general ideas, his maxims, his solemn, and at times truly eloquent speeches thus became accessible to all; traces of them are to be found nearly everywhere, for he had treated of many subjects and meditated on many problems, including, long before Hamlet, the question of "to be or not to be": May thys be true or doth the fable fayne, When corps is dead the sprite to live as yet? ... Hath not the soule likewise his funerall? . ... Doth all at once together dye? And may no part his fatall howre delay, But with the breath the soule from hence doth flie, Sometimes the characters in his plays reappeared on the English stage; sometimes national heroes, lovers from Boccaccio, prophets from the Bible, Asiatic princes, imitating his style, exchanged, in English plays, noble orations or brief aphorisms, observed, as well as they could, the rule of the unities, and slipped in due time behind the arras, there to be slaughtered, and procure for a learned audience the pleasure of hearing the report of classical Nuntius and the sententious communings of a chorus "à l'antique." "Our youths longed to ascend the stage," wrote Nicholas Grimald, from the College of Merton in 1543, and he composed for them a Latin "tragica-comoedia" on the Resurrection (with Alecto playing a part), and he justified, by the example of Plautus, some few liberties taken with the "with divers and sundrye addicions." The ten tragedies were successively turned into English by Heywood, Studley and others, and then published complete in one volume: "Seneca his tenne Tragedies," 1581. Concerning "The influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy," see the brief and substantial essay of J. W. Cunliffe, London, 1893. "The sixt tragedie . . . entituled Troas :" chorus of act ii. unities. At Cambridge, Thomas Legge obtained in 1579 great success with a "Richardus Tertius," written after the manner of Seneca.2 Again and again, in one or the other language, others did the same. At the Inns of Court, Gascoigne gave a "Jocasta" in English blank verse, imitated from Dolce, who had imitated Seneca, who had imitated Euripides, who had imitated Æschylus. There we find in complete array chorus, messengers, and confidants: O faithfull servaunt of mine auncient sire, The whole discourse of my recurelesse griefe... Yet... Yet, I shall tell it all over again, for if it is sufficiently known to thee, it is not to this audience. Jocasta does not give this reason, but it is the true one; thus begins the play.3 To other scholarly writers the nation's history * Performed, he says, before an "eruditissimorum virorum corona," who, if really such, could not presumably much admire the poetry of lines such as this: Nemo homo potuit melius consilium dare. 66 "Christus Redivivus," Cologne, 1543, reprinted by J. M. Hart, " Modern Language Association of America," vol. xiv. The well-known "Pedantius," probably by E. Forsett, was also a University play, performed at Trinity College, Cambridge, in Feb. 1581, Harvey being, as it seems, caricatured as the hero of this Latin comedy; ed. C. Moore Smith, 1905, vol. viii. of Bang’s Materialen," Ist ed., 1631. A "Christus Triumphans by Foxe the martyrologist, 1556, was translated into French, 1562, and into English, 1578. The best Latin dramas of the period were written by the Scotchman, Buchanan, but in France, and for a French public: "Jephthes sive votum," Paris, 1554, "Baptistes sive calumnia," a "Medea," an Alcestis," all of them performed at the "Collège de Guyenne," Bordeaux. A Latin "Victoria," dedicated to Philip Sidney by Abraham Fraunce, has recently been recovered and edited by G. C. Moore Smith (Louvain, vol. xiv. of Bang's "Materialen "). Cf. "Notes on some English University Plays," by the same, Modern Language Review, III. 141 and see Keller, ibid. 177 ff. 2 Text in Hazlitt, "Shakespeare's Library," vol. v. 3 Acts i. and iv. by Kinwelmersh; the rest by Gascoigne : "Jocasta," 1566, printed 1572, in blank verse (except the choruses). Dumb shows introduce each act: “Firste ... a king with an Imperial crown uppon his head . . . a Mounde with a crosse in his lefte hande . . . sitting in a chariote . . . drawne ... supplied the subject of “Gorboduc"; mediæval romances, the plot of the "Misfortunes of Arthur"; the Decameron, the story of "Tancred and Gismund "2; all of them written according to the classical standard, and performed before Elizabeth. "Gorboduc," the work of Sackville and Norton, and the earliest English tragedy in blank verse was represented at Whitehall on the 18th of January, 156[2].3 It pleased connoisseurs by the imitation of the ancients and the dignity of the speeches; critics declared it a masterpiece or almost; England had at last her Jodelle, perhaps even her Seneca; alone among all the dramas of his day, this one found grace in the eyes of Sir Philip Sidney, as "clyming to the height of Seneca his stile." Even at the time of Shakespeare's greatest popularity, the classical drama continued to have staunch partisans. Daniel composed, after Seneca's recipes, a "Cleopatra" beginning with a monologue which filled the whole of in by foure Kinges”—an example for Tamburlaine-and by this cross and all the rest "Sesostris, King of Egypt" was to be known. By Gascoigne, a masque (below, p. 196), a morality mixed with comedy, "The Glasse of Government," 1575, a prose comedy, "The Supposes," performed at Gray's Inn, in 1566, a sort of comedy of errors and "jeux de l'amour et du hasard,” adapted from Ariosto's famous "Suppositi," first acted 1509 and a play more celebrated for its merriment than for its ethical worth. "Works" of Gascoigne, ed. Hazlitt, 1869, 2 vols. 4to; Complete Works," ed. J. W. Cunliffe, Cambridge, 1907, 2 vols. 8vo; Supposes and Jocasta" (with Dolce's Italian text), ed. J. W. Cunliffe, Boston, 1906. Cf. above, vol. II. PP. 357, 426. I 66 Certaine Devises and Shewes," London, 1587, usually called "The Misfortunes of Arthur"; principal author, T. Hughes. 