 355 (#377) ############################################
Its Style
Style and Influence 355
produce, at times, distinctly virtuous results, when they enter into
some of his most glowing descriptions? . Sidney's extravagances
were, in fact, not altogether a vain display. Lyly, in an age of
poetry, gave to prose the subtle effects of harmony and balance;
Sidney incidentally showed how dull prose might be lit up with
flowers of fancy; and his work is, for all time, a rich mine of
poetic ore.
The popularity of the work may be gauged from its frequent
reappearances, as well as from its subsequent influence upon
various writers. Upon the drama, in particular, its influence was
considerable. It popularised the new machinery of the disguise
of the sexes; it also suggested fresh situations arising out of
fanciful realms such as Arden and Bohemia ; while its love-
passages must also have induced greater interest in the characteri-
sation of women. It furnished episodes for more than one type
of work. It supplied King Lear with the under-plot of Gloucester
and his sons; Quarles with the material for his metrical tale
Argalus and Parthenia (1629). Dramatic works, like Day's Ile
of Guls (1606), Beaumont and Fletcher's Cupid's Revenge (1615)
and Shirley's Arcadia, are, in some sort, adaptations of its theme? ,
while Webster's Duchess of Malfi is indebted to it for certain
figures and phrases". Moreover, it inspired Lodge's Rosalynde,
and lady Wroth's Urania (1621), both of which are imitations
in novel form; and, lastly, its style set the fashion which helped
to ring out the reign of Lyly.
While Sidney thus dreamed of his golden world, there was one
who, under less happy circumstances, was to traverse the same
fields. Robert Greene is the second great romancer of the Eliza-
bethan period, in which he appears as a picturesque but pathetic
Bohemian, with 'wit lent from Heaven but vices sent from Hell. '
Before he had finished with Cambridge, his moral nature was
tainted, and, after that, his way lay perpetually over stormy seas.
A glimpse of happier things seemed promised in 1586, but, once
again, his evil genius led him astray, until, finally, he was rescued
1 Cf. the oft-quoted description of the land of Arcadia (ed. 1674, p. 6), and the
description of the field for shepherds’ sports : 'through the midst (of the field] there
ran a sweet brook which did both hold the eye open with her azure streams and yet
seek to close the eye with the purling noise upon the pebbles it ran over : the field
itself being set in some places with roses and in all the rest constantly preserving a
flourishing green,
the roses added such a ruddy shew unto it as though the field were
bashful at its own beauty' (ed. 1674, p. 68).
• To these might be added Glapthorne's Argalus and Parthenia; Shirley's Andro-
mana ; Mucedorus ; McNamara Morgan's Philoclea (1754).
3 See Notes and Queries, 10 Ser. vol. II, pp. 221 ff.
23-2
## p. 356 (#378) ############################################
356
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
by a poor shoemaker in 1592, under whose rough shelter he made
a pathetic end. His life had been one of struggle and drift, a
wayward course of frustrated good intentions; and these things
left their impress upon what he wrote, and upon his manner of
writing. In the first place, he wrote merely to sell, and, as a
consequence, he resembles a sensitive barometer, indicating the
literary vogue from day to day. When Lyly was popular, Greene
adopted his methods; when romance was called for, he also com-
plied; his attempt at the pastoral followed Sidney's success; while
his realistic pamphlets responded to a yet later demand. Secondly,
with numerous creditors ever driving him on, he resorts in his
haste to plagiarism and repetition? He repeats himself without
a blush : about thirteen pages of his Myrrour of Modestie occur
in his Never too late, and parts of Planetomachia reappear in
Perimedes the Blacksmith; from Euphues, he abstracts numerous
similes, while from T(homas) B(owes's) translation of Peter de la Pri-
maudaye's French Academy (1586), he takes entire passages when
they please his fancy. And yet, though in life he followed the
worse, he approved the better; his work is free from licentious-
ness, he never 'gave the looser cause to laugh. ' His better self
is revealed when, in his earlier work, he writes as a 'Homer of
women,' when he sings in Menaphon a tender cradle-song, or when
he works into his verse the saddening refrain of his life's story.
Greene's chief romances are Pandosto (1588), Perimedes the
Blacksmith (1588) and Menaphon (1589). The first deals with
the story of Dorastus and Fawnia, which Shakespeare afterwards
refined in his Winter's Tale, adding such characters as Autolycus
and Paulina, and removing from those he adopted their puppet-
like stiffness. Perimedes embodies an evening tale, told by the
fireside of the idyllic blacksmith, the story being based upon one
in the Decameron (Giorn. II, Nov. II); the motive is that of the
separation and reunion of kindred, and the chief figure is the
noble Mariana In Menaphon, the scene is laid in the realm of
Arcadia, where occur the adventures of the shipwrecked princess
Sephestia, who is loved by the shepherd Menaphon, but is duly
restored to her husband and son, disguised as shepherds. Sidney's
influence is apparent here, primarily, in the pastoral background;
but, when Menaphon promises Sephestia that the mountaine tops
shall be thy mornings walke, and the shadie vallies thy evenings
arbour,' it is further evident that Sidney, rather than Lyly, has
become the model of style. The plot, apparently, is taken from
2 Cf. Hart, H. C. , Notes and Queries, 10 Ser. vol. iv.
## p. 357 (#379) ############################################
Greene's Romances
357
the narrative of Curan and Argentile in Warner's Albion's
England; and the Thracian Wonder by a later pen, is a dramatic
adaptation of the pastoral romance?
Other romances of Greene, though of less importance, must
also be mentioned. In 1584 appeared his Gwydonius and Arbasto,
two romances of an earlier heroic type, which were followed, in
1592, by Philomela, an attractive story, in honour of lady Fitz-
water. The central incident of this last romance consists of a
wager, made by a jealous husband, concerning his wife's fidelity-
a favourite theme of Boccaccio—and the work is confessedly
‘penned to approve of women's chastity. "?
From the point of view of art, Greene's romantic fiction cannot
be said to rank very high, though it comprises interesting narra-
tives, of moral and learned tendency, which waft their readers
into the pleasant but fanciful realms of Bohemia and Arcadia.
There is, however, considerable lack of structural skill, of artistic
restraint and verisimilitude, in dealing with the affairs of the
heart; as with Sidney, the art of story-telling in prose was yet in
its infancy. But one pleasing feature of these works is the skill
with which women-portraits are drawn : for the romances embody
such creations as Myrania and Fawnia, Mariana and Sephestia,
women of the faithful and modest type. It was only after 1588
that the reverence and sympathy which these portraits betray on
the part of their author was to change into the 'bitterest hate. '
In Alcida, a love pamphlet of 1588, he first revealed 'woman's
wanton ways'; and, subsequently, he depicted fascinating sirens
such as Infida (Never too late) and Lamilia (Groatsworth of Wit),
who form a marked contrast with his earlier types. Excellent
occasional verse is another outstanding feature of these prose
romances; it culminates in Menaphon, as, for instance, in the
lines of Melicertus on the description of his mistress, while the
cradle song beginning
Weepe not my wanton! smile upon my knee!
When thou art olde, ther's grief inough for thee!
is notable even among Elizabethan lyrics.
1 See Brereton, J. le Gay, Mod. Lang. Rev. vol. II, pp. 34–38, and Adams, J. Q. , Jr. ,
Mod. Phil. in, Jan. 1906.
? He also wrote other prose pamphlets reminiscent of earlier types of composition :
thus, in his Planetomachia (1585), a dispute between the planets Venus and Saturn as
to their respective influences on mankind, are to be found traces of the old débat,
together with reminiscences of the ancient faith in the misticall science of astro-
nomie': Orpharion (1588), on the other hand, embodies an imaginary dream, while
in the Spanish Masquerado (1588) Greene turns from love to politics and indulges in
a fierce tirade against the affairs of Spain.
