The most elaborate effort of its kind that has come down to
us was the Gray's inn entertainment presented to the queen in
1588, of which The Misfortunes of Arthur, by Thomas Hughes,
was the principal feature.
us was the Gray's inn entertainment presented to the queen in
1588, of which The Misfortunes of Arthur, by Thomas Hughes,
was the principal feature.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v05
But being divided, is easely destroyed.
As befell apon
Duke Gorboduc dividing his land to his two sonnes which he before held in
Monarchie.
Nearly all the dialogue of the play-for the incidents occur
off the stage is delivered in the council chamber. The opening
scene, it is true, consists of a private conversation between Ferrex
and his mother; but the longest passage in it is an elaborate
political commonplace. After this short introductory scene,
1 Courtney, L. H. , in Notes and Queries, Ser. II, vol. 2, pp. 261-3.
3
## p. 67 (#91) ##############################################
Gorboduc
67
containing less than seventy lines in all, we have, in the first
act, nothing but discussions in the king's council, his decision to
divide the realm between his two sons being all that can properly
be described as action. Ferrex and Porrex, each with his good
and his evil counsellor, occupy the whole of act 11. In act III, we
are back in Gorboduc's council chamber, and the only incident
is recounted by a messenger. With act iv, according to the printer
of the first edition, Sackville's part begins; and this division is
borne out by the fact that the remaining acts show greater
power of thought and vigour of versification, more variety of tone
and richness of character and incident. The speech of Porrex in
his own defence has more dramatic significance than anything
the English stage had yet known; the incident of the attempted
poisoning, introduced by the dramatist into the story for the first
time', and not mentioned in acts I—III, and the young prince's
remorse at his brother's death, engage the sympathy of the
audience for his own untimely end, which is recounted with many
natural and moving touches by Marcella, an eye-witness of the
assassination, and, therefore, able to communicate more passion
than the conventional messenger. But, with act v, we are once
more in the dull round of political disquisition, broken only by the
soliloquy in which Fergus reveals his ambitious designs. The
tragedy ends with obvious allusions to the political situation of
the day :
Such one (my lordes) let be your chosen king,
Such one so borne within your native land,
Such one, preferre, and in no wise admitte
The heavie yoke of forreine governaunce :
Let forreine titles yelde to publike wealth.
One wonders how the queen took this, and, still more, how she
received the advice directed to her in the concluding speech:
This, this ensues, when noble men do faile
In loyall trouth, and subjectes will be kinges.
And this doth growe when loe unto the prince,
Whom death or sodeine happe of life bereaves,
No certaine heire remaines, such certaine heire,
As not all onely is the rightfull heire
But to the realme is so made knowen to be,
And trouth therby vested in subjectes hartes,
To owe fayth there where right is knowen to rest.
1 Sackville perhaps got a bint from Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum
Britanniae, Bk. II, chap. XVI: 'At Porrez majori cupiditate subductus, paratis insidiis
Perrecem fratrem interficere parat' (ed. San-Marte, p. 30). The treachery here is
attributed to the younger brother, who afterwards kills Ferrex in battle, so that the
incident has not, in the History, the dramatic significance given to it by Sackville.
5-2
## p. 68 (#92) ##############################################
68
Early English Tragedy
6
Alas, in Parliament what hope can be,
When is of Parliament no hope at all ?
Which, though it be assembled by consent,
Yet is not likely with consent to end,
While eche one for him selfe, or for his frend,
A gainst his foe, shall travaile what he may.
While now the state left open to the man,
That shall with greatest force invade the same,
Shall fill ambicious mindes with gaping hope;
When will they once with yelding hartes agree?
Or in the while, how shall the realme be used ?
No, no: then Parliament should have bene holden,
And certeine heirs appointed to the crowne,
To stay the title of established right,
And in the people plant obedience
While yet the prince did live, whose name and power
By lawfull sommons and authoritie
Might make a Parliament to be of force,
And might have set the state in quiet stay.
At the beginning of her reign, Elizabeth had given orders that
'common Interludes in the Englishe tongue' should refrain from
handling 'either matters of religion or of the governaunce of the
estate of the common weale,' 'beyng no meete matters to be wrytten
or treated upon, but by menne of aucthoritie, learning, and wisedome,
nor to be handled before any audience but of grave and discrete
persons' Presumably, the queen thought that these conditions
were fulfilled at the Christmas revels of the Inner Temple in
1561–2; for, a few days later, the tragedy was repeated before her
in her own ball; and, in 1563, Norton presented the same arguments
as those of the passage cited above on behalf of a committee of
the House of Commons in a petition for the limitation of the
succession to the crown?
It is clear that our first tragedy is very far from being a servile
imitation of Seneca. Its authors took over his general scheme of
five acts divided by choruses, his counsellors and messengers, his
rhetorical style and grave sententious precepts; in the reflective
passages, one often detects an echo of the Roman original, though
there is little direct imitation of phraseology, such as came to be
the fashion later. The plot bears a general resemblance to that
of Seneca's fragmentary Thebais; but the story is taken from
Geoffrey of Monmouth, and, as we have seen, it is developed on
independent lines. The direct stimulus to production probably
i Collier, vol. I, p. 167.
2 See Courtney, L. H. , u. 8. p. 261; Commons Journal, vol. I, pp. 62–64.
3 For the relation of Gorboduc to its sources, see a doctor's dissertation now in
course of publication at the university of Wisconsin by Watt, H. A. , Gorboduc; or
Ferrex and Porrex (1909).
>
## p. 69 (#93) ##############################################
Allegorical Dumb-shows
69
came from Italian example; but the authors modified the custom
of the Italian stage to suit their own ideas. It had long been the
practice in Italy to enliven dramatic performances with spectacular
entertainments between the acts, called intermedii. We have
noted such representations above in connection with Filostrato
e Panfila, and they were the invariable accompaniments of the
early productions of comedy, both in Latin and in the vernacular.
In tragedy, they were of rarer occurrence, choruses usually
taking their place; they were almost always allegorical in
character; sometimes they had relation to the subject of the
play, sometimes not; and they were presented both with and
without words. Though they figure largely in contemporary
accounts of dramatic entertainments, they were not always
included in printed editions of the plays; but Dolce published
those used to adorn the performance of his Troiane (1566), and
these may serve as an example of the type. After the first act
of the tragedy, there was a discourse between the chorus and
Trojan citizens on the misfortunes of their country; after the
second, Pluto appeared with the ghosts of the Trojan slain ; after
the third, Neptune and the council of the gods ; after the fourth,
other deities, especially Venus and Juno. The spectators often
paid more attention to these intermedii than to the drama, to the
disgust of dramatists, who were loud in their complaints? ; and
a contemporary critic remarks that they were of special interest
to foreign visitors, who did not understand Italian? . It can hardly
be doubted that this Italian practice gave the authors of Gorboduc
a hint for the establishment of a similar custom on the Elizabethan
stage. But, here again, they showed a certain originality. They
connected their allegorical dumb-shows with the subject of the
tragedy, and, by making them precede each act, instead of following,
as was the rule in Italy, gave them new weight and significance.
They were no longer mere shows, distracting the spectator from
the main theme of the drama, but helps to the understanding of it.
Norton and Sackville, doubtless, were familiar with such allegorical
representations at London, Coventry and elsewhere, as independent
tableaux in honour of the festival of a patron saint or a royal visit,
and they followed Italian example only in using them for the
purposes of tragedy. In the fourth dumb-show, the three furies
come from under the stage, as though out of hell’; and this, as well
1 Cf. Isabella d'Este's letters to her husband during her visit to Ferrara in 1502,
and Grazzini's prologue to La Strega (1582).
? See preface to d'Ambra's Cojanaria, acted at Florence in 1565.
## p. 70 (#94) ##############################################
70 Early English Tragedy
as the phrase in Machyn's diary' with reference to the second
performance, “ther was a grett skaffold in the hall,' seems to indicate
that the stage of Gorboduc was, substantially, that of the miracle-
plays. In the observance of stage proprieties, the authors follow
strict classical usage, for all the events are reported, and the
realism of the native drama is carefully eschewed. But, in other
respects, they are more lax, or inclined to compromise. The play
begins, in the conventional Senecan fashion, with an allusion to the
dawn; but the practice of Italian tragedy and the precepts of the
Italian interpreters of Aristotle's Poetics are disregarded, as Sidney
lamented in his Apologie:
For it is faulty both in place, and time, the two necessary companions
of all corporall actions. For where the stage should alwaies represent but
one place, and the uttermost time presupposed in it should be, both by
Aristotle's precept and common reason, but one day; there is both many
dayes and many places inartificially imagined.
Whether this were accident or design, it secured to English tragedy
from the beginning a liberty which all the efforts of Sidney's group
of stricter classicists could not do away with.
Gorboduc seems to have found no imitators immediately:
it was not published till 1565, and then surreptitiously. At
King's college, Cambridge, in 1564, the queen saw 'a Tragedie
named Dido, in hexametre verse, without anie chorus,' and 'an
English play called Ezechias, made by Mr Udall. ' At Christmas,
1564, as we have seen, Damon and Pithias by Richard Edwards
was acted at Whitehall; and, in 1566, his Palamon and Arcyte
was presented before the queen in the hall of Christ Church,
Oxford, as well as a Latin play, called Marcus Geminus. But,
of these, only Damon and Pithias has come down to us, and its
freedom from classical influence has been already noted. When,
however, the members of Gray's inn presented a comedy and
a tragedy in 1566, they obviously took as their model for the
latter the drama which had been acted with much applause by
the gentlemen of the Inner Temple, and which had just been
published. Jocasta is written in blank verse, which Gorboduc
had introduced on the English stage: its authorship is divided
according to acts, the first and fourth being 'done' by Francis
Kinwelmersh, the second, third and fifth by George Gascoigne,
while a third member of the society, Christopher Yelverton,
contributed the epilogue. Gascoigne wrote the 'argument,' and,
apparently, supervised the whole undertaking; for he afterwards
1 Camden Society edition (1848), p. 275.
## p. 71 (#95) ##############################################
Gascoigne's Jocasta
71
included the tragedy in his collected works, and Ariosto’s Supposes,
presented at the same time, was translated by him alone. As in
Gorboduc, each act is preceded by a dumb-show with musical
accompaniment, and the rimed choruses, which in the earlier
tragedy were recited by foure auncient and sage men of Brittaine,
were given in Jocasta by 'foure Thebane dames. ' The full title
reads : 'Jocasta: A Tragedie written in Greeke by Euripides,
translated and digested into Acte by George Gascoygne and
Francis Kinwelmershe of Grayes Inne, and there by them presented,
1566. ' The claim of translation from the original Greek, apparently,
passed without remark till 1879, when J. P. Mahaffy' first pointed
out that Gascoigne and Kinwelmersh had not gone to Phoenissae,
but to an adaptation of it by Lodovico Dolce, bearing the title
Giocasta (1549). This was not Dolce's only contribution, as we
shall see", in aid of Elizabethan tragedy, and some of his sonnets
were translated by Thomas Lodge. He was a Venetian (1508—68),
and much of his literary activity consisted of hack work for the
well known publishing house of Gioliti. He translated Seneca's
tragedies and other Latin classics. He professed to translate the
Odyssey, but was somewhat hampered by his ignorance of Greek,
the result being a story taken from Homer rather than a translation.