2 "The Tragedie of Tancred and Gismund, compiled by the Gentlemen of the Inner Temple . . . newly revived and polished according to the decorum of these daies [ie., turned into blank verse] by R. W[ilmot],” 1591, first performed before Elizabeth in 1568; from Boccaccio, "Decameron," Nov. 1, Giornata iv. 3" The Tragedie of Gorboduc, where of three actes were wrytten by Thomas Nortone, and the two laste by Thomas Sackvyle," London, 1565; reprinted by Miss L. T. Smith, Heilbronn, 1883. On Sackville, see above, vol. II. P. 332. Act I., and ending with a messenger's report nine pages long. In the same way as Jodelle in his "Cléopâtre Captive," he was obliged, on account of the unities, to begin his tragedy very near the catastrophe and to dilute, in his five acts, matter considered by Shakespeare insufficient for one: the first scene of the first act both in Daniel and Jodelle corresponds to Scene 2 of Act V. in Shakespeare. At the same time, the "Marc Antoine" of Garnier, another French classical dramatist, was translated into English verse by the Countess of Pembroke 2; the "Cornélie" of the same was turned into English by Kyd 3; Brandon wrote a "Virtuous Octavia" 4; Fulke Greville, the friend of Sidney, curbed to classical rules and decked with messengers, nurses, choruses and ghosts, the Oriental subjects of "Mustapha" and "Alaham "5; Sir William Alexander cut up ancient history into tragedies: “Darius," "The Tragedie of Cleopatra," 1594. By the same, "The Tragedie of Philotas," 1605. The dedications in verse of these two plays are among Daniel's best work. "Complete Works," ed. Grosart, vol. iii. 2 "The Tragedie of Antonie," London, 1595, 4to, a pretty volume, elegantly printed on fine paper, with a care never bestowed on any of the romantic dramas of the period. 3 His efforts to translate accurately, though far from always successful, are worthy of note. See for example the flowery speech of the messenger relating, in characteristic fashion, the final catastrophe: Tout s'épand par les champs, comme un camp mesnager De caverneux fourmis, venus pour fourrager, Lors que l'hiver prochain ses froidures appreste, Ils sortent de leur creux... "Cornélie," 1st ed. 1573; "Œuvres," ed. Foerster, Heilbronn, 1882. The fields are spred, and as a houshold campe Of creeping emmets in a countrey farme, That come to forrage when the cold begins, Leaving theyr crannyes, etc. 'Cornelia," 1594; "Works," ed. Boas, Oxford, 1901, p. 150. "The Tragi-comodi of the Virtuous Octavia," 1598, 12mo. 5 "Works in Verse and Prose," ed. Grosart, vol. iii.; 1st ed. of "Mustapha," 1609; of "Alaham," 1633. I "Cræsus," etc., filling, he too, a whole act with a monologue of Solon's or with the lugubrious disquisitions of Alexander's ghost. More or less visible, rill, rivulet, or river, classical tradition persisted, and may be traced from the time of the early Tudors to the days when it reigned supreme with the last of the Stuarts. In the history of the English drama, at this period, a fact deserves special attention, and is indeed of paramount importance. At the same moment, in France and in England, those best entitled to speak uttered, in both countries, the same precepts. The cleverest critics, the most learned and experienced scholars, the thinkers of greatest fame, pronounced on the question of the neo-classicism adapted from the ancients, as opposed to the lawless romanticism inherited from the Middle Ages. In the two countries, with the same energy, but widely different results, they declared for classical art. Tragedy, wrote in 1572 Jean de la Taille, one of the best known French theoricians and dramatists, "is a sort and kind of poetry not vulgar, but as elegant, beautiful, and excellent as may be. Its appropriate subject deals only with pitiful catastrophes of the great, with the inconstancy of Fortune, banishments, wars, plagues, famines. . . that is, always extreme misery and not things which happen every day, naturally and according to reason, as to die a natural death, or to be killed by one's foe." What more natural and according to reason than to be killed by one's foe? Nothing, in those days. Such commonplace occurrences could not excite much interest (a noteworthy declaration explaining the preternaturally black deeds so often recorded by Shakespeare and his contemporaries); but a good sub 1 "Foure Monarchicke Tragedies," in "Recreations with the Muses" by "William [Alexander] Earle of Sterline," London, 1637, fol.; 1st editions, 1603-7. The tragedies of Daniel, Fulke Greville and Alexander were never put on the stage. |