## p. 358 (#380) ############################################
358
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
Less interesting, because less tragic, is the personality of
Thomas Lodge, who also was responsible for certain romances.
During his Oxford days, he fell under Lyly's influence, which
accounts for the Euphuistic strain which pervades all his works.
His restless, unsettled career was typical of his age. He began
with law, took to literature and ended as a medical man, while,
from time to time, he indulged in lengthy cruises abroad. His first
romance, Forbonius and Prisceria (1584), is a slight performance,
and consists of a story of blighted affection, the subject of which
seeks refuge in a pastoral life. Rosalynde, Euphues Golden
Legacie (1590) 'fetcht from the Canaries,' is, on the other hand,
one of the most pleasing of all the romances, and, upon it,
Shakespeare, as is well known, based his As You Like It. It is
a fresh story, steeped in idyllic sentiment, the charm of which
even a Euphuistic manner is unable to dull. Lodge
have written it on a cruise to the straits of Magellan, whence
“every line was wet with the surge'; but the environment worked
only by way of contrast, for pastoral scenes and rural notes are
the products of this pen at work on the high seas. The story itself is
based on The Tale of Gamelyn, a fourteenth century ballad of the
Robin Hood cycle, which relates how the hero, defrauded by his
elder brother, takes to the forest and becomes an outlaw! This
story of earlier England is removed by Lodge into the region of
pastoral romance, and the English outlaws become Arcadians of
the Italian type, polished in speech and courtly in manner. A love
element is woven into the tale ; Rosalynde and Alinda, as well as
Phoebe, appear on the scene; and the plot develops, as in the
Arcadia, by means of disguisals of sex. The narrative is also
varied by the insertion of occasional verse, though the variations
lack subtlety and the inserted eclogues frequently drag. But
where the treatment most suffers is in the handling of character,
which reveals no development, and is, moreover, stiff and formal.
Shakespeare appreciated the charm and freshness of the woodland
scenes, and he appropriated the elements of a good love-tale; but
he also detected the unreality of Lodge's creations, and, while he
quickens them into life in his own incomparable way, through the
humours of Touchstone he smiles at the inconsistencies and un-
realities which he takes care to remove. Another of Lodge's.
romances, Margarite of America, written in the winter of 1592
and published 1596, was also claimed to have been written at sea,
on a voyage to South America with Master Thomas Cavendish;
and the story, apparently, was taken from a Spanish work in the
i Cf. vol. 1, p. 298.
## p. 359 (#381) ############################################
Ford, Breton and Munday
359
Jesuit library at Santos, Brazil. A number of Cavendish's men
certainly stayed at that place, and some are known to have been
lodged at the Jesuit college. But the Spanish element is easily
overrated ; and several of its sonnets are borrowed from Italian
sources, more particularly from Lodovico Dolce and Paschale? .
The remaining works of a romantic kind present nothing new.
Emanuel Ford's Parismus (1598), and its sequel, Parismenos
(1599), are obvious imitations of the works of Greene. The scene
is placed in Bohemia, and the action is made up of the usual
excitements of princely love and war; the general tone, however,
is less scrupulously moral than is the case with Greene, whence
Meres's censure of Ford's work as being 'hurtful to youth. It
should be added that the story thus handled by Ford is reminiscent
of Romeo and Juliet, and it is more than probable that the writer
owes an unacknowledged debt to that dramatic work. Nicholas
Breton is another of Greene's successors, his chief romantic work
consisting of Strange Fortunes of two excellent princes (1600).
Like Ford, he manages to shake himself free of faded Euphuisms,
but his methods of romance are the methods of Greene, stiffened,
perhaps, by a sense of inartistic symmetry. Nor must the Spanish
romances, popularised by Anthony Munday in his English transla-
tions, be entirely forgotten. Between 1580 and 1590, he produced
those versions of the Amadis and Palmerin cycles which represent
modifications of the Arthurian romance. The works were viewed
with disfavour by the cultured classes, on account of their pre-
posterous plots, and the crudeness and inaccuracy of their render-
ing. Munday achieved a popular success, but he added little to
his reputation, or to the dignity of the Elizabethan romance.
Before the last decade of the century was well advanced, a
marked change came over works of fiction. By a sort of normal
reaction, idealism gave way to realism, the romance to the realistic
pamphlet and story, and, from Arcadia and Bohemia with their
courtly amenities, the scene moved to London and its everyday
life. The chief writers of this type of work were Greene, Nashe and
Deloney, who, however, differ somewhat in the methods they adopt.
Greene relates his own life-story, a grim narrative, which reveals,
incidentally, much of the seamier side of life; and this he follows
up with a series of revelations as to the tricks and knaveries of
London rogues. Nashe, on the other hand, while less gloomy,
1 Cf. Kastner, L. E. , Mod. Lang. Rev. vol. 11, ii, 156-8.
3 Note the song 'In Praise of a Deggar's life,' a variant on the earlier theme of the
mean estate, See Davison's Poetical Rapsody, Collier's reprint, p. 161.
## p. 360 (#382) ############################################
360
Elizabethan Prose Prose
Fiction
is more satirical in what he has to say. He deals with follies
and quackeries, rather than vices, and, while his methods are
sufficiently trenchant, he has an eye to the humorous side of
things: in his picaresque novel, the rogue becomes a hero. Deloney,
again, has neither the grim realism of the one nor the force-
ful satire of the other. He is content to depict citizen life with a
proper regard for the dignity of the crafts, and with a quiet sense
of humour, which is by no means inconsistent with his more
serious intentions.
Greene's autobiographical work begins in his Mourning Gar-
ment (1590) and Never too late (1590). He does not, as yet, deal
directly with London life, though his own experiences, lightly
veiled, form the nucleus of the tales. The Mourning Garment
is an adaptation of the story of the Prodigal Son, with the addition
of pastoral details as reminders of his earlier craft. But Greene is
no longer 'Love's Philosopher,' as, indeed, he confesses; Philador
gets into difficulties through the society of women, those Panthers
that allure, the syrens that entice,' and the succeeding details are
those of the Biblical narrative. In Never too late, the author's
career is more closely followed. Here, it is Francesco who im-
personates Greene; and he relates how he had married a gentle-
woman, whom he abandoned for one less worthy, and how he was
helped in his distress by strolling actors. These are well-known
incidents in the life of Greene; but, when Francesco subsequently
becomes reconciled to his injured wife, Greene pathetically suggests
an event which, unhappily, found no counterpart in his actual life.
In 1592, further autobiographical work was penned by Greene on
his death-bed, when the veil concealing the author's identity is de-
liberately lifted. The main facts of his life are again dealt with, and,
in the Groatsworth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance,
the writer is careful to state that Roberto is himself. The other
death-bed pamphlet, The Repentance of Robert Greene, is still
more direct; its style is, perhaps, inferior to that of his earlier
work, and the writer seems intent on painting his life in the most
sombre colours.