He treated Phoenissae in the same fashion, relying upon a
Latin translation published at Basel by R. Winter, in 1541, the
misprints of which he reproduced. He dealt freely with his
original, recasting choruses, omitting some scenes and adding others,
generally from his favourite author Seneca. Both the original
ode,' which Warton ascribes to Gascoigne and praises as 'by no
means destitute of pathos or imagination, and the ode to Concord
by Kinwelmersh, in which the same critic discovers 'great ele-
gance of expression and versification,' are loose translations of
Dolce. In the dialogue, the translators followed the Italian text
with greater fidelity, though there are some amusing blunders.
Gascoigne, as a rule, is more successful in reproducing the sense
of his original, but Dolce sometimes leads him astray. Thus, in
Phoenissae (v. 1675), where Antigone threatens to follow the
example of the Danaides (Νυξ άρ' εκείνη Δαναΐδων μ' έξει μίαν),
Dolce translates flatly: lo seguird lo stil d'alcune accorte; and
Gascoigne still more flatly: 'I will ensue some worthie womans
steppes. ' The same gradual depravation of a great original is to
1 Euripides (Classical Writers), pp. 184—5.
2 See infra, p. 74. Cf. also Symonds, J. A. , Shakspere's Predecessors, pp. 221–2.
## p. 72 (#96) ##############################################
72 Early English Tragedy
be seen in v. 1680, which descends, by clearly marked steps, to
bathos. When Antigone declares her determination to accompany
her father into exile, Creon says: Γενναιότης σοι, μωρία δ' ένεστί τις.
The Latin version reproduces this prosaically but correctly:
Generositas tibi inest, sed tamen stultitia quaedam inest. Dolce
mistranslates: Quel ch'in altri è grandezza è in te pazzia; and
Gascoigne blindly follows his blind guide: “What others might
beseeme, beseemes not thee. '
Jocasta did not advance English tragedy on its destined way;
indeed, on the whole, the movement is backwards, for its authors
not only showed less originality than their predecessors by adopting
the method of translation, but, in other respects, their efforts are
more imitative than independent. Neither tragedy had employed
the resource of romantic passion, and it seemed, therefore, as if
there were a real opportunity for development when Gismond
of Salerne was presented in 1567—8 by 'the worshipful company
of the Inner-Temple Gentlemen. '
The tragedy was by them most pithily framed, and no less curiously acted
in view of her Majesty, by whom it was then as princely accepted, as of the
whole honourable audience notably applauded: yea, and of all men generally
desired, as a work, either in stateliness of show, depth of conceit, or true
ornaments of poetical art, inferior to none of the best in that kind : no, were
the Roman Seneca the censurer.
So pronounces William Webbe, author of A Discourse of English
Poetrie, in the letter prefixed to the revised (1591) edition of
the play, and addressed to the editor, Robert Wilmot. From the
initials appended to each act in this edition, it appears that act II
was written by Henry Noel, act iv by Christopher Hatton and
act v by Wilmot himself; the authors of act 1 (Rod. Staf. ) and
act III (G. Al. ) have not yet been identified. The plot is taken
from Boccaccio's first novel of the fourth day, which had already
been used by Italian dramatists, though our authors were indebted
to none of these. They went directly to the Italian text of the
Decameron, and not, as has been generally supposed, to the
translation of the tale just published in The Palace of Pleasure,
for their version is closer to the original, and in some important
particulars more accurate, than Painter's. For instance, Ghismonda,
in her lament over her dead lover, says: Ahi dolcissimo albergo
di tutti i miei piaceri, maladetta sia la crudeltà di colui, che
con gli occhi della fronte or mi ti fa vedere. Assai m'era con
quegli della mente riguardarti a ciascuna ora. This is translated
by Painter:
## p. 73 (#97) ##############################################
Gismond of Salerne
73
Oh sweete harboroughe of my pleasures, cursed be the crueltye of him
that hath caused mee at this time to loke appon thee with the eyes of my
face: it was pleasure ynoughe, to see thee every hower, amonges people of
knowledge and understanding;
a grotesque misconception of the phrase, con quegli della mente.
Wilmot reproduced the meaning of the original', and passages
might be quoted to show that his collaborators also had Boccaccio's
text before them, and were not content to rely on Painter's
translation, which, indeed, is often inadequate. The story is
one of the most tragic in the Decameron, and offers an excellent
subject for dramatic treatment. Boccaccio's passion-wrought and
desperate heroine, with her fearless assertion of the claims of
nature and love against those of social convention, is a magnificent
centre of interest for the tragic stage; but all this advantage, ready
to their hand in the original story, the English dramatists laid aside.
Gismond's lover is no longer un giovane valletto, but the Counté
Palurine,' and she herself is not so much a victim of love as a
terrible example of disordered passion. Moral considerations
prevented the Inner Temple gentlemen from making Gismond
their heroine. 'Herein they all agree,' Wilmot writes, commending
virtue, detesting vice, and lively deciphering their overthrow that
suppress not their unruly affections. ' It was necessary, therefore, ,
to make a complete change from Boccaccio's point of view and
method of treatment. Part of the original material was transferred
to other speakers or different occasions. Thus, Ghismonda's
reflection that the spirit of her dead lover still lingers near,
awaiting hers, is applied by the English dramatists to her dead
husband; and her plea to her father that the flesh is weak is
made more respectable--and much less effective-by putting it
into the mouth of the aunt, Lucrece, and placing it before,
instead of after, the event. Moreover, the chorus hold up
'worthy dames, such as Penelope and Lucrece, as 'a mirrour
and a glasse to womankinde,' and exhort their hearers to resist
Cupid's assaults and be content with a moderate and virtuous
affection (choruses II, III, IV). An epilogue (of the kind which, no
Ah pleasant harborrow of my hartës thought.
Ah swete delight, joy, comfort of my life.
Ah cursed be his crueltie that wrought
thee this despite, and unto me such grefe,
to make me to behold thus with these eyes
thy woefull hart, and force me here to see
this dolefull sight. Alas, did not suffise
that with my hartes eyen continually
I did behold the same?
(Act V, sc. 2, 25—33. )
## p. 74 (#98) ##############################################
74
Early English Tragedy
doubt, would have been recited by 'sweet bully Bottom') assures
the ladies in the audience that such inordinate passions are
unknown in Britain land':
Nor Pluto heareth English ghostes complaine
our dames disteined lyves. Therfore ye may
be free from fere. Suffiseth to mainteine
the vertues which we honor in yow all :
80 as our Britain ghostes, when life is past,
may praise in heven, not plaine in Plutoes hall
oor dames, but hold them vertuous and chast,
worthy to live where furie never came,
where Love can see, and beares no deadly bowe.
In this way, the interests of morality and the authors' reputa-
tions were saved, but at the sacrifice of much that was valuable
in the original story, which the dramatists supplemented from
other sources. Their thoughts, naturally, would be directed to
classical examples of unhappy passion-Phaedra and Dido. The
latter had been made the subject of a tragedy by Dolce (1547),
and to this, undoubtedly, our authors had recourse. At the
opening of their play, Cupid comes down from heaven and speaks
the following lines:
:
Loe I, in shape that seme unto your sight
a naked boy, not clothed but with wing,
am that great god of love that with my might
do rule the world, and everie living thing.
This one hand beares vain hope, short joyfull state,
with faire semblance the lover to allure:
this other holdes repentance all to late,
warr, fiër, blood, and paines without recure.
On swete ambrosia is not my foode,
nor nectar is my drink, as to the rest
of all the Goddes. I drink the lovers blood,
and eate the living bart within his brest.
Cupid, likewise, opens Dolce's Didone, and the lines quoted above
are merely a translation and re-arrangement of the Italian
original :
Io, che dimostro in viso,
A la statura, e à i panni,
D'esser picciol fanciullo,
Si come voi mortale:
Son quel gran Dio, che'l mondo chiama Amore.
Quel, che pò in cielo, e in terra,
Et nel bollente Averno;
Contra di cui non vale
Forza, ne human consiglio:
Ne d'ambrosia mi pasco,
Si come gli altri Dei,
## p. 75 (#99) ##############################################
Gismond
of Salerne
75
Ma di sangue, e di pianto.
Ne l'una mano io porto
Dubbia speme, fallace, e breve gioia ;
Ne l'altra affanno, e noia,
Pene, sospiri, e morti.
There are other parallels of less importance, but, as the play
proceeded, the divergence in the development of the plot of
Didone made it less suitable to the purpose of our authors, and
they supplied their lack of invention with commonplaces taken
direct from Seneca. As Dolce had done the same, it is hard to
say whether a great deal of act i is taken from the Italian's
borrowings or from the Latin original, but there are Senecan
reminiscences, at first or second hand, from Phaedra, Medea,
Thyestes, Oedipus, Agamemnon, Hercules Furens, Hercules
Oetacus and Octavia. The chorus of act I was, no doubt,
suggested by Octavia 298–312 and 689–695. Act III lays
Octavia and Phaedra under extensive contribution. The opening
of act iv, by Megaera, is taken direct from Thyestes, and the
invocation of Jove's thunder at the beginning of scene 2 may have
been suggested by the same play or by Phaedra, 679—690. This
stock device (which may be traced back to Sophocles : Electra,
823—6) had already been used in Gorboduc (end of act III,
sc. 1); and the original passage in Phaedra is misquoted in Titus
Andronicus, act iv, sc. 1, 81–82. But it is in act v of Gismond
of Salerne that Seneca is most openly plundered Lines 1-2,
21-38, 40–42, 45–68, 149—167, 182—188 and 207–208 are
merely translations of Seneca, chiefly from Thyestes.
When due deductions are made for what the authors borrowed
from Boccaccio, Dolce and Seneca, not much remains to be
credited to their own originality. Of the characters neither found
nor implied in Boccaccio's novel, Cupid is taken from Dolce;
Renuchio, Megaera and the chorus from Seneca ; Lucrece and
Claudia are the conventional confidantes of classical tragedy.
The order of events, in the main, is that of the novel, though a
noteworthy change is made in that, after the discovery, Tancred
sends for his daughter before he meets her lover-with this
disadvantage, that, at the time of the interview, Gismond is not
made aware of Guiscard's imprisonment and impending fate.
The one important addition made by the English dramatists to
Boccaccio's story is the death of Tancred, and this is only
announced as an intention in the action, though we are informed
parenthetically in the epilogue that he ‘now himself hath slayen. '
## p. 76 (#100) #############################################
76
Early English Tragedy
In the later version of the tragedy which Wilmot prepared for
publication, Tancred plucks out his eyes after the example of
Oedipus and kills himself on the stage. The same elaboration
of the horrible is to be noted in the dumb-show introducing the
fifth act in the edition of 1591.
Before this act was a dead march played, during which entered on the
stage Renuchio, Captain of the Guard, attended upon by the guard. They
took up Guiscard from under the stage; then after Guiscard had kindly
taken leave of them all, a strangling-cord was fastened about his neck, and
he haled forth by them. Renuchio bewaileth it; and then, entering in,
bringeth forth a standing cup of gold, with a bloody heart reeking hot in it,
and then saith, ut sequitur.
