The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare Part 2

"This Brutus or Brytus (for this letter Y hath of ancient times had the sounds both of V and I) ... was the sonne of Silvius, the sonne of Ascanius, the sonne of Aeneas the Trojan, begotten of his wife Creusa, and borne in Troie, before the citie was destroied" (book ii. chap. i.).

[12]

"En mund ne est (ben vus l'os dire) Pais, reaume, ne empire U tant unt este bons rois E seinz, c.u.m en isle d'Englois ...

Seinz, martirs e confessurs Ki pur Deu mururent plursurs; Li autre forz e hardiz mutz, c.u.m fu Arthurs, Aedmunz, e Knudz."

("Lives of Edward the Confessor," ed. H. R. Luard, London, Rolls, 1858, 8vo.)

[13] Both editions are undated; the first one seems to have been published in 1478, the second in 1484 (W. Blades, "Life and Typography of William Caxton," 1861, two vols. 4to).

[14] "English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle de Hampole," ed. G. G.

Perry, London, Early English Text Society, 1866, 8vo. p. 7. Rolle de Hampole died in 1349. Caesarius' tale (Caesarius Heisterbacensis, d. 1240) begins thus: "Erat ibi juvenis quidam in studio, qui, suggerente humani generis inimico, talia quaedam peccata commiserat, quae, obstante erubescentia, nulli hominum confiteri potuit: cogitans tamen quae malis praeparata sunt tormenta gehennae, & quae bonis abscondita sunt gaudia perennis vitae, timens etiam quotidie judicium Dei super se, intus torquebatur morsu conscientiae & foris tabescebat in copore...."

("Ill.u.s.trium miraculorum ... libri xii.," bk. ii. ch. 10).

[15] "Speculum Stultorum," in "Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets ... of the Twelfth Century" ed. Th. Wright, London, 1872, 2 vols. 8vo.

[16] "Gualteri Mapes De nugis curialium distinctiones quinque," ed