More direct descriptions of London life appear in further
pamphlets, in which Greene exposes rogues and depicts honest
tradesmen. The former object underlies his Notable Discovery
of Coosnage (1591). Awdeley and Harman, as has been seen, had
dealt with the vagabond classes, and had specified for public
benefit the various classes of knaves, while Copland's Hye Way
to the Spyttel Hous gave the earliest account of the thievish cant
>
## p. 361 (#383) ############################################
1
Greene's Realistic Work 361
known as 'pedlyng frenche' Greene, however, is indebted to none
of these, except, perhaps, for the general idea. He is concerned
with neither pedlars, nor gypsies, nor itinerant rogues; his aim,
rather, is to warn country people against the snares of London. It
is the wiles of panders and courtesans, card-sharpers and swindlers,
that he undertakes to reveal, and this the Notable Discovery
accomplishes. So successful was he, in fact, that an attempt
was made upon his life, and A Defence of Conny-Catching
appeared as an impudent rejoinder. In 1592, Greene followed up
the attack by A Disputation between a He Conny-Catcher and a
She Conny-Catcherl, a lurid description of the London demi-
monde, which concludes with a pathetic account of the reclaiming
of a courtesan. And in The Blacke Booke's Messenger of the same
ye Greene once more wages war with rascals, by sketching the
grimy career of a celebrated rogue, one Ned Browne, whose
belated repentance takes place in the neighbourhood of the
scaffold.
Besides dealing in this way with roguery, Greene also gives
some attention to the more respectable side of London life, in his
Quip for an Upstart Courtier or a Quaint Dispute between
Velvet-Breeches and Cloth-Breeches (1592). The dispute is as to
whether the courtier (i. e. Velvet-Breeches), or the tradesman
(Cloth-Breeches) is deserving of the greater respect, and the
decision is duly referred to a jury of tradesmen. This brings
together a body of typical citizens, and is thus a device which
enables the author to introduce his projected class-descriptions.
The work reveals Greene's democratic sympathies, for he not only
finds much interest in his commonplace types, but he also takes
care, while giving short shrift to his upstart courtier, to assign more
flattering treatment to the London tradesman. And this democratic
attitude is not devoid of a certain significance, especially when a
similar sympathy appears in Deloney's work: it explains, in some
measure, the impulse which originated this realistic section of
Elizabethan fiction. The form of the work is that of the medieval
dream-vision, the fundamental idea, apparently, being taken from
an anonymous poem, A Debate between Pride and Lowliness.
All this work of Greene had meant a considerable contribution
to the literature dealing with contemporary life. With the author
i Conny-catchers were London rogues who duped simple people by various tricks
and who primarily obtained their name from those typical cheats, the pedlars—those
gaderers of cony skynnes
That chop with laces, poyntes, nedles and pyns (Copland);
quoted by Hart, H. S.
narrative, its material and its methods, were silently imparted,
while the feature of originality was being implicitly suggested.
They did much, too, in the way of popularising prose as a
medium of narrative. The merits of a simple prose had long been
recognised in France and Italy ; its more modest garb had been
seen to impose no restraint on the progress of the story, while
it was obviously free from that counter-attraction, inevitable in
verse, to the narrative itself. English writers had yet to learn the
charm of a plain and simple prose, devoid of tricks, but, in
employing prose in fiction, they had begun to learn.
This marked development in the methods of narrative soon
led to its employment in one of the main literary businesses of
the time, that of supplying moral treatises for courtly reading.
These works, which aimed at edifying by means of disqui-
sitions on subjects like love and friendship, form a sort of
intellectual counterpart to such works as Vincentio Saviolo his
Practise, which ‘intreated' of the use of rapier and dagger and
was 'most necessarie for all gentlemen that had in regard their
Honors. They were a revival, in some sort, of the medieval
discussions, though scarcely, on the whole, as trivial. Under an
attractive narrative form, they contrived to disseminate southern
culture after the fashion of Castiglione and Guevara.
The great outstanding figure in this line is that of John Lyly,
a native of Kent, and, in his day, a noted son of Oxford. His
career was one of strenuous effort, ill-requited because ill-directed.
His nice, fastidious temperament, which marked him off from the
roaring section of university wits, seems to have rendered him
ineffective in actual life. At Oxford, he missed recognition ; his
ambition to succeed to the Mastership of the Revels was quietly
ignored; while his closing years, passed in penury and neglect,
form a saddening sequel to the efforts of one, who, in his time, had
adorned the stage, had beautified the conversation of exquisites
of learned tendency' and had been the fruitful occasion of much
wit in others.
The work for which he is famous appeared in two instalments.
Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit was 'lying bound on the stacioners
stall’ by the Christmas of 1578; Euphues and his England, the
## p. 345 (#367) ############################################
Lyly's Euphues
345
second part, appeared in 1580. Together, they form an extensive
moral treatise, and, incidentally, our first English novel. The
whole hangs together by the thinnest of plots, which is, indeed,
more a means to an end than an end in itself. Each incident and
situation is merely an opportunity for expounding some point of
philosophy. Euphues, a young man of Athens, arrives at Naples,
where he forms a friendship with young Philautus. He falls
in love with Lucilla, the betrothed of Philautus, and is duly
jilted by that fickle mistress. This is all the action of The
Anatomy of Wit: but the moralising element is something more
considerable. The ancient Eubulus discourses on the follies of
youth; Euphues, himself, on the subject of friendship. The com-
plications brought about by the action of Lucilla lead to much
bitter moralising upon fickleness in general, while Euphues, jilted,
discusses his soul and indites 'a Cooling Carde for all Fond Lovers. '
Over and above all this, the work contains the hero's private
papers, his essays and letters; and opportunities are seized for
inveighing against dress, and for discoursing upon such diverse
subjects as marriage and travel, education and atheism. In
Euphues and his England, the scene changes from Italy to
England. The two friends, now reconciled, proceed to Canterbury,
where they are entertained by one Fidus, a pastoral figure of
considerable attractiveness ; Philautus soon becomes involved
in the toils of love, while Euphues plays the part of a philo-
sophical spectator. The former lays siege to the heart of one
whose affections are already bestowed, and so, with philosophy
for his comfort, he enters upon the wooing of another, with more
auspicious result. This brings the action to a close, and Euphues
leaves England, eulogising the country and the women it contains,
and returns forthwith to nurse his melancholy within his cell at
Silexedra.
The significance of the structure is best appreciated by re-
membering that the work is really a compilation, and is, in fact,
entered as such in the Stationers' register. Reminiscences of
Cicero occur, particularly of his De Amicitia and his De Natura
Deorum : but the body of the work is drawn from North's Diall
of Princes (1557), the English translation of Guevara's great
treatise. Euphues, in short, is little more than a re-ordering of
this material, and Lyly betrays his source when he introduces
certain details which, in his work, are obvious anachronisms, but
which, in the pages of Guevara, were in perfect keeping. Apart
from this, the adaptation has been consistently made, and the
works coincide in much of their detail. Dissertations on the
## p. 346 (#368) ############################################
346
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
same subjects-on love and ladies, on friendship and God, occur in
each. Both have letters appended to their close, which letters
treat of identical subjects ; Lyly's names of Lucilla, Livia and
Camilla are taken over from Guevara, while the 'Cooling Carde'
of Euphues finds its counterpart in that letter of Marcus Aurelius
against the frailty of women which is embodied in Guevara's
work? . It is only in a few instances that Lyly, while obtaining his
idea from the Spanish work, goes elsewhere for fuller details.
This is, however, the case in his remarks on education, in the
section Euphues and his Ephoebus (1, 264). Guevara, it is true,
embodies this material but Lyly's rendering is more nearly
suggestive of Plutarch's De Educatione Puerorum, though his
indebtedness is but indirect, the actual source being Erasmus's
Colloquia Familiaria (Puerpera).
The character of these sources indicates, clearly enough, Lyly's
didactic aim, in undertaking his Euphues. But, in projecting a
moral treatise, he stumbled on the novel, and, considered as such,
the work, though with many defects, has, also, abundant merit.