These dumb - shows are realistic rather than allegorical in
character, and set forth the action of the drama without words,
as in the play within the play in Hamlet. In the earlier version,
there are no dumb-shows, properly so called. Cupid opens the
first and third acts, but this device of a prologue was taken, as we
have seen, from Dolce, who also introduces Cupid and the shade
of Sichaeus at the beginning of act II of Didone, in obvious
imitation of the fury Megaera and the shade of Tantalus at the
opening of Seneca's Thyestes. The English dramatists' Megaera
(act iv) might be suggested by this passage in Didone, in which
.
she is mentioned by name, but, more probably, was taken from
Seneca direct. The choruses are recited by four gentlemen of
Salerne; and the versification turns back from the blank verse
of Gorboduc and Jocasta to the older rimed measures—a re-
trogression which Wilmot, in the later version, was at some pains
to correct. Cupid comes down from heaven, and Megaera up
from hell, marking a slight advance in stage machinery; and it
appears from the last line of the revised edition that curtains
were used. The scene is restricted to the court of Tancred's
palace and the chamber of Gismond lying immediately behind
it-the chamber within,' which was afterwards to become a
habitual resource of the popular stage—but there is no attempt
to observe the unity of time. The treatment of the plot, though
poorly contrived, is episodical, and this is an important point,
for it is characteristic of English tragedy that it aims at presenting
the whole course of the action, in its inception, development and
consequences, rather than a particular situation or crisis, as was
the custom in Senecan tragedy, and its Italian and French
imitations. The one merit of Gismond of Salerne is that it
endeavours to present a romantic subject with something of the
## p. 77 (#101) #############################################
>
The Misfortunes of Arthur
77
gravity and dignity of classical tragedy. From the latter point of
view, its superiority to its immediate predecessors, Damon and
Pithias and Horestes, is abundantly manifest; and, in both
interest of theme and manner of treatment, it surpasses the
earlier and more academic models. Gorboduc is overweighted
.
with political reflections, and the plot loses itself in abstrac-
tions. Jocasta has the double disadvantage of a time-worn
theme and frigid manner of presentation. Gismond of Salerne
struck out a new path, in which later dramatists followed with
infinitely greater art. It seems a far cry from Gismond and
Guiscard to the ‘pair of star-cross'd lovers' of Shakespeare's first
Italian tragedy ; but the Gentlemen of the Inner Temple at least
attempted what he achieved—to present the problem of human
passion sub specie eternitatis.
The most elaborate effort of its kind that has come down to
us was the Gray's inn entertainment presented to the queen in
1588, of which The Misfortunes of Arthur, by Thomas Hughes,
was the principal feature. The dumb-shows were more complex
in their apparatus and allegorical significance than ever before,
and, evidently, were regarded as of primary importance, for the
title of the pamphlet contemporaneously published reads: Certaine
devises and shewes presented to her Majestie by the Gentlemen of
Grayes-Inne at her Highnesse Court in Greenewich, the twenty
eighth day of Februarie in the thirtieth yeare of her Majesties
most happy Raigne, making no mention of the tragedy. "The
dumbe showes,' we are finally informed,
were partly devised by Maister Christopher Yelverton, Maister Frauncis
Bacon, Maister John Lancaster and others, partly by the saide Maister
Flower, who with Maister Penroodocke and the said Maister Lancaster
directed these proceedings at Court.
Alternative introductory and final speeches for Gorlois, and two
alternative choruses, were provided by Flower, and the whole
entertainment was prefaced by an elaborate introduction penned
by Nicholas Trotte; in this, five gentlemen students were
presented to her majesty as captives by one of the muses, who
assured the queen that
since your sacred Majestie
In gratious hands the regall Scepter held
All Tragedies are fled from State, to stadge.
As this was in the interval between the execution of Mary queen
of Scots and the coming of the Armada, the compliment was
extravagant enough to satisfy even Elizabeth's inordinate appetite
## p. 78 (#102) #############################################
78 Early English Tragedy
M
-
1
for flattery; and, all things considered, it is no wonder that, a few
years later', the queen said that Gray's inn was 'an House she
was much beholden unto, for that it did always study for some
sports to present unto her. The study undertaken by Thomas
Hughes and his collaborators in 1587—8 was no light one.
Following the example of Sackville and Norton, Hughes found
a subject in ancient British legend and chose the same main
authority-Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae.
This is proved” by the adoption of the main outlines of the story
as they are found in Geoffrey and of his forms of proper names-
Gorlois, Igerna, Anne (Arthur's sister), Cador, Gillamor, Cheldrich,
Aschillus, Hoel, Angharad, Conan. But Hughes had recourse to
other versions of the story as well—probably Malory's Morte
d'Arthur-for we have also such forms as Guenevora, Mordred,
Gawin, not found in Geoffrey. The incestuous birth of Mordred,
and the slaughter of Arthur and Mordred by each other's hands,
are in Malory and not in Geoffrey, who describes Mordred as
Arthur's nephew. These additional horrors, doubtless, were
selected by Hughes in order to bring his theme up to the level
of Senecan sensationalism. In this, he was following the classical
tradition of the time, and, no doubt, pleasing the queen, whose
blank verse translation from the Hercules Oetaeus is still pre-
served in the Bodleian library, though, according to Warton, it
has ‘no other recommendation but its royalty. ' Hughes chose as
his first model the most horrible of Seneca's tragedies, Thyestes.
The ghost of Gorlois, who comes up from hell to recite the first
scene, is merely the Tantali umbra of Thyestes in another guise,
and lines 22—28 are translated literally from this source. In the
next scene, between Guenevora and Fronia, Thyestes proved in-
adequate to the demands made upon it, and the words of the
injured or erring wives of Agamemnon, Hercules Oetaeus and
Medea are reproduced; how extensive the borrowing is may
be judged from the fact that in Guenevora's longest speech
(19—47) there is only one original line (20), and that is a common-
place, quite in Seneca's manner. In the third scene, the general
relation of Guenevora to Angharad is that of Phaedra to her
nurse, but Hercules Furens, Medea, Thebais and Oedipus are
also put under contribution, Guenevora's longest speech (43—54)
being again taken entirely from Seneca. The conversation between
Mordred and Guenevora in scene 4 is modelled on that of
1 At the Gesta Grayorum, 1594. Nichols's Progresses, vol. III, p. 319.
? In the edition of the play by Grumbine, H. C.
## p. 79 (#103) #############################################
The Misfortunes of Arthur
79
Aegisthus and Clytemnestra in Agamemnon; Conan, in the latter
part of the scene, introduces some of the sententious precepts put
into the mouth of Seneca in Octavia. Then the chorus, four in
number according to established tradition, recite, each in turn, a
six lined stanza: this division of the chorus, which occurs again in
the dialogue of the fifth act, is the one innovation Hughes has
introduced.
It is hardly worth while to follow the dramatist in his
borrowings through act II (where they are almost as extensive)
and through the rest of the play to the last lines of the
epilogue, which still echo Seneca ; but one feature which affected
Elizabethan tragedy throughout its history may be noted. The
earlier dramatists had attempted, without much success, to imitate
Seneca's stichomythia. Hughes copied this staccato style of
antithetical and epigrammatic dialogue very closely. The following
lines, of which only the first is taken from Thyestes, may serve as
an example:
CADOR. To rule is much. ARTHUR Small if we covet naught.
CA. Who covets not a Crowne ? AR. He that discernes
The swoord aloft. Ca. That hangeth fast. AR. But by
A haire. Ca. Right holdes it up. AR. Wrong puls it downe.
CA. The Commons helpe the King. AR. They sometimes hurt.
This device is of frequent occurrence in later tragedy, and is
sometimes very effectively used by Shakespeare, e. g. in the opening
scenes of Richard III and of Hamlet.
The characters of The Misfortunes of Arthur not only indulge
freely in Senecan aphorisms, but are cast in the regular Senecan
moulds. Mordred is the typical usurper, Guenevora the faithless
.
wife, and the messengers, counsellors and confidants show few
gleams of personality; but an exception must be made in the
case of Arthur, who, perhaps, is the first well-conceived character
of English academic tragedy. Of course, he utters many Senecan
commonplaces, but he is not a merely conventional type. His
inclination to deal gently with his son is finely contrasted with his
vigorous address to his troops when he is roused to action by
Mordred's insolent message ; and his lament over his son's body
has been justly admired, in spite of a touch here and there of
Senecan rhetoric. His last words breathe a dignity and mystery
.
not unworthy of the situation :
Yea: though I Conquerour die, and full of Fame:
Yet let my death and parture rest obscure.
No grave I neede (0 Fates) nor buriall rights,
Nor stately hearce, nor tombe with haughty toppe:
## p. 80 (#104) #############################################
80 Early English Tragedy
But let my Carkasse lurk: yea, let my death
Be ay unknowen, so that in every Coast
I still be feard, and lookt for every houre.
The blank verse of Hughes, though it is still monotonous, has
more power and life than that of his predecessors; and it seems
reasonable to regret that he did not rely more on his own efforts.
If he had left himself free to develop his theme according to
his own ideas, he would probably have filled a larger place in
the history of English tragedy, though, no doubt, the Senecan
patchwork he produced was more in accordance with the expecta-
tions of his audience.
It seems unnecessary to pursue the fortunes of the academic
drama further here; it had given to the stage standards of regularity
and dignity of which that stage was sorely in need, and it had
bestowed upon tragedy the blank verse which was to become its re-
cognised means of expression. We must now turn our attention to
those players of 'common Interludes in the Englishe tongue' who
were continually harried by the London civic authorities, and
alternately repressed and encouraged by the queen. The organi-
sation of strolling players and noblemen's servants into regular
companies, and the building of the first theatres, gave the drama
the standing of a profession, and attracted to it university wits,
who were soon to raise it to the dignity of an art. Whatever might
be the amount of their Latin, popular dramatists were not without
respect, according to their lights, for the authority of Seneca ;
they probably studied the tragedies at school, and were, perhaps,
taught as Hoole, one of the masters at Rotherham, recommended,
“how and wherein they may imitate them, and borrow something
out of them. The translation of Tenne Tragedies published
in 1581 gave even those devoid of classical lore the chance of
making themselves acquainted with some, at least, of Seneca's
characteristics. Troas had appeared as early as 1559, and all the
other plays except Thebais by 1566. Some, at any rate, of the
versions were intended, as Nevyle says of Oedipus, for 'tragicall
and pompous showe upon stage, but it is not known whether
they were ever acted. In any case, their influence upon writers
for the popular stage is beyond doubt. It was not against the
dramatists of the inns of court (they were university men and
went to the original Latin, as their versions show) that Thomas
Nashe, in the prefatory epistle to Greene's Menaphon (1589),
directed his jibe, Seneca let bloud line by line and page by page,
at length must needes die to our stage': it was against 'a sort of
## p. 81 (#105) #############################################
The Tenne Tragedies of Seneca 81
shifting companions . . . that could scarcelie latinize their necke-
verse if they should have neede. ' To these
English Seneca read by candle light yeeldes manie good sentences, as Bloud
is a begger, and so foorth: and if you intreate him faire in a frostie morning,
he will affoord you whole Hamlets, I should say handfulls of tragical
speaches.