It foretells the day of the novel of manners, of the novel involv-
ing a detailed analysis of love. It moves away from the fanciful
idealism of the medieval romance and suggests an interest in con- .
temporary life. Love is no longer the medieval pastime of knights
and ladies ; its subtleties are analysed, its romance and glamour
are seen to lurk within contemporary walls and beneath velvet
doublets. The defects of Euphues, on the other hand, are those of
a writer unconscious of his art. There is a want of action, for the
story is, after all, of but secondary interest. A poverty of inven-
tion is apparent in the parallelism which exists between the action
of the two parts. Again, proportion is wanting; important events
are hurriedly treated; the characterisation is but slight; the
attempt at realism unconvincing. And yet the writer acquires
skill as he proceeds. In the second part, he shows a distinct
advance in artistic conception; there is more action, less moralis-
ing; characters multiply, characterisation improves and variety is
introduced by changes of scene? .
Not the least striking feature of the work, however, is the
peculiar style in which it is written. The style, known as
Euphuistic, won a following in its day, and has since become one
of the most familiar of literary phenomena. It is the least elusive
of styles, being deliberately compounded and, therefore, easily
1 See Landmann, Transactions of the New Shak. Soc. (1885), pp. 255 ff.
? See Bond, Works of Lyly, vol. 1, pp. 141 ff.
## p. 347 (#369) ############################################
Euphuism
347
6
analysed; but, while its grotesque exaggerations have met with
more than appreciation, justice has not always been done to its
real aims and effects. With all its flowers of fancy, it is nothing
more than the ‘painful'expression of a sober calculating scholar,
and is the outcome of a desire to write with clearness and precision,
with ornament and culture, at a time when Englishmen desired
'to heare finer speach then the language would allow. Lyly aimed
at precision and emphasis, in the first place, by carefully balancing
his words and phrases, by using rhetorical questions and by
repeating the same idea in different and striking forms. Allitera-
tion, puns and further word-play were other devices employed to
the same end. For ornament, in the second place, he looked
mainly to allusions and similes of various kinds. He alludes to
historical personages, found in Plutarch and Pliny, to mythological
figures taken from Ovid and Vergil. But his most daring orna-
mentation lies in his wholesale introduction of recondite knowledge;
he draws similes from folklore, medicine and magic, above all from
the Natural History of Pliny, and this mixture of quaint device
and naïve science resulted in a style which appealed irresistibly
to his contemporaries? . It should here be added, however, that
the acquaintance with Plutarch and Pliny, which the elements of
Lyly's style suggest, was not, necessarily, first hand. On the
contrary, it was, almost certainly, obtained through the writings
of Erasmus, which were in the hands of most sixteenth century
scholars and which had already penetrated into the schools. In
them, Erasmus had presented the fruit of his classical reading. His
Similia Colloquia, Apophthegmata and Adagia offered in a clear,
coherent form much that was best in antiquity and they repre-
sented a storehouse of learning which would save Lyly much
seeking in his quest for learned material. In some cases, where
Erasmus reproduces Pliny or Plutarch verbatim, Lyly's indebted-
ness to the great humanist might be doubted; but when Erasmus
takes over his classical material in a somewhat altered form, when
he expands or explains a thought, or falls into slight error or
confusion, the fact that these variations from the original are
faithfully reproduced in Lyly makes the latter's source undoubted.
And if this indebtedness be proved in the case of variations, a
further debt may be inferred even where identity of expression
appears in the classical writers, in Erasmus and Lyly? .
But this elaborated style, this 'curtizan-like painted affectation'
1 See Bond, Works of Lyly, vol. 1, pp. 141 ff.
2 See De Vocht, H. , De Invloed van Erasmus op de Engelsche Tooneelliteratuur der
aviº en xviie eeuwen (eerste deel), 1908.
## p. 348 (#370) ############################################
348
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
of Euphuism, did not originate with Lyly himself; he only
‘hatched the egges that his elder friendes laide. ' Its immediate
origin lay in a certain stylistic tendency then fashionable in
England. An almost identical craze had existed, a little earlier,
in Spain, namely, in Guevara's alto estilo, which, however, had
lacked the English device of alliteration. But the English fashion
did not come from Spain, though North’s Diall of Princes has
often been credited with having effected the introduction : while
this translation may have increased the vogue, it cannot have set
the fashion. In the first place, North had employed a French
version of Guevara's work for the purposes of translation, and
this was a medium likely to dissolve any peculiarities of style in
the original. And, secondly, many of the features of Euphuism,
its parallelism and repetitions, its rhetorical questions and classical
allusions, had already appeared in Lord Berners's Froissart (1524),
not only before North, but before Guevara had written! This
fashion, of which Berners is thus the first English representa-
tive, can, subsequently, be traced to some extent in Cheke and
Ascham; while, in Pettie's Petite Pallace, already mentioned, all
the structural, and most of the ornamental, characteristics of
Euphuism are present. It only remained for Lyly to expand the
recognised methods of simile-manufacture by adding to Pettie's
collection, based on fact and personal observation, others invented
by himself, and based on fancy.
The ultimate origin of the fashion lay yet further afield, and
is to be traced to that widespread movement for improving the
vernacular which left its mark on almost every European litera-
ture. The coincidence of its effects in the literary styles of
England and Spain must be ascribed to the prevalence of similar
national conditions in both those countries. In each case, it was
the outcome of a perverted classical enthusiasm, which led to the
imitation of late Latin stylists with their many extravagances.
It was due, also, in part, to the necessity for a courtly diction
which arose simultaneously in both countries, in consequence of
the growing interest which centred round the person and court
of the monarch. As a movement, it was by no means isolated ;
nor did its results assume merely one form. Arcadianism and
Gongorism, the conceits of seventeenth century France, and the
pedantic mannerisms of Hoffmanswaldau and Lohenstein in
Germany, are merely the outcome of the same influences, working
at different times on different soils.
Nor are the results of Euphuism on English prose style by any
1 See Wilson, J. D. , John Lyly, chap. L
## p. 349 (#371) ############################################
6
Lyly's Influence
349
means a negligible quantity, though its 'cunning courtship of
faire words,' its tedious redundancies and mass of ornaments,
led to its abandonment, generally speaking, about 1590. Sidney,
by that time, had lamented the fact that his contemporaries
enamelled 'with py'd flowers their thoughts of gold,' and Warner
perceived that in running on the letter we often runne from the
matter. ' But some good came of it all. An attempt had defi-
nitely been made to introduce design into prose; and balance and
harmony were the fitting contributions of an age of poetry to the
development of prose style. Prose diction, moreover, was en-
couraged to free itself from obsolescent words; and further
devices for obtaining lucidity, such as the use of short sentences
and paragraph divisions, were, henceforth, to be generally adopted
by English writers.
Apart from its prose style, the Euphues of Lyly exercised
considerable influence upon its author's contemporaries. On
Shakespeare, to mention only one, its effect is marked. Some of
the dramatist's characters, such as his pairs of friends, the senten-
tious old man Polonius and the melancholy philosopher Jacques,
recall Euphues in different ways. Verbal resemblances also exist:
Shakespeare's utterances on friendship, and his famous bee-
passage, place his indebtedness beyond all doubt, even supposing
his numerous similes drawn from actual or supposed natural
history to be but drafts made upon the common possessions of
the age
Lyly's success with Euphues was not slow in inspiring a number
of followers, and, up to about 1584, works of the moral treatise
kind were constantly appearing. But their authors, as a rule,
were painful imitators, who seemed incapable of original effort.
Some affected his style, others worked 'Euphues' into their title-
page, while the majority wrote, as Lyly had claimed to write, for
'the onely delight of the Courteous Gentlewoemen. ' Anthony
Munday's Zelauto (1580) is the first of this school ; it is a
delicate disputation. . . given for a friendly entertainment of
Euphues,' in which Zelauto's praise of England is in emulation
of that of Euphues. In Barnabe Riche's Don Simonides (1581)
Philautus reappears and English manners, once again, form part
of the topics discussed. Melbancke's Philotimus (1583) is made
up of philosophical discussions on the warre betwixt nature and
>
1 Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1, sc. 3. 198; As You Like It, Act I, 80. 3. 69.
Henry V, Act I, sc. 2. 183.
3 See Bond, Works of Lyly, vol. 1, pp. 169–175.
## p. 350 (#372) ############################################
350
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
3
fortune,' and, in Warner's Pan his Syrinx (1584), woman is under
debate, and, as in Euphues, a cooling carde' is drawn up
against the sex. The most notable exponent of this fashionable
type of work is, however, Robert Greene. His character, the date
of his appearance and the attendant circumstances, all made it
inevitable that he should follow the fashion, and work it for what
it was worth. In his Mamillia (1580) he relates how a fickle
Pharicles undeservedly wins Mamillia's hand, a circumstance which
leads on, naturally enough, to questions of love and youthful folly.
Upon these topics Greene, therefore, discourses, and duly recom-
mends what he has to say, by means of zoological similes and
classical precedents. These details of ornamentation he repeats
in succeeding works, in his Myrrour of Modestie (1584), based
upon the story of Susanna and the elders, and in Morando (1587),
a series of dissertations upon the subject of love. In 1587, two
companion works, characterised by the same style, appeared from
his pen. The first, Penelope's Web, consists of a discussion in which
the faithful Penelope, strangely enough, embodies the ideas of the
Italian Platonists in her conception of love, and then goes on to
portray the perfect wife. In Euphues his Censure to Philautus, on
the other hand, the perfect warrior is sketched, Euphues supplying
the picture for the benefit of his friend. But, in spite of this
and other sequels to Lyly's original story, the enthusiasm aroused
by Euphues and the love-pamphlets he engendered had already
begun to subside. Greene was already working in another field;
and Lodge's still more belated pamphlet Euphues Shadow, the
battaile of the sences, 'wherein youthful folly is set down' (1592),
is nothing more than a hardy survival'. It was a work born out
of season ; and, though its author was pleased to describe his
Rosalynde as 'Euphues golden legacie found after his death in
his cell at Silexedra,' such a description was little more than the
whim of one 'who had his oare in every paper boat'—the work
itself belonged to another genre.
Before the vigour of this edifying output had begun to abate,
the literary current was already setting in the direction of the
court romance. The study of codes of etiquette and morality, was,
after all, an unsatisfying diversion, and, to those who looked back
regretfully to the more substantial chivalry of an earlier day, the
romance still made a definite appeal. The earlier romance, how-
ever, had fallen into disrepute by this time; and the Elizabethan
type was drawn up on lines somewhat different, and more in
1 Cf. also J. Dickenson's Arisbas, Euphues amidst his slumbers (1594).
>
## p. 351 (#373) ############################################
Sidney's Arcadia
351
keeping with the fashion of the age. With the retention of
characters of a princely kind and the frequent addition of a
pastoral setting, a fresh situation was devised, that of the nobly
born in a simple life; and this, in its turn, brought about a change
of motive, so that the general theme became that of the separa-
tion and reunion of royal kindred. Therefore, while the earlier
chivalrous and supernatural elements are, for the most part,
absent from the romances of Sidney, Greene and Lodge, in their
Arcadias and Bohemias true nobility shines all the more clearly
through the wrappings of humble pastoral circumstance. And
this was a theme of which Shakespeare made good use in his
romantic plays.
Of all the workers in the field of romance, Sir Philip Sidney
stands out as best qualified by nature and circumstance to
deal with the theme. Amid the shades of Penshurst, the golden
past had entered his soul, and its gentle influence was shed over
his remaining days. He travelled abroad and made friends with
Languet; at home, his sympathies were divided between art and
action. He began life as a courtier in 1575, but his idealistic
temperament proved to be but ill-adapted for an atmosphere of
intrigue. Bickerings with the earl of Oxford and a rebuff from
Elizabeth drove him, in 1579, into rustic retreat at Wilton, whence
he emerged to take up diplomatic work abroad, and to fall before
Zutphen in 1586.
The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia was begun in 1580,
during Sidney's retreat at Wilton, and was posthumously pub-
lished in 1590. It was primarily intended as merely an expression
of some of the 'many fancies' that lurked in his young head'; it
was 'a trifle, and that triflingly handled'; and as the author sent
his sheets by instalments to his sister, the countess, it was on the
understanding that they should proceed no further. The prime
motive of the work was to indulge his fancy with ideal scenes and
sentiments, such as he had sought for in vain in the debased
chivalry of the court; and fancy leads him on to pastoral scenes,
to the calm of a golden age, as it had led others before him in
similar periods of unsettlement.
Earlier pastoral works existed in Sanazzaro's Arcadia (1504)
and Montemayor's Diana (1552); and to each of these Sidney
is somewhat indebted, while, for occasional incident, he goes
to Heliodorus and others 1. From Sanazzaro he obtains his
Notably Achilles Tatius's Clitophon and Leucippe and Chariton's Chereas and
Callirrhoe; see Brunhuber, Sir P. Sidney's Arcadia und ihre Nachläufer.
1
## p. 352 (#374) ############################################
352
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
title, and, possibly, the trick of infusing something of a personal
element into his work. Although the work of the Elizabethan
is never autobiographical to the extent of the Italian's, yet,
amidst his fancies, there stray some serious and personal thoughts
on religion, philosophy and love, while the pastoral Philisides
shadows forth the friend of Languet. Sidney's debt to Monte-
mayor is, however, less uncertain, as is shown by the striking
parallel which exists between the opening passages of their
respective works. In Diana, Sidney found a precedent for his
mixed pastoral, for his happy blend of eclogue and romance;
by Sanazzaro, on the other hand, the chivalrous element had
been left untouched. Montemayor's conception of romance, more-
over, embodied nothing of the magical, and Sidney follows him in
discarding this piece of medieval machinery. And, once again, the
love-plot in Montemayor's hands having become more than ever
complicated, Sidney, by the employment of bewildering disguises,
and a multiplicity of incident, succeeds in effecting the same
artistic confusion? .
The main interest of Sidney's plot centres in love-intrigue.
Two shipwrecked princes, Musidorus and Pyrocles, after pre-
liminary adventure, fall in love with Pamēla and Philoclea,
daughters of the king of Arcadia, who has taken up his abode
in the depths of a forest. Exigencies of courtship compel the
princes to assume rustic disguises; and Pyrocles, appearing as a
shepherdess Zelmane, soon becomes involved in awkward entangle-
ments. The king falls in love with the pretended shepherdess,
while his queen is attracted by the man whom she recognises
through his disguise. From this compromising position, Pyrocles
is only rescued by the privileged skill of the novelist; explana-
tions and pardons follow, and the sequel is of a felicitous kind.
But the story, as thus outlined, fails to give any idea of the plot's
endless involutions, of its untiring series of alarums and excursions.
Subordinate romances are woven into the main structure; there
are tournaments and fêtes, long-drawn love-scenes and unceasing
adventure with both man and beast. And the movement is further
retarded by numerous experiments in metre, due to Sidney the
Areopagite. There are some choice insertions, like the ditty
beginning ‘My true-love hath my heart,' but, by the side of these,
there are limping hexameters and elegiacs, experiments in terza
rima and ottava rima and occasional exhibitions of the sdrucciolo
or trisyllabic rimes.