It is not easy to give chapter and verse in support of Nashe's
accusation-he was too reckless a controversialist to be able
always to prove his statements by detailed evidence-but the
general inference to be made from his attack upon contemporary
dramatists is beyond question. Kyd, Marlowe and Marston saved
their credit as scholars by quoting Seneca in the original, but the
first-named—and he is probably the particular object of Nashe's
invective-also copied from Seneca without acknowledgment.
All three were indebted to him for the type of sensational and
rhetorical tragedy which they made popular, and smaller men, whose
work has now perished, would be no less affected. Elizabethan
tragedy adopted not only Seneca's five acts, and occasionally his
choruses, his stock characters-especially the prologuising ghost?
-and his philosophical commonplaces, but his exaggerated
passions, his crude horrors and his exuberant rhetoric. In the
induction to A warning for Faire Women (1599)—a play which,
itself, is an example of the faults it condemns—the typical
Elizabethan tragedy is described as telling
How some damn'd tyrant to obtain a crown
Stabs, hangs, impoisons, smothers, cutteth throats:
And then a Chorus, too, comes howling in
And tells us of the worrying of a cat:
Then, too, a filthy whining ghost,
Lapt in some foul sheet, or a leather pilch,
Comes screaming like a pig half stick',
And cries, Vindicta! -Revenge, Revenge!
Fortunately, more wholesome influences were brought to bear
on the popular stage by the renewed interest in English history
which followed the national triumph over the Armada, and which
the publication of chronicles enabled dramatists to gratify.
Thomas Legge's Richardus Tertius, acted at St John's college,
Cambridge, in 1573, 1579 and 1582 (if all the dates in the MSS are
1 See Boas, F. 8. , The Works of Thomas Kyd, introduction, pp. xvii, xxiv, xxxii,
XXXIV–XXXV, xlv; Otto, M. , Der Stil in Thomas Kyds Originaldramen (Berlin, 1905);
MacCallum, M. W. , •The Authorship of the Early Hamlet,' an English Miscellany
presented to Dr Furnivall (1901).
2 See Moorman, F. W. , The Pre-Shaksperean Ghost,' The Modern Language
Rerier, vol. I, p. 85 (Jan. 1906).
6
>
6
E. L. V.
CH, IV
## p. 82 (#106) #############################################
82
Early English Tragedy
>
correct), is a remarkable early example of the treatment, after the
Senecan manner, of a subject taken from comparatively recent
national history. This, in itself, distinguishes it from earlier Latin
plays, such as Buchanan's Jephthes and Johannes Baptistes and
Grimoald's Archipropheta, which treated scriptural subjects after
the classical model, and from later tragedies, such as Gager's,
which were classical both in matter and form? But, in spite of the
numerous manuscripts in which Richardus Tertius has come down
to us, and the references to it by Harington, Nashe and Meres,
Churchill, in his excellent treatise on the subject, seems to imply
too much when he says that 'to Legge was due the turning of the
drama in England in an entirely new direction. The character of
the earliest surviving history plays in the vernacular suggests that
the impulse to their composition was not academic but popular,
and their models not classical tragedy, at first or second hand,
but miracle-plays, the methods of which they apply to national
history, as had been done in France more than a century
before. The Famous Victories of Henry the fifth (printed 1598
and acted before 1588), by common consent the earliest example,
though, doubtless, it is later in date than Richardus Tertius,
departs as widely as possible from classical standards in its
utter formlessness, its lack not only of choruses but of acts, its
combination of comic and serious interests, its mixture of prose
with indifferent verse. The Troublesome Raigne of King John
(printed 1591), considered by A. W. Ward 'the best example of the
chronicle history pure and simple,' has nothing classical about
it, except a few scraps of Latin, mainly introduced for comic
effect. It appeals, with a good deal more art than the preceding
play, though there is still much to seek on this score, to the
national spirit, which had hitherto found dramatic expression
only in the folk-play. In the address "To the gentlemen readers'
(given in the edition of 1591, but omitted in that of 1611 reprinted
by Nichols), the dramatist frankly makes this patriotic interest
his first claim for attention :
You that with friendly grace of smoothed brow
Have entertained the Scythian Tamburlaine,
And given applause unto an Infidel:
Vouchsafe to welcome (with like curtesie)
A warlike Christian and your Countreyman.
1 See Churchill, G. B. and Keller, W. , "Die lateinischen Universitäts-Dramen
Englands in der Zeit der Königin Elizabeth,' Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare
Gesellschaft, vol. XXXIV (1898).
2 Richard the Third up to Shakespeare,' Palaestra, vol. 2 (1900).
6
## p. 83 (#107) #############################################
The True Chronicle History of King Leir 83
But the real hero of the play, as of that which Shakespeare
founded on it, is the bastard Fawconbridge, who is given due
prominence in the title, and whose character is developed with a
good deal of spirit and skill? . On the whole, however, the artistic
merits of the play have been exaggerated by recent critics ; blank
verse, rime and prose are used with the same careless facility,
and the scenes follow one another without any attempt at dramatic
construction. But in it, as in the earlier play, we catch the first
tones of the voice of Elizabethan England to which Shakespeare
gave fuller and nobler expression in the historical dramas founded
on these first rude attempts :
Let England live but true within it selfe,
And all the world can never wrong her State.
*
If Englands Peeres and people joyne in one,
Nor Pope, nor Fraunce, nor Spaine can doo them wrong.
Apart from the use made of it by Shakespeare, The True
Chronicle History of King Leir, and his three daughters,
Gonorill, Ragan, and Cordella (printed 1605 and probably acted
15943) has an interest of its own, though few will be found to
subscribe to the opinion* that 'the whole of this old drama is
incomparably and in every respect superior to Shakespeare's
adaptation. ' But it may be freely admitted that the old play
is well contrived, and written in a light, easy style which is not
unpleasing. In spite of its absurd disguises and coincidences, it
is an organic whole, and not a mere succession of events taken
haphazard from the chronicle, its main sources being, indeed,
Warner, Mirror for Magistrates and The Faerie Queene. The
contrast between the bearing of Cordella and her sisters is made
more natural by the fact that they have an advantage over her
in being informed beforehand that they will lose nothing by com-
pliance with their father's test of affection ; and the characters
!
1 The most striking episode, at the opening of the play, was apparently adapted by
the dramatist, with additions of his own, from a story told by Hall and Stow of the
bastard Dunois of Orleans. See Boswell-Stone, W. G. , Shakespeare's Holinshed,
pp. 48–50.
2 The same comment might be made on the pre-Shakespearean Richard II, printed
in Shakespeare Jahrbuch, 1899 (vol. xxxv), and commended by Boas in Fortnightly
Review, vol. LXXVII (1902), pp. 391-404, for its breadth of canvass, its insight into
popular feeling, and its abundant comic relief. '
* On this point see Perrett, W. , 'The Story of King Lear,' Palaestra, vol. xxxv,
and Law, R. A. , Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, vol. xxI,
pp. 462–477 (1906).
* Leo Tolstoi, in Fortnightly Review, Jan. 1907, vol. LXXXVII, p. 66.
6-2
## p. 84 (#108) #############################################
84
Early English Tragedy
are clearly, though not deeply, conceived. There is a solitary
Senecan aphorism (“For fear of death is worse than death itself');
but the play is free, alike from the tedious commonplaces of
academic tragedy, and from the extravagant rhetoric which
Tamburlaine had brought into vogue. This is partly due to
the dramatist's vein of humour, not always duly restrained, but
seasoned with salt enough to withstand the changes of time.
Occasionally, he seems to criticise the absurdity of his own
dramatic expedients. There is more point than was, perhaps,
apparent to the author in Mumford's comment upon the disguised
king's extraordinary speed in the wooing of Cordella ;
Have Palmers weeds such power to win fayre Ladies?
Fayth, then I hope the next that falles is myne:
Upon condition I no worse might speed,
I would for ever weare a Palmers weed.
I like an honest and playne dealing wench,
That sweares (without exceptions) I will have yon.
These soppets, that know not whether to love a man or no,
except they first go aske their mothers leave, by this hand, I
hate them ten tymes worse then poyson.
KING.
What resteth then our happinesse to procure ?
MUMFORD.
Fayth, go to Church, to make the matter sure.
KING.
It shall be so, because the world shall say,
King Leirs three daughters were wedded in one day:
The celebration of this happy chaunce,
We will deferre, untill we come to Fraunce.
MUMFORD.
I like the wooing, that's not long a doing.
Well, for her sake, I know what I know:
Ile never marry whilest I live,
Except I have one of these Brittish Ladyes,
My humour is alienated from the mayds of Fraunce.
The Lamentable Tragedie of Locrine (Newly set foorth,
overseene and corrected. By W. S. 1595) is a play of unusual
interest, not only because of the questions of authorship it raises,
but because of its combination of the diverse streams of influence
to which the drama was by this time subject. It adopts the dumb-
shows of academic tragedy, with Até as chorus; it has two ghosts
and a duplicated revenge motive; the opening scene is imitated
## p. 85 (#109) #############################################
Locrine and Selimus
85
.
from Gorboduc; and there are numerous transcripts from Seneca'.
But it has also a large and lively comic element and a good
deal of stage fighting, and it borrows freely from Kyd, Marlowe,
Greene, Peele and Lodge, and from Spenser's Complaints (entered
in the Stationers' register 29 December 1590, and containing, in
The Ruines of Time, a reference to the death of Sir Francis
Walsingham, 6 April 1590). The dramatist has been accused
of borrowing from another play, very similar in style, The First
part of the Tragicall raigne of Selimus (printed 1594); but, in this
case, the obligation seems to be the other way. The contributions
to this interesting controversy have been numerous and varied.
Tieck marked a number of parallels between Locrine and
Spenser's Complaints in his copy of the fourth folio of Shake-
speare; but these were first published, with a few additions by
R. Brotanek, in 19002 P. A. Daniel had already drawn attention
to the almost identical passages in Locrine and Selimus. Charles
Crawford, who had undertaken the same investigation at the
instigation of Grosart, charged the author of Locrine with
wholesale 'cribbing' from Selimus, supporting the accusation with
an elaborate array of parallel passages". Emil Koeppel's attention
was called to Crawford's articles by a summary of them published
in the Shakespeare Jahrbuch; and, after an examination of the
text, he arrived at an exactly opposite conclusion, viz. that
Selimus borrowed from Locrine5. The same conclusion had
been reached independently by F. G. Hubbard of the university
of Wisconsin, and has since been supported by him with further
evidence in a paper to which he kindly gave the present writer
access before its publication. It is pointed out that the comic
scene in Locrines, which is paralleled in Selimus, stands alone
in the latter play, while, in Locrine, there is much other low
humour of the same kind in connection with the same characters.
Hubbard adds to this argument in favour of the priority of
Locrine some important considerations with reference to the lines
Cf. the passage in the second scene beginning (11. 68—9)
But what so ere the fates determind have,
It lieth not in us to disannull,
with Oedipus 1001—16 : Fatis agimur : cedite fatis.
? Beiblatt zur Anglia, vol. xi, pp. 202—7.