1 See Greg, W. W. , Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama (London, 1906).
## p. 353 (#375) ############################################
Its Characteristics
353
As a romance, the work enshrines Sidney's noble ideals of
medieval chivalry. The Grecian heroes embody true knightly
qualities : they are simple and gentle, daring in action and
devoted in love. And the pastoral element gives an ideal setting
to this chivalrous action. Arcadia is a land where morning ‘strows
a
roses and violets on the heavenly floor,' a land of flowering
meadows and quiet pastures, where shepherd boys pipe as though
they should never be old' But, while the romance is thus prodigal
of beauty, it is not without many faults, both of form and style.
Its characters, in the first place, are of a shadowy kind; a
strong suggestion of sheer unreality is inevitable. As regards its
structure, there is an obvious lack of order and restraint, and this
is a feature which, while characteristic of the age, is, perhaps,
exaggerated in the case of the romance with its traditions of
amplitude. In drama and poetry, there existed compelling forces
of law and order, to which the intensity of the one and the grace
of the other were due. But the laws of the prose romance were
yet to be evolved, and in the Arcadia will be found no very logical
development, nor skilful handling of the threads of the narrative.
Its discursive character has already been noted, and one result of
this exhausting method lies in the fact that the work concludes
without decent disposal of all the characters. Nor must humour
be looked for in either situation or phrase. Though a few rustics
like Dametas and Mopsa are introduced by way of an antimasque,
the humorous result apparently desired is not obtained. Sidney's
temperament was melancholy as well as idealistic; his vision did
not include either the ludicrous or the grotesque. The work, how-
ever, has the qualities of an eclectic performance, reflecting the
rich confusion of the renascence mind. Fancy ranges in the
romance from Greece to England, and within its purview the
three ages seem to meet. The landscape, in the first place, has
the bright colouring of renascence paintings—something, too,
of the quieter tones of an English country-side; its temples
and its churches, its palaces and pavilions, suggest a medley
collected from Greece, Italy and England. Then, again, the
ancient and medieval worlds appear to meet the modern.
While
the pastoral colouring revives the ancient notion of a golden age,
and the chivalrous element is a faint afterglow of medieval days,
a modern touch is perceived in the confessed unreality of the
nature of the romance. Romance, hitherto, had been speciously
linked with the real and actual: now, frankly removed to fanciful
realms, it is made to imply an escape from reality-the sense in
which it is accepted by the modern mind.
23
E. L. III.
CH. XVI,
## p. 354 (#376) ############################################
354
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
The style of the Arcadia represents a successful attempt at
a picturesque prose, for the result is picturesque if somewhat
extravagant. Other contemporaries were engaged upon the same
quest, but, while Sidney avoids their several extravagances, he
indulges in others of his own making. He avoids, for instance, the
devices of Euphuism, the more obvious absurdities of bombastic,
pedantic phrase, as well as those tricks of alliteration' and other
'far-fetched helps' which 'do bewray a want of inward touch. '
His excesses, on the other hand, are those of a poet who forgets
that he is now committed to prose. He enters upon a pedestrian
task, unprepared to forego poetical flight; and, freed from the
restraints which verse imposes, he strains even the limits of a
more willing prose. With coherence of structure he is not greatly
concerned. His sentences, long and rambling, are yet incapable
of expressing his wealth of thought, and are, therefore, expanded
by frequent parentheses. When he aims at emphasis, he occasion-
ally employs Lyly's trick of antithesis, or, perhaps, the epigram-
matic effect of the oxymoron? : but his favourite artifice is that of
a jingle of words’, which lacks effect as it lacks dignity.
The same excess characterises his use of ornament, for which
he depends, not upon erudite display, but, rather, upon a free use
of clever conceits in which sentiment is ascribed to inanimate
objects. Sparingly used as an accompaniment to highly-wrought
verse, the device is capable of excellent results, but, when frequently
employed in ordinary prose, it soon becomes smothered by its own
sweetness. Sidney, in short, rides the 'pathetic fallacy' to death ;
he is for ever hearing 'tongues in trees'; and commonplace thought,
arrayed in delicate fancy, often leads to grotesque effect".
Sidney's prose style is, however, not all extravagance, it con-
tains much that suggests the happier moods of a cultured mind.
The famous prayer of Pamela, for instance, reads with a noble
liturgical ring; pregnant apophthegms, scattered here and there,
gleam like jewels of thought“, while even the writer's foibles could
6
1 Thus, a bare house is said to be '& picture of miserable happiness and rich
beggary': maidenly charms are described as “a wanton modesty, an enticing
soberness. '
2 Cf. . in the dressing of her hair and apparel she might see neither a careful art
nor an art of carefulness, . . . a neglected chance. . . could not imperfect her perfection' (see
Arcadia, ed. 1674, p. 244).
3 E. g. a sewing operation is described in the following terms : 'the needle itself
would have been loth to have gone fromward such a mistress but that it hoped to
return thitherward very quickly again, the cloth looking with many eyes upon her,
and lovingly embracing the wounds she gave' (ed. 1674, p. 260).
* Cf. 'all is but lip-wisdom that wants experience': 'the journey of high Honor
lies not in plain ways': 'a lamentable tune is the sweetest musick to a woful mind. '
## p. 355 (#377) ############################################
Its Style
Style and Influence 355
produce, at times, distinctly virtuous results, when they enter into
some of his most glowing descriptions? . Sidney's extravagances
were, in fact, not altogether a vain display. Lyly, in an age of
poetry, gave to prose the subtle effects of harmony and balance;
Sidney incidentally showed how dull prose might be lit up with
flowers of fancy; and his work is, for all time, a rich mine of
poetic ore.
The popularity of the work may be gauged from its frequent
reappearances, as well as from its subsequent influence upon
various writers. Upon the drama, in particular, its influence was
considerable. It popularised the new machinery of the disguise
of the sexes; it also suggested fresh situations arising out of
fanciful realms such as Arden and Bohemia ; while its love-
passages must also have induced greater interest in the characteri-
sation of women. It furnished episodes for more than one type
of work. It supplied King Lear with the under-plot of Gloucester
and his sons; Quarles with the material for his metrical tale
Argalus and Parthenia (1629). Dramatic works, like Day's Ile
of Guls (1606), Beaumont and Fletcher's Cupid's Revenge (1615)
and Shirley's Arcadia, are, in some sort, adaptations of its theme? ,
while Webster's Duchess of Malfi is indebted to it for certain
figures and phrases". Moreover, it inspired Lodge's Rosalynde,
and lady Wroth's Urania (1621), both of which are imitations
in novel form; and, lastly, its style set the fashion which helped
to ring out the reign of Lyly.
While Sidney thus dreamed of his golden world, there was one
who, under less happy circumstances, was to traverse the same
fields. Robert Greene is the second great romancer of the Eliza-
bethan period, in which he appears as a picturesque but pathetic
Bohemian, with 'wit lent from Heaven but vices sent from Hell. '
Before he had finished with Cambridge, his moral nature was
tainted, and, after that, his way lay perpetually over stormy seas.
A glimpse of happier things seemed promised in 1586, but, once
again, his evil genius led him astray, until, finally, he was rescued
1 Cf. the oft-quoted description of the land of Arcadia (ed. 1674, p. 6), and the
description of the field for shepherds’ sports : 'through the midst (of the field] there
ran a sweet brook which did both hold the eye open with her azure streams and yet
seek to close the eye with the purling noise upon the pebbles it ran over : the field
itself being set in some places with roses and in all the rest constantly preserving a
flourishing green,
the roses added such a ruddy shew unto it as though the field were
bashful at its own beauty' (ed. 1674, p. 68).