3 In a letter to The Athenæum of 16 April 1898, p. 512.
* In a series of papers contributed to Notes and Queries in 1901 (Ser. Ix, vol. vir).
- Koeppel's paper was published in Jahrbuch for 1905 (vol.
Duke Gorboduc dividing his land to his two sonnes which he before held in
Monarchie.
Nearly all the dialogue of the play-for the incidents occur
off the stage is delivered in the council chamber. The opening
scene, it is true, consists of a private conversation between Ferrex
and his mother; but the longest passage in it is an elaborate
political commonplace. After this short introductory scene,
1 Courtney, L. H. , in Notes and Queries, Ser. II, vol. 2, pp. 261-3.
3
## p. 67 (#91) ##############################################
Gorboduc
67
containing less than seventy lines in all, we have, in the first
act, nothing but discussions in the king's council, his decision to
divide the realm between his two sons being all that can properly
be described as action. Ferrex and Porrex, each with his good
and his evil counsellor, occupy the whole of act 11. In act III, we
are back in Gorboduc's council chamber, and the only incident
is recounted by a messenger. With act iv, according to the printer
of the first edition, Sackville's part begins; and this division is
borne out by the fact that the remaining acts show greater
power of thought and vigour of versification, more variety of tone
and richness of character and incident. The speech of Porrex in
his own defence has more dramatic significance than anything
the English stage had yet known; the incident of the attempted
poisoning, introduced by the dramatist into the story for the first
time', and not mentioned in acts I—III, and the young prince's
remorse at his brother's death, engage the sympathy of the
audience for his own untimely end, which is recounted with many
natural and moving touches by Marcella, an eye-witness of the
assassination, and, therefore, able to communicate more passion
than the conventional messenger. But, with act v, we are once
more in the dull round of political disquisition, broken only by the
soliloquy in which Fergus reveals his ambitious designs. The
tragedy ends with obvious allusions to the political situation of
the day :
Such one (my lordes) let be your chosen king,
Such one so borne within your native land,
Such one, preferre, and in no wise admitte
The heavie yoke of forreine governaunce :
Let forreine titles yelde to publike wealth.
One wonders how the queen took this, and, still more, how she
received the advice directed to her in the concluding speech:
This, this ensues, when noble men do faile
In loyall trouth, and subjectes will be kinges.
And this doth growe when loe unto the prince,
Whom death or sodeine happe of life bereaves,
No certaine heire remaines, such certaine heire,
As not all onely is the rightfull heire
But to the realme is so made knowen to be,
And trouth therby vested in subjectes hartes,
To owe fayth there where right is knowen to rest.
1 Sackville perhaps got a bint from Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum
Britanniae, Bk. II, chap. XVI: 'At Porrez majori cupiditate subductus, paratis insidiis
Perrecem fratrem interficere parat' (ed. San-Marte, p. 30). The treachery here is
attributed to the younger brother, who afterwards kills Ferrex in battle, so that the
incident has not, in the History, the dramatic significance given to it by Sackville.
5-2
## p. 68 (#92) ##############################################
68
Early English Tragedy
6
Alas, in Parliament what hope can be,
When is of Parliament no hope at all ?
Which, though it be assembled by consent,
Yet is not likely with consent to end,
While eche one for him selfe, or for his frend,
A gainst his foe, shall travaile what he may.
While now the state left open to the man,
That shall with greatest force invade the same,
Shall fill ambicious mindes with gaping hope;
When will they once with yelding hartes agree?
Or in the while, how shall the realme be used ?
No, no: then Parliament should have bene holden,
And certeine heirs appointed to the crowne,
To stay the title of established right,
And in the people plant obedience
While yet the prince did live, whose name and power
By lawfull sommons and authoritie
Might make a Parliament to be of force,
And might have set the state in quiet stay.
At the beginning of her reign, Elizabeth had given orders that
'common Interludes in the Englishe tongue' should refrain from
handling 'either matters of religion or of the governaunce of the
estate of the common weale,' 'beyng no meete matters to be wrytten
or treated upon, but by menne of aucthoritie, learning, and wisedome,
nor to be handled before any audience but of grave and discrete
persons' Presumably, the queen thought that these conditions
were fulfilled at the Christmas revels of the Inner Temple in
1561–2; for, a few days later, the tragedy was repeated before her
in her own ball; and, in 1563, Norton presented the same arguments
as those of the passage cited above on behalf of a committee of
the House of Commons in a petition for the limitation of the
succession to the crown?
It is clear that our first tragedy is very far from being a servile
imitation of Seneca. Its authors took over his general scheme of
five acts divided by choruses, his counsellors and messengers, his
rhetorical style and grave sententious precepts; in the reflective
passages, one often detects an echo of the Roman original, though
there is little direct imitation of phraseology, such as came to be
the fashion later. The plot bears a general resemblance to that
of Seneca's fragmentary Thebais; but the story is taken from
Geoffrey of Monmouth, and, as we have seen, it is developed on
independent lines. The direct stimulus to production probably
i Collier, vol. I, p. 167.
2 See Courtney, L. H. , u. 8. p. 261; Commons Journal, vol. I, pp. 62–64.
3 For the relation of Gorboduc to its sources, see a doctor's dissertation now in
course of publication at the university of Wisconsin by Watt, H. A. , Gorboduc; or
Ferrex and Porrex (1909).
>
## p. 69 (#93) ##############################################
Allegorical Dumb-shows
69
came from Italian example; but the authors modified the custom
of the Italian stage to suit their own ideas. It had long been the
practice in Italy to enliven dramatic performances with spectacular
entertainments between the acts, called intermedii. We have
noted such representations above in connection with Filostrato
e Panfila, and they were the invariable accompaniments of the
early productions of comedy, both in Latin and in the vernacular.
In tragedy, they were of rarer occurrence, choruses usually
taking their place; they were almost always allegorical in
character; sometimes they had relation to the subject of the
play, sometimes not; and they were presented both with and
without words. Though they figure largely in contemporary
accounts of dramatic entertainments, they were not always
included in printed editions of the plays; but Dolce published
those used to adorn the performance of his Troiane (1566), and
these may serve as an example of the type. After the first act
of the tragedy, there was a discourse between the chorus and
Trojan citizens on the misfortunes of their country; after the
second, Pluto appeared with the ghosts of the Trojan slain ; after
the third, Neptune and the council of the gods ; after the fourth,
other deities, especially Venus and Juno. The spectators often
paid more attention to these intermedii than to the drama, to the
disgust of dramatists, who were loud in their complaints? ; and
a contemporary critic remarks that they were of special interest
to foreign visitors, who did not understand Italian? . It can hardly
be doubted that this Italian practice gave the authors of Gorboduc
a hint for the establishment of a similar custom on the Elizabethan
stage. But, here again, they showed a certain originality. They
connected their allegorical dumb-shows with the subject of the
tragedy, and, by making them precede each act, instead of following,
as was the rule in Italy, gave them new weight and significance.
They were no longer mere shows, distracting the spectator from
the main theme of the drama, but helps to the understanding of it.
Norton and Sackville, doubtless, were familiar with such allegorical
representations at London, Coventry and elsewhere, as independent
tableaux in honour of the festival of a patron saint or a royal visit,
and they followed Italian example only in using them for the
purposes of tragedy. In the fourth dumb-show, the three furies
come from under the stage, as though out of hell’; and this, as well
1 Cf. Isabella d'Este's letters to her husband during her visit to Ferrara in 1502,
and Grazzini's prologue to La Strega (1582).
? See preface to d'Ambra's Cojanaria, acted at Florence in 1565.
## p. 70 (#94) ##############################################
70 Early English Tragedy
as the phrase in Machyn's diary' with reference to the second
performance, “ther was a grett skaffold in the hall,' seems to indicate
that the stage of Gorboduc was, substantially, that of the miracle-
plays. In the observance of stage proprieties, the authors follow
strict classical usage, for all the events are reported, and the
realism of the native drama is carefully eschewed. But, in other
respects, they are more lax, or inclined to compromise. The play
begins, in the conventional Senecan fashion, with an allusion to the
dawn; but the practice of Italian tragedy and the precepts of the
Italian interpreters of Aristotle's Poetics are disregarded, as Sidney
lamented in his Apologie:
For it is faulty both in place, and time, the two necessary companions
of all corporall actions. For where the stage should alwaies represent but
one place, and the uttermost time presupposed in it should be, both by
Aristotle's precept and common reason, but one day; there is both many
dayes and many places inartificially imagined.
Whether this were accident or design, it secured to English tragedy
from the beginning a liberty which all the efforts of Sidney's group
of stricter classicists could not do away with.
Gorboduc seems to have found no imitators immediately:
it was not published till 1565, and then surreptitiously. At
King's college, Cambridge, in 1564, the queen saw 'a Tragedie
named Dido, in hexametre verse, without anie chorus,' and 'an
English play called Ezechias, made by Mr Udall. ' At Christmas,
1564, as we have seen, Damon and Pithias by Richard Edwards
was acted at Whitehall; and, in 1566, his Palamon and Arcyte
was presented before the queen in the hall of Christ Church,
Oxford, as well as a Latin play, called Marcus Geminus. But,
of these, only Damon and Pithias has come down to us, and its
freedom from classical influence has been already noted. When,
however, the members of Gray's inn presented a comedy and
a tragedy in 1566, they obviously took as their model for the
latter the drama which had been acted with much applause by
the gentlemen of the Inner Temple, and which had just been
published. Jocasta is written in blank verse, which Gorboduc
had introduced on the English stage: its authorship is divided
according to acts, the first and fourth being 'done' by Francis
Kinwelmersh, the second, third and fifth by George Gascoigne,
while a third member of the society, Christopher Yelverton,
contributed the epilogue. Gascoigne wrote the 'argument,' and,
apparently, supervised the whole undertaking; for he afterwards
1 Camden Society edition (1848), p. 275.
## p. 71 (#95) ##############################################
Gascoigne's Jocasta
71
included the tragedy in his collected works, and Ariosto’s Supposes,
presented at the same time, was translated by him alone. As in
Gorboduc, each act is preceded by a dumb-show with musical
accompaniment, and the rimed choruses, which in the earlier
tragedy were recited by foure auncient and sage men of Brittaine,
were given in Jocasta by 'foure Thebane dames. ' The full title
reads : 'Jocasta: A Tragedie written in Greeke by Euripides,
translated and digested into Acte by George Gascoygne and
Francis Kinwelmershe of Grayes Inne, and there by them presented,
1566. ' The claim of translation from the original Greek, apparently,
passed without remark till 1879, when J. P. Mahaffy' first pointed
out that Gascoigne and Kinwelmersh had not gone to Phoenissae,
but to an adaptation of it by Lodovico Dolce, bearing the title
Giocasta (1549). This was not Dolce's only contribution, as we
shall see", in aid of Elizabethan tragedy, and some of his sonnets
were translated by Thomas Lodge. He was a Venetian (1508—68),
and much of his literary activity consisted of hack work for the
well known publishing house of Gioliti. He translated Seneca's
tragedies and other Latin classics. He professed to translate the
Odyssey, but was somewhat hampered by his ignorance of Greek,
the result being a story taken from Homer rather than a translation.