• To these might be added Glapthorne's Argalus and Parthenia; Shirley's Andro-
mana ; Mucedorus ; McNamara Morgan's Philoclea (1754).
3 See Notes and Queries, 10 Ser. vol. II, pp. 221 ff.
23-2
## p. 356 (#378) ############################################
356
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
by a poor shoemaker in 1592, under whose rough shelter he made
a pathetic end. His life had been one of struggle and drift, a
wayward course of frustrated good intentions; and these things
left their impress upon what he wrote, and upon his manner of
writing. In the first place, he wrote merely to sell, and, as a
consequence, he resembles a sensitive barometer, indicating the
literary vogue from day to day. When Lyly was popular, Greene
adopted his methods; when romance was called for, he also com-
plied; his attempt at the pastoral followed Sidney's success; while
his realistic pamphlets responded to a yet later demand. Secondly,
with numerous creditors ever driving him on, he resorts in his
haste to plagiarism and repetition? He repeats himself without
a blush : about thirteen pages of his Myrrour of Modestie occur
in his Never too late, and parts of Planetomachia reappear in
Perimedes the Blacksmith; from Euphues, he abstracts numerous
similes, while from T(homas) B(owes's) translation of Peter de la Pri-
maudaye's French Academy (1586), he takes entire passages when
they please his fancy. And yet, though in life he followed the
worse, he approved the better; his work is free from licentious-
ness, he never 'gave the looser cause to laugh. ' His better self
is revealed when, in his earlier work, he writes as a 'Homer of
women,' when he sings in Menaphon a tender cradle-song, or when
he works into his verse the saddening refrain of his life's story.
Greene's chief romances are Pandosto (1588), Perimedes the
Blacksmith (1588) and Menaphon (1589). The first deals with
the story of Dorastus and Fawnia, which Shakespeare afterwards
refined in his Winter's Tale, adding such characters as Autolycus
and Paulina, and removing from those he adopted their puppet-
like stiffness. Perimedes embodies an evening tale, told by the
fireside of the idyllic blacksmith, the story being based upon one
in the Decameron (Giorn. II, Nov. II); the motive is that of the
separation and reunion of kindred, and the chief figure is the
noble Mariana In Menaphon, the scene is laid in the realm of
Arcadia, where occur the adventures of the shipwrecked princess
Sephestia, who is loved by the shepherd Menaphon, but is duly
restored to her husband and son, disguised as shepherds. Sidney's
influence is apparent here, primarily, in the pastoral background;
but, when Menaphon promises Sephestia that the mountaine tops
shall be thy mornings walke, and the shadie vallies thy evenings
arbour,' it is further evident that Sidney, rather than Lyly, has
become the model of style. The plot, apparently, is taken from
2 Cf. Hart, H. C. , Notes and Queries, 10 Ser. vol. iv.
## p. 357 (#379) ############################################
Greene's Romances
357
the narrative of Curan and Argentile in Warner's Albion's
England; and the Thracian Wonder by a later pen, is a dramatic
adaptation of the pastoral romance?
Other romances of Greene, though of less importance, must
also be mentioned. In 1584 appeared his Gwydonius and Arbasto,
two romances of an earlier heroic type, which were followed, in
1592, by Philomela, an attractive story, in honour of lady Fitz-
water. The central incident of this last romance consists of a
wager, made by a jealous husband, concerning his wife's fidelity-
a favourite theme of Boccaccio—and the work is confessedly
‘penned to approve of women's chastity. "?
From the point of view of art, Greene's romantic fiction cannot
be said to rank very high, though it comprises interesting narra-
tives, of moral and learned tendency, which waft their readers
into the pleasant but fanciful realms of Bohemia and Arcadia.
There is, however, considerable lack of structural skill, of artistic
restraint and verisimilitude, in dealing with the affairs of the
heart; as with Sidney, the art of story-telling in prose was yet in
its infancy. But one pleasing feature of these works is the skill
with which women-portraits are drawn : for the romances embody
such creations as Myrania and Fawnia, Mariana and Sephestia,
women of the faithful and modest type. It was only after 1588
that the reverence and sympathy which these portraits betray on
the part of their author was to change into the 'bitterest hate. '
In Alcida, a love pamphlet of 1588, he first revealed 'woman's
wanton ways'; and, subsequently, he depicted fascinating sirens
such as Infida (Never too late) and Lamilia (Groatsworth of Wit),
who form a marked contrast with his earlier types. Excellent
occasional verse is another outstanding feature of these prose
romances; it culminates in Menaphon, as, for instance, in the
lines of Melicertus on the description of his mistress, while the
cradle song beginning
Weepe not my wanton! smile upon my knee!
When thou art olde, ther's grief inough for thee!
is notable even among Elizabethan lyrics.
1 See Brereton, J. le Gay, Mod. Lang. Rev. vol. II, pp. 34–38, and Adams, J. Q. , Jr. ,
Mod. Phil. in, Jan. 1906.
? He also wrote other prose pamphlets reminiscent of earlier types of composition :
thus, in his Planetomachia (1585), a dispute between the planets Venus and Saturn as
to their respective influences on mankind, are to be found traces of the old débat,
together with reminiscences of the ancient faith in the misticall science of astro-
nomie': Orpharion (1588), on the other hand, embodies an imaginary dream, while
in the Spanish Masquerado (1588) Greene turns from love to politics and indulges in
a fierce tirade against the affairs of Spain.
## p. 358 (#380) ############################################
358
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
Less interesting, because less tragic, is the personality of
Thomas Lodge, who also was responsible for certain romances.
During his Oxford days, he fell under Lyly's influence, which
accounts for the Euphuistic strain which pervades all his works.
His restless, unsettled career was typical of his age. He began
with law, took to literature and ended as a medical man, while,
from time to time, he indulged in lengthy cruises abroad. His first
romance, Forbonius and Prisceria (1584), is a slight performance,
and consists of a story of blighted affection, the subject of which
seeks refuge in a pastoral life. Rosalynde, Euphues Golden
Legacie (1590) 'fetcht from the Canaries,' is, on the other hand,
one of the most pleasing of all the romances, and, upon it,
Shakespeare, as is well known, based his As You Like It. It is
a fresh story, steeped in idyllic sentiment, the charm of which
even a Euphuistic manner is unable to dull. Lodge
have written it on a cruise to the straits of Magellan, whence
“every line was wet with the surge'; but the environment worked
only by way of contrast, for pastoral scenes and rural notes are
the products of this pen at work on the high seas. The story itself is
based on The Tale of Gamelyn, a fourteenth century ballad of the
Robin Hood cycle, which relates how the hero, defrauded by his
elder brother, takes to the forest and becomes an outlaw! This
story of earlier England is removed by Lodge into the region of
pastoral romance, and the English outlaws become Arcadians of
the Italian type, polished in speech and courtly in manner. A love
element is woven into the tale ; Rosalynde and Alinda, as well as
Phoebe, appear on the scene; and the plot develops, as in the
Arcadia, by means of disguisals of sex. The narrative is also
varied by the insertion of occasional verse, though the variations
lack subtlety and the inserted eclogues frequently drag. But
where the treatment most suffers is in the handling of character,
which reveals no development, and is, moreover, stiff and formal.