He treated Phoenissae in the same fashion, relying upon a
Latin translation published at Basel by R. Winter, in 1541, the
misprints of which he reproduced. He dealt freely with his
original, recasting choruses, omitting some scenes and adding others,
generally from his favourite author Seneca. Both the original
ode,' which Warton ascribes to Gascoigne and praises as 'by no
means destitute of pathos or imagination, and the ode to Concord
by Kinwelmersh, in which the same critic discovers 'great ele-
gance of expression and versification,' are loose translations of
Dolce. In the dialogue, the translators followed the Italian text
with greater fidelity, though there are some amusing blunders.
Gascoigne, as a rule, is more successful in reproducing the sense
of his original, but Dolce sometimes leads him astray. Thus, in
Phoenissae (v. 1675), where Antigone threatens to follow the
example of the Danaides (Νυξ άρ' εκείνη Δαναΐδων μ' έξει μίαν),
Dolce translates flatly: lo seguird lo stil d'alcune accorte; and
Gascoigne still more flatly: 'I will ensue some worthie womans
steppes. ' The same gradual depravation of a great original is to
1 Euripides (Classical Writers), pp. 184—5.
2 See infra, p. 74. Cf. also Symonds, J. A. , Shakspere's Predecessors, pp. 221–2.
## p. 72 (#96) ##############################################
72 Early English Tragedy
be seen in v. 1680, which descends, by clearly marked steps, to
bathos. When Antigone declares her determination to accompany
her father into exile, Creon says: Γενναιότης σοι, μωρία δ' ένεστί τις.
The Latin version reproduces this prosaically but correctly:
Generositas tibi inest, sed tamen stultitia quaedam inest. Dolce
mistranslates: Quel ch'in altri è grandezza è in te pazzia; and
Gascoigne blindly follows his blind guide: “What others might
beseeme, beseemes not thee. '
Jocasta did not advance English tragedy on its destined way;
indeed, on the whole, the movement is backwards, for its authors
not only showed less originality than their predecessors by adopting
the method of translation, but, in other respects, their efforts are
more imitative than independent. Neither tragedy had employed
the resource of romantic passion, and it seemed, therefore, as if
there were a real opportunity for development when Gismond
of Salerne was presented in 1567—8 by 'the worshipful company
of the Inner-Temple Gentlemen. '
The tragedy was by them most pithily framed, and no less curiously acted
in view of her Majesty, by whom it was then as princely accepted, as of the
whole honourable audience notably applauded: yea, and of all men generally
desired, as a work, either in stateliness of show, depth of conceit, or true
ornaments of poetical art, inferior to none of the best in that kind : no, were
the Roman Seneca the censurer.
So pronounces William Webbe, author of A Discourse of English
Poetrie, in the letter prefixed to the revised (1591) edition of
the play, and addressed to the editor, Robert Wilmot. From the
initials appended to each act in this edition, it appears that act II
was written by Henry Noel, act iv by Christopher Hatton and
act v by Wilmot himself; the authors of act 1 (Rod. Staf. ) and
act III (G. Al. ) have not yet been identified. The plot is taken
from Boccaccio's first novel of the fourth day, which had already
been used by Italian dramatists, though our authors were indebted
to none of these. They went directly to the Italian text of the
Decameron, and not, as has been generally supposed, to the
translation of the tale just published in The Palace of Pleasure,
for their version is closer to the original, and in some important
particulars more accurate, than Painter's. For instance, Ghismonda,
in her lament over her dead lover, says: Ahi dolcissimo albergo
di tutti i miei piaceri, maladetta sia la crudeltà di colui, che
con gli occhi della fronte or mi ti fa vedere. Assai m'era con
quegli della mente riguardarti a ciascuna ora. This is translated
by Painter:
## p. 73 (#97) ##############################################
Gismond of Salerne
73
Oh sweete harboroughe of my pleasures, cursed be the crueltye of him
that hath caused mee at this time to loke appon thee with the eyes of my
face: it was pleasure ynoughe, to see thee every hower, amonges people of
knowledge and understanding;
a grotesque misconception of the phrase, con quegli della mente.
Wilmot reproduced the meaning of the original', and passages
might be quoted to show that his collaborators also had Boccaccio's
text before them, and were not content to rely on Painter's
translation, which, indeed, is often inadequate. The story is
one of the most tragic in the Decameron, and offers an excellent
subject for dramatic treatment. Boccaccio's passion-wrought and
desperate heroine, with her fearless assertion of the claims of
nature and love against those of social convention, is a magnificent
centre of interest for the tragic stage; but all this advantage, ready
to their hand in the original story, the English dramatists laid aside.
Gismond's lover is no longer un giovane valletto, but the Counté
Palurine,' and she herself is not so much a victim of love as a
terrible example of disordered passion. Moral considerations
prevented the Inner Temple gentlemen from making Gismond
their heroine. 'Herein they all agree,' Wilmot writes, commending
virtue, detesting vice, and lively deciphering their overthrow that
suppress not their unruly affections. ' It was necessary, therefore, ,
to make a complete change from Boccaccio's point of view and
method of treatment. Part of the original material was transferred
to other speakers or different occasions. Thus, Ghismonda's
reflection that the spirit of her dead lover still lingers near,
awaiting hers, is applied by the English dramatists to her dead
husband; and her plea to her father that the flesh is weak is
made more respectable--and much less effective-by putting it
into the mouth of the aunt, Lucrece, and placing it before,
instead of after, the event. Moreover, the chorus hold up
'worthy dames, such as Penelope and Lucrece, as 'a mirrour
and a glasse to womankinde,' and exhort their hearers to resist
Cupid's assaults and be content with a moderate and virtuous
affection (choruses II, III, IV). An epilogue (of the kind which, no
Ah pleasant harborrow of my hartës thought.
Ah swete delight, joy, comfort of my life.
Ah cursed be his crueltie that wrought
thee this despite, and unto me such grefe,
to make me to behold thus with these eyes
thy woefull hart, and force me here to see
this dolefull sight. Alas, did not suffise
that with my hartes eyen continually
I did behold the same?
(Act V, sc. 2, 25—33. )
## p. 74 (#98) ##############################################
74
Early English Tragedy
doubt, would have been recited by 'sweet bully Bottom') assures
the ladies in the audience that such inordinate passions are
unknown in Britain land':
Nor Pluto heareth English ghostes complaine
our dames disteined lyves. Therfore ye may
be free from fere. Suffiseth to mainteine
the vertues which we honor in yow all :
80 as our Britain ghostes, when life is past,
may praise in heven, not plaine in Plutoes hall
oor dames, but hold them vertuous and chast,
worthy to live where furie never came,
where Love can see, and beares no deadly bowe.
In this way, the interests of morality and the authors' reputa-
tions were saved, but at the sacrifice of much that was valuable
in the original story, which the dramatists supplemented from
other sources. Their thoughts, naturally, would be directed to
classical examples of unhappy passion-Phaedra and Dido. The
latter had been made the subject of a tragedy by Dolce (1547),
and to this, undoubtedly, our authors had recourse. At the
opening of their play, Cupid comes down from heaven and speaks
the following lines:
:
Loe I, in shape that seme unto your sight
a naked boy, not clothed but with wing,
am that great god of love that with my might
do rule the world, and everie living thing.
This one hand beares vain hope, short joyfull state,
with faire semblance the lover to allure:
this other holdes repentance all to late,
warr, fiër, blood, and paines without recure.
On swete ambrosia is not my foode,
nor nectar is my drink, as to the rest
of all the Goddes. I drink the lovers blood,
and eate the living bart within his brest.
Cupid, likewise, opens Dolce's Didone, and the lines quoted above
are merely a translation and re-arrangement of the Italian
original :
Io, che dimostro in viso,
A la statura, e à i panni,
D'esser picciol fanciullo,
Si come voi mortale:
Son quel gran Dio, che'l mondo chiama Amore.
Quel, che pò in cielo, e in terra,
Et nel bollente Averno;
Contra di cui non vale
Forza, ne human consiglio:
Ne d'ambrosia mi pasco,
Si come gli altri Dei,
## p. 75 (#99) ##############################################
Gismond
of Salerne
75
Ma di sangue, e di pianto.
Ne l'una mano io porto
Dubbia speme, fallace, e breve gioia ;
Ne l'altra affanno, e noia,
Pene, sospiri, e morti.
There are other parallels of less importance, but, as the play
proceeded, the divergence in the development of the plot of
Didone made it less suitable to the purpose of our authors, and
they supplied their lack of invention with commonplaces taken
direct from Seneca. As Dolce had done the same, it is hard to
say whether a great deal of act i is taken from the Italian's
borrowings or from the Latin original, but there are Senecan
reminiscences, at first or second hand, from Phaedra, Medea,
Thyestes, Oedipus, Agamemnon, Hercules Furens, Hercules
Oetacus and Octavia. The chorus of act I was, no doubt,
suggested by Octavia 298–312 and 689–695. Act III lays
Octavia and Phaedra under extensive contribution. The opening
of act iv, by Megaera, is taken direct from Thyestes, and the
invocation of Jove's thunder at the beginning of scene 2 may have
been suggested by the same play or by Phaedra, 679—690. This
stock device (which may be traced back to Sophocles : Electra,
823—6) had already been used in Gorboduc (end of act III,
sc. 1); and the original passage in Phaedra is misquoted in Titus
Andronicus, act iv, sc. 1, 81–82. But it is in act v of Gismond
of Salerne that Seneca is most openly plundered Lines 1-2,
21-38, 40–42, 45–68, 149—167, 182—188 and 207–208 are
merely translations of Seneca, chiefly from Thyestes.
When due deductions are made for what the authors borrowed
from Boccaccio, Dolce and Seneca, not much remains to be
credited to their own originality. Of the characters neither found
nor implied in Boccaccio's novel, Cupid is taken from Dolce;
Renuchio, Megaera and the chorus from Seneca ; Lucrece and
Claudia are the conventional confidantes of classical tragedy.
The order of events, in the main, is that of the novel, though a
noteworthy change is made in that, after the discovery, Tancred
sends for his daughter before he meets her lover-with this
disadvantage, that, at the time of the interview, Gismond is not
made aware of Guiscard's imprisonment and impending fate.
The one important addition made by the English dramatists to
Boccaccio's story is the death of Tancred, and this is only
announced as an intention in the action, though we are informed
parenthetically in the epilogue that he ‘now himself hath slayen. '
## p. 76 (#100) #############################################
76
Early English Tragedy
In the later version of the tragedy which Wilmot prepared for
publication, Tancred plucks out his eyes after the example of
Oedipus and kills himself on the stage. The same elaboration
of the horrible is to be noted in the dumb-show introducing the
fifth act in the edition of 1591.
Before this act was a dead march played, during which entered on the
stage Renuchio, Captain of the Guard, attended upon by the guard. They
took up Guiscard from under the stage; then after Guiscard had kindly
taken leave of them all, a strangling-cord was fastened about his neck, and
he haled forth by them. Renuchio bewaileth it; and then, entering in,
bringeth forth a standing cup of gold, with a bloody heart reeking hot in it,
and then saith, ut sequitur.