Shakespeare appreciated the charm and freshness of the woodland
scenes, and he appropriated the elements of a good love-tale; but
he also detected the unreality of Lodge's creations, and, while he
quickens them into life in his own incomparable way, through the
humours of Touchstone he smiles at the inconsistencies and un-
realities which he takes care to remove. Another of Lodge's.
romances, Margarite of America, written in the winter of 1592
and published 1596, was also claimed to have been written at sea,
on a voyage to South America with Master Thomas Cavendish;
and the story, apparently, was taken from a Spanish work in the
i Cf. vol. 1, p. 298.
## p. 359 (#381) ############################################
Ford, Breton and Munday
359
Jesuit library at Santos, Brazil. A number of Cavendish's men
certainly stayed at that place, and some are known to have been
lodged at the Jesuit college. But the Spanish element is easily
overrated ; and several of its sonnets are borrowed from Italian
sources, more particularly from Lodovico Dolce and Paschale? .
The remaining works of a romantic kind present nothing new.
Emanuel Ford's Parismus (1598), and its sequel, Parismenos
(1599), are obvious imitations of the works of Greene. The scene
is placed in Bohemia, and the action is made up of the usual
excitements of princely love and war; the general tone, however,
is less scrupulously moral than is the case with Greene, whence
Meres's censure of Ford's work as being 'hurtful to youth. It
should be added that the story thus handled by Ford is reminiscent
of Romeo and Juliet, and it is more than probable that the writer
owes an unacknowledged debt to that dramatic work. Nicholas
Breton is another of Greene's successors, his chief romantic work
consisting of Strange Fortunes of two excellent princes (1600).
Like Ford, he manages to shake himself free of faded Euphuisms,
but his methods of romance are the methods of Greene, stiffened,
perhaps, by a sense of inartistic symmetry. Nor must the Spanish
romances, popularised by Anthony Munday in his English transla-
tions, be entirely forgotten. Between 1580 and 1590, he produced
those versions of the Amadis and Palmerin cycles which represent
modifications of the Arthurian romance. The works were viewed
with disfavour by the cultured classes, on account of their pre-
posterous plots, and the crudeness and inaccuracy of their render-
ing. Munday achieved a popular success, but he added little to
his reputation, or to the dignity of the Elizabethan romance.
Before the last decade of the century was well advanced, a
marked change came over works of fiction. By a sort of normal
reaction, idealism gave way to realism, the romance to the realistic
pamphlet and story, and, from Arcadia and Bohemia with their
courtly amenities, the scene moved to London and its everyday
life. The chief writers of this type of work were Greene, Nashe and
Deloney, who, however, differ somewhat in the methods they adopt.
Greene relates his own life-story, a grim narrative, which reveals,
incidentally, much of the seamier side of life; and this he follows
up with a series of revelations as to the tricks and knaveries of
London rogues. Nashe, on the other hand, while less gloomy,
1 Cf. Kastner, L. E. , Mod. Lang. Rev. vol. 11, ii, 156-8.
3 Note the song 'In Praise of a Deggar's life,' a variant on the earlier theme of the
mean estate, See Davison's Poetical Rapsody, Collier's reprint, p. 161.
## p. 360 (#382) ############################################
360
Elizabethan Prose Prose
Fiction
is more satirical in what he has to say. He deals with follies
and quackeries, rather than vices, and, while his methods are
sufficiently trenchant, he has an eye to the humorous side of
things: in his picaresque novel, the rogue becomes a hero. Deloney,
again, has neither the grim realism of the one nor the force-
ful satire of the other. He is content to depict citizen life with a
proper regard for the dignity of the crafts, and with a quiet sense
of humour, which is by no means inconsistent with his more
serious intentions.
Greene's autobiographical work begins in his Mourning Gar-
ment (1590) and Never too late (1590). He does not, as yet, deal
directly with London life, though his own experiences, lightly
veiled, form the nucleus of the tales. The Mourning Garment
is an adaptation of the story of the Prodigal Son, with the addition
of pastoral details as reminders of his earlier craft. But Greene is
no longer 'Love's Philosopher,' as, indeed, he confesses; Philador
gets into difficulties through the society of women, those Panthers
that allure, the syrens that entice,' and the succeeding details are
those of the Biblical narrative. In Never too late, the author's
career is more closely followed. Here, it is Francesco who im-
personates Greene; and he relates how he had married a gentle-
woman, whom he abandoned for one less worthy, and how he was
helped in his distress by strolling actors. These are well-known
incidents in the life of Greene; but, when Francesco subsequently
becomes reconciled to his injured wife, Greene pathetically suggests
an event which, unhappily, found no counterpart in his actual life.
In 1592, further autobiographical work was penned by Greene on
his death-bed, when the veil concealing the author's identity is de-
liberately lifted. The main facts of his life are again dealt with, and,
in the Groatsworth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance,
the writer is careful to state that Roberto is himself. The other
death-bed pamphlet, The Repentance of Robert Greene, is still
more direct; its style is, perhaps, inferior to that of his earlier
work, and the writer seems intent on painting his life in the most
sombre colours.
More direct descriptions of London life appear in further
pamphlets, in which Greene exposes rogues and depicts honest
tradesmen. The former object underlies his Notable Discovery
of Coosnage (1591). Awdeley and Harman, as has been seen, had
dealt with the vagabond classes, and had specified for public
benefit the various classes of knaves, while Copland's Hye Way
to the Spyttel Hous gave the earliest account of the thievish cant
>
## p. 361 (#383) ############################################
1
Greene's Realistic Work 361
known as 'pedlyng frenche' Greene, however, is indebted to none
of these, except, perhaps, for the general idea. He is concerned
with neither pedlars, nor gypsies, nor itinerant rogues; his aim,
rather, is to warn country people against the snares of London. It
is the wiles of panders and courtesans, card-sharpers and swindlers,
that he undertakes to reveal, and this the Notable Discovery
accomplishes. So successful was he, in fact, that an attempt
was made upon his life, and A Defence of Conny-Catching
appeared as an impudent rejoinder. In 1592, Greene followed up
the attack by A Disputation between a He Conny-Catcher and a
She Conny-Catcherl, a lurid description of the London demi-
monde, which concludes with a pathetic account of the reclaiming
of a courtesan. And in The Blacke Booke's Messenger of the same
ye Greene once more wages war with rascals, by sketching the
grimy career of a celebrated rogue, one Ned Browne, whose
belated repentance takes place in the neighbourhood of the
scaffold.
Besides dealing in this way with roguery, Greene also gives
some attention to the more respectable side of London life, in his
Quip for an Upstart Courtier or a Quaint Dispute between
Velvet-Breeches and Cloth-Breeches (1592). The dispute is as to
whether the courtier (i. e. Velvet-Breeches), or the tradesman
(Cloth-Breeches) is deserving of the greater respect, and the
decision is duly referred to a jury of tradesmen. This brings
together a body of typical citizens, and is thus a device which
enables the author to introduce his projected class-descriptions.
The work reveals Greene's democratic sympathies, for he not only
finds much interest in his commonplace types, but he also takes
care, while giving short shrift to his upstart courtier, to assign more
flattering treatment to the London tradesman. And this democratic
attitude is not devoid of a certain significance, especially when a
similar sympathy appears in Deloney's work: it explains, in some
measure, the impulse which originated this realistic section of
Elizabethan fiction. The form of the work is that of the medieval
dream-vision, the fundamental idea, apparently, being taken from
an anonymous poem, A Debate between Pride and Lowliness.
All this work of Greene had meant a considerable contribution
to the literature dealing with contemporary life. With the author
i Conny-catchers were London rogues who duped simple people by various tricks
and who primarily obtained their name from those typical cheats, the pedlars—those
gaderers of cony skynnes
That chop with laces, poyntes, nedles and pyns (Copland);
quoted by Hart, H. S.