These dumb - shows are realistic rather than allegorical in
character, and set forth the action of the drama without words,
as in the play within the play in Hamlet. In the earlier version,
there are no dumb-shows, properly so called. Cupid opens the
first and third acts, but this device of a prologue was taken, as we
have seen, from Dolce, who also introduces Cupid and the shade
of Sichaeus at the beginning of act II of Didone, in obvious
imitation of the fury Megaera and the shade of Tantalus at the
opening of Seneca's Thyestes. The English dramatists' Megaera
(act iv) might be suggested by this passage in Didone, in which
.
she is mentioned by name, but, more probably, was taken from
Seneca direct. The choruses are recited by four gentlemen of
Salerne; and the versification turns back from the blank verse
of Gorboduc and Jocasta to the older rimed measures—a re-
trogression which Wilmot, in the later version, was at some pains
to correct. Cupid comes down from heaven, and Megaera up
from hell, marking a slight advance in stage machinery; and it
appears from the last line of the revised edition that curtains
were used. The scene is restricted to the court of Tancred's
palace and the chamber of Gismond lying immediately behind
it-the chamber within,' which was afterwards to become a
habitual resource of the popular stage—but there is no attempt
to observe the unity of time. The treatment of the plot, though
poorly contrived, is episodical, and this is an important point,
for it is characteristic of English tragedy that it aims at presenting
the whole course of the action, in its inception, development and
consequences, rather than a particular situation or crisis, as was
the custom in Senecan tragedy, and its Italian and French
imitations. The one merit of Gismond of Salerne is that it
endeavours to present a romantic subject with something of the
## p. 77 (#101) #############################################
>
The Misfortunes of Arthur
77
gravity and dignity of classical tragedy. From the latter point of
view, its superiority to its immediate predecessors, Damon and
Pithias and Horestes, is abundantly manifest; and, in both
interest of theme and manner of treatment, it surpasses the
earlier and more academic models. Gorboduc is overweighted
.
with political reflections, and the plot loses itself in abstrac-
tions. Jocasta has the double disadvantage of a time-worn
theme and frigid manner of presentation. Gismond of Salerne
struck out a new path, in which later dramatists followed with
infinitely greater art. It seems a far cry from Gismond and
Guiscard to the ‘pair of star-cross'd lovers' of Shakespeare's first
Italian tragedy ; but the Gentlemen of the Inner Temple at least
attempted what he achieved—to present the problem of human
passion sub specie eternitatis.
The most elaborate effort of its kind that has come down to
us was the Gray's inn entertainment presented to the queen in
1588, of which The Misfortunes of Arthur, by Thomas Hughes,
was the principal feature. The dumb-shows were more complex
in their apparatus and allegorical significance than ever before,
and, evidently, were regarded as of primary importance, for the
title of the pamphlet contemporaneously published reads: Certaine
devises and shewes presented to her Majestie by the Gentlemen of
Grayes-Inne at her Highnesse Court in Greenewich, the twenty
eighth day of Februarie in the thirtieth yeare of her Majesties
most happy Raigne, making no mention of the tragedy. "The
dumbe showes,' we are finally informed,
were partly devised by Maister Christopher Yelverton, Maister Frauncis
Bacon, Maister John Lancaster and others, partly by the saide Maister
Flower, who with Maister Penroodocke and the said Maister Lancaster
directed these proceedings at Court.
Alternative introductory and final speeches for Gorlois, and two
alternative choruses, were provided by Flower, and the whole
entertainment was prefaced by an elaborate introduction penned
by Nicholas Trotte; in this, five gentlemen students were
presented to her majesty as captives by one of the muses, who
assured the queen that
since your sacred Majestie
In gratious hands the regall Scepter held
All Tragedies are fled from State, to stadge.
As this was in the interval between the execution of Mary queen
of Scots and the coming of the Armada, the compliment was
extravagant enough to satisfy even Elizabeth's inordinate appetite
## p. 78 (#102) #############################################
78 Early English Tragedy
M
-
1
for flattery; and, all things considered, it is no wonder that, a few
years later', the queen said that Gray's inn was 'an House she
was much beholden unto, for that it did always study for some
sports to present unto her. The study undertaken by Thomas
Hughes and his collaborators in 1587—8 was no light one.
Following the example of Sackville and Norton, Hughes found
a subject in ancient British legend and chose the same main
authority-Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae.
This is proved” by the adoption of the main outlines of the story
as they are found in Geoffrey and of his forms of proper names-
Gorlois, Igerna, Anne (Arthur's sister), Cador, Gillamor, Cheldrich,
Aschillus, Hoel, Angharad, Conan. But Hughes had recourse to
other versions of the story as well—probably Malory's Morte
d'Arthur-for we have also such forms as Guenevora, Mordred,
Gawin, not found in Geoffrey. The incestuous birth of Mordred,
and the slaughter of Arthur and Mordred by each other's hands,
are in Malory and not in Geoffrey, who describes Mordred as
Arthur's nephew. These additional horrors, doubtless, were
selected by Hughes in order to bring his theme up to the level
of Senecan sensationalism. In this, he was following the classical
tradition of the time, and, no doubt, pleasing the queen, whose
blank verse translation from the Hercules Oetaeus is still pre-
served in the Bodleian library, though, according to Warton, it
has ‘no other recommendation but its royalty. ' Hughes chose as
his first model the most horrible of Seneca's tragedies, Thyestes.
The ghost of Gorlois, who comes up from hell to recite the first
scene, is merely the Tantali umbra of Thyestes in another guise,
and lines 22—28 are translated literally from this source. In the
next scene, between Guenevora and Fronia, Thyestes proved in-
adequate to the demands made upon it, and the words of the
injured or erring wives of Agamemnon, Hercules Oetaeus and
Medea are reproduced; how extensive the borrowing is may
be judged from the fact that in Guenevora's longest speech
(19—47) there is only one original line (20), and that is a common-
place, quite in Seneca's manner. In the third scene, the general
relation of Guenevora to Angharad is that of Phaedra to her
nurse, but Hercules Furens, Medea, Thebais and Oedipus are
also put under contribution, Guenevora's longest speech (43—54)
being again taken entirely from Seneca. The conversation between
Mordred and Guenevora in scene 4 is modelled on that of
1 At the Gesta Grayorum, 1594. Nichols's Progresses, vol. III, p. 319.
? In the edition of the play by Grumbine, H. C.
## p. 79 (#103) #############################################
The Misfortunes of Arthur
79
Aegisthus and Clytemnestra in Agamemnon; Conan, in the latter
part of the scene, introduces some of the sententious precepts put
into the mouth of Seneca in Octavia. Then the chorus, four in
number according to established tradition, recite, each in turn, a
six lined stanza: this division of the chorus, which occurs again in
the dialogue of the fifth act, is the one innovation Hughes has
introduced.
It is hardly worth while to follow the dramatist in his
borrowings through act II (where they are almost as extensive)
and through the rest of the play to the last lines of the
epilogue, which still echo Seneca ; but one feature which affected
Elizabethan tragedy throughout its history may be noted. The
earlier dramatists had attempted, without much success, to imitate
Seneca's stichomythia. Hughes copied this staccato style of
antithetical and epigrammatic dialogue very closely. The following
lines, of which only the first is taken from Thyestes, may serve as
an example:
CADOR. To rule is much. ARTHUR Small if we covet naught.
CA. Who covets not a Crowne ? AR. He that discernes
The swoord aloft. Ca. That hangeth fast. AR. But by
A haire. Ca. Right holdes it up. AR. Wrong puls it downe.
CA. The Commons helpe the King. AR. They sometimes hurt.
This device is of frequent occurrence in later tragedy, and is
sometimes very effectively used by Shakespeare, e. g. in the opening
scenes of Richard III and of Hamlet.
The characters of The Misfortunes of Arthur not only indulge
freely in Senecan aphorisms, but are cast in the regular Senecan
moulds. Mordred is the typical usurper, Guenevora the faithless
.
wife, and the messengers, counsellors and confidants show few
gleams of personality; but an exception must be made in the
case of Arthur, who, perhaps, is the first well-conceived character
of English academic tragedy. Of course, he utters many Senecan
commonplaces, but he is not a merely conventional type. His
inclination to deal gently with his son is finely contrasted with his
vigorous address to his troops when he is roused to action by
Mordred's insolent message ; and his lament over his son's body
has been justly admired, in spite of a touch here and there of
Senecan rhetoric. His last words breathe a dignity and mystery
.
not unworthy of the situation :
Yea: though I Conquerour die, and full of Fame:
Yet let my death and parture rest obscure.
No grave I neede (0 Fates) nor buriall rights,
Nor stately hearce, nor tombe with haughty toppe:
## p. 80 (#104) #############################################
80 Early English Tragedy
But let my Carkasse lurk: yea, let my death
Be ay unknowen, so that in every Coast
I still be feard, and lookt for every houre.
The blank verse of Hughes, though it is still monotonous, has
more power and life than that of his predecessors; and it seems
reasonable to regret that he did not rely more on his own efforts.
If he had left himself free to develop his theme according to
his own ideas, he would probably have filled a larger place in
the history of English tragedy, though, no doubt, the Senecan
patchwork he produced was more in accordance with the expecta-
tions of his audience.
It seems unnecessary to pursue the fortunes of the academic
drama further here; it had given to the stage standards of regularity
and dignity of which that stage was sorely in need, and it had
bestowed upon tragedy the blank verse which was to become its re-
cognised means of expression. We must now turn our attention to
those players of 'common Interludes in the Englishe tongue' who
were continually harried by the London civic authorities, and
alternately repressed and encouraged by the queen. The organi-
sation of strolling players and noblemen's servants into regular
companies, and the building of the first theatres, gave the drama
the standing of a profession, and attracted to it university wits,
who were soon to raise it to the dignity of an art. Whatever might
be the amount of their Latin, popular dramatists were not without
respect, according to their lights, for the authority of Seneca ;
they probably studied the tragedies at school, and were, perhaps,
taught as Hoole, one of the masters at Rotherham, recommended,
“how and wherein they may imitate them, and borrow something
out of them. The translation of Tenne Tragedies published
in 1581 gave even those devoid of classical lore the chance of
making themselves acquainted with some, at least, of Seneca's
characteristics. Troas had appeared as early as 1559, and all the
other plays except Thebais by 1566. Some, at any rate, of the
versions were intended, as Nevyle says of Oedipus, for 'tragicall
and pompous showe upon stage, but it is not known whether
they were ever acted. In any case, their influence upon writers
for the popular stage is beyond doubt. It was not against the
dramatists of the inns of court (they were university men and
went to the original Latin, as their versions show) that Thomas
Nashe, in the prefatory epistle to Greene's Menaphon (1589),
directed his jibe, Seneca let bloud line by line and page by page,
at length must needes die to our stage': it was against 'a sort of
## p. 81 (#105) #############################################
The Tenne Tragedies of Seneca 81
shifting companions . . . that could scarcelie latinize their necke-
verse if they should have neede. ' To these
English Seneca read by candle light yeeldes manie good sentences, as Bloud
is a begger, and so foorth: and if you intreate him faire in a frostie morning,
he will affoord you whole Hamlets, I should say handfulls of tragical
speaches.
It is not easy to give chapter and verse in support of Nashe's
accusation-he was too reckless a controversialist to be able
always to prove his statements by detailed evidence-but the
general inference to be made from his attack upon contemporary
dramatists is beyond question. Kyd, Marlowe and Marston saved
their credit as scholars by quoting Seneca in the original, but the
first-named—and he is probably the particular object of Nashe's
invective-also copied from Seneca without acknowledgment.
All three were indebted to him for the type of sensational and
rhetorical tragedy which they made popular, and smaller men, whose
work has now perished, would be no less affected. Elizabethan
tragedy adopted not only Seneca's five acts, and occasionally his
choruses, his stock characters-especially the prologuising ghost?
-and his philosophical commonplaces, but his exaggerated
passions, his crude horrors and his exuberant rhetoric. In the
induction to A warning for Faire Women (1599)—a play which,
itself, is an example of the faults it condemns—the typical
Elizabethan tragedy is described as telling
How some damn'd tyrant to obtain a crown
Stabs, hangs, impoisons, smothers, cutteth throats:
And then a Chorus, too, comes howling in
And tells us of the worrying of a cat:
Then, too, a filthy whining ghost,
Lapt in some foul sheet, or a leather pilch,
Comes screaming like a pig half stick',
And cries, Vindicta! -Revenge, Revenge!
Fortunately, more wholesome influences were brought to bear
on the popular stage by the renewed interest in English history
which followed the national triumph over the Armada, and which
the publication of chronicles enabled dramatists to gratify.
Thomas Legge's Richardus Tertius, acted at St John's college,
Cambridge, in 1573, 1579 and 1582 (if all the dates in the MSS are
1 See Boas, F. 8. , The Works of Thomas Kyd, introduction, pp. xvii, xxiv, xxxii,
XXXIV–XXXV, xlv; Otto, M. , Der Stil in Thomas Kyds Originaldramen (Berlin, 1905);
MacCallum, M. W. , •The Authorship of the Early Hamlet,' an English Miscellany
presented to Dr Furnivall (1901).
2 See Moorman, F. W. , The Pre-Shaksperean Ghost,' The Modern Language
Rerier, vol. I, p. 85 (Jan. 1906).
6
>
6
E. L. V.
CH, IV
## p. 82 (#106) #############################################
82
Early English Tragedy
>
correct), is a remarkable early example of the treatment, after the
Senecan manner, of a subject taken from comparatively recent
national history. This, in itself, distinguishes it from earlier Latin
plays, such as Buchanan's Jephthes and Johannes Baptistes and
Grimoald's Archipropheta, which treated scriptural subjects after
the classical model, and from later tragedies, such as Gager's,
which were classical both in matter and form? But, in spite of the
numerous manuscripts in which Richardus Tertius has come down
to us, and the references to it by Harington, Nashe and Meres,
Churchill, in his excellent treatise on the subject, seems to imply
too much when he says that 'to Legge was due the turning of the
drama in England in an entirely new direction. The character of
the earliest surviving history plays in the vernacular suggests that
the impulse to their composition was not academic but popular,
and their models not classical tragedy, at first or second hand,
but miracle-plays, the methods of which they apply to national
history, as had been done in France more than a century
before. The Famous Victories of Henry the fifth (printed 1598
and acted before 1588), by common consent the earliest example,
though, doubtless, it is later in date than Richardus Tertius,
departs as widely as possible from classical standards in its
utter formlessness, its lack not only of choruses but of acts, its
combination of comic and serious interests, its mixture of prose
with indifferent verse. The Troublesome Raigne of King John
(printed 1591), considered by A. W. Ward 'the best example of the
chronicle history pure and simple,' has nothing classical about
it, except a few scraps of Latin, mainly introduced for comic
effect. It appeals, with a good deal more art than the preceding
play, though there is still much to seek on this score, to the
national spirit, which had hitherto found dramatic expression
only in the folk-play. In the address "To the gentlemen readers'
(given in the edition of 1591, but omitted in that of 1611 reprinted
by Nichols), the dramatist frankly makes this patriotic interest
his first claim for attention :
You that with friendly grace of smoothed brow
Have entertained the Scythian Tamburlaine,
And given applause unto an Infidel:
Vouchsafe to welcome (with like curtesie)
A warlike Christian and your Countreyman.
1 See Churchill, G. B. and Keller, W. , "Die lateinischen Universitäts-Dramen
Englands in der Zeit der Königin Elizabeth,' Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare
Gesellschaft, vol. XXXIV (1898).
2 Richard the Third up to Shakespeare,' Palaestra, vol. 2 (1900).
6
## p. 83 (#107) #############################################
The True Chronicle History of King Leir 83
But the real hero of the play, as of that which Shakespeare
founded on it, is the bastard Fawconbridge, who is given due
prominence in the title, and whose character is developed with a
good deal of spirit and skill? . On the whole, however, the artistic
merits of the play have been exaggerated by recent critics ; blank
verse, rime and prose are used with the same careless facility,
and the scenes follow one another without any attempt at dramatic
construction. But in it, as in the earlier play, we catch the first
tones of the voice of Elizabethan England to which Shakespeare
gave fuller and nobler expression in the historical dramas founded
on these first rude attempts :
Let England live but true within it selfe,
And all the world can never wrong her State.
*
If Englands Peeres and people joyne in one,
Nor Pope, nor Fraunce, nor Spaine can doo them wrong.
Apart from the use made of it by Shakespeare, The True
Chronicle History of King Leir, and his three daughters,
Gonorill, Ragan, and Cordella (printed 1605 and probably acted
15943) has an interest of its own, though few will be found to
subscribe to the opinion* that 'the whole of this old drama is
incomparably and in every respect superior to Shakespeare's
adaptation. ' But it may be freely admitted that the old play
is well contrived, and written in a light, easy style which is not
unpleasing. In spite of its absurd disguises and coincidences, it
is an organic whole, and not a mere succession of events taken
haphazard from the chronicle, its main sources being, indeed,
Warner, Mirror for Magistrates and The Faerie Queene. The
contrast between the bearing of Cordella and her sisters is made
more natural by the fact that they have an advantage over her
in being informed beforehand that they will lose nothing by com-
pliance with their father's test of affection ; and the characters
!
1 The most striking episode, at the opening of the play, was apparently adapted by
the dramatist, with additions of his own, from a story told by Hall and Stow of the
bastard Dunois of Orleans. See Boswell-Stone, W. G. , Shakespeare's Holinshed,
pp. 48–50.
2 The same comment might be made on the pre-Shakespearean Richard II, printed
in Shakespeare Jahrbuch, 1899 (vol. xxxv), and commended by Boas in Fortnightly
Review, vol. LXXVII (1902), pp. 391-404, for its breadth of canvass, its insight into
popular feeling, and its abundant comic relief. '
* On this point see Perrett, W. , 'The Story of King Lear,' Palaestra, vol. xxxv,
and Law, R. A. , Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, vol. xxI,
pp. 462–477 (1906).
* Leo Tolstoi, in Fortnightly Review, Jan. 1907, vol. LXXXVII, p. 66.
6-2
## p. 84 (#108) #############################################
84
Early English Tragedy
are clearly, though not deeply, conceived. There is a solitary
Senecan aphorism (“For fear of death is worse than death itself');
but the play is free, alike from the tedious commonplaces of
academic tragedy, and from the extravagant rhetoric which
Tamburlaine had brought into vogue. This is partly due to
the dramatist's vein of humour, not always duly restrained, but
seasoned with salt enough to withstand the changes of time.
Occasionally, he seems to criticise the absurdity of his own
dramatic expedients. There is more point than was, perhaps,
apparent to the author in Mumford's comment upon the disguised
king's extraordinary speed in the wooing of Cordella ;
Have Palmers weeds such power to win fayre Ladies?
Fayth, then I hope the next that falles is myne:
Upon condition I no worse might speed,
I would for ever weare a Palmers weed.
I like an honest and playne dealing wench,
That sweares (without exceptions) I will have yon.
These soppets, that know not whether to love a man or no,
except they first go aske their mothers leave, by this hand, I
hate them ten tymes worse then poyson.
KING.
What resteth then our happinesse to procure ?
MUMFORD.
Fayth, go to Church, to make the matter sure.
KING.
It shall be so, because the world shall say,
King Leirs three daughters were wedded in one day:
The celebration of this happy chaunce,
We will deferre, untill we come to Fraunce.
MUMFORD.
I like the wooing, that's not long a doing.
Well, for her sake, I know what I know:
Ile never marry whilest I live,
Except I have one of these Brittish Ladyes,
My humour is alienated from the mayds of Fraunce.
The Lamentable Tragedie of Locrine (Newly set foorth,
overseene and corrected. By W. S. 1595) is a play of unusual
interest, not only because of the questions of authorship it raises,
but because of its combination of the diverse streams of influence
to which the drama was by this time subject. It adopts the dumb-
shows of academic tragedy, with Até as chorus; it has two ghosts
and a duplicated revenge motive; the opening scene is imitated
## p. 85 (#109) #############################################
Locrine and Selimus
85
.
from Gorboduc; and there are numerous transcripts from Seneca'.
But it has also a large and lively comic element and a good
deal of stage fighting, and it borrows freely from Kyd, Marlowe,
Greene, Peele and Lodge, and from Spenser's Complaints (entered
in the Stationers' register 29 December 1590, and containing, in
The Ruines of Time, a reference to the death of Sir Francis
Walsingham, 6 April 1590). The dramatist has been accused
of borrowing from another play, very similar in style, The First
part of the Tragicall raigne of Selimus (printed 1594); but, in this
case, the obligation seems to be the other way. The contributions
to this interesting controversy have been numerous and varied.
Tieck marked a number of parallels between Locrine and
Spenser's Complaints in his copy of the fourth folio of Shake-
speare; but these were first published, with a few additions by
R. Brotanek, in 19002 P. A. Daniel had already drawn attention
to the almost identical passages in Locrine and Selimus. Charles
Crawford, who had undertaken the same investigation at the
instigation of Grosart, charged the author of Locrine with
wholesale 'cribbing' from Selimus, supporting the accusation with
an elaborate array of parallel passages". Emil Koeppel's attention
was called to Crawford's articles by a summary of them published
in the Shakespeare Jahrbuch; and, after an examination of the
text, he arrived at an exactly opposite conclusion, viz. that
Selimus borrowed from Locrine5. The same conclusion had
been reached independently by F. G. Hubbard of the university
of Wisconsin, and has since been supported by him with further
evidence in a paper to which he kindly gave the present writer
access before its publication. It is pointed out that the comic
scene in Locrines, which is paralleled in Selimus, stands alone
in the latter play, while, in Locrine, there is much other low
humour of the same kind in connection with the same characters.
Hubbard adds to this argument in favour of the priority of
Locrine some important considerations with reference to the lines
Cf. the passage in the second scene beginning (11. 68—9)
But what so ere the fates determind have,
It lieth not in us to disannull,
with Oedipus 1001—16 : Fatis agimur : cedite fatis.
? Beiblatt zur Anglia, vol. xi, pp. 202—7.
3 In a letter to The Athenæum of 16 April 1898, p. 512.
* In a series of papers contributed to Notes and Queries in 1901 (Ser. Ix, vol. vir).
- Koeppel's paper was published in Jahrbuch for 1905 (vol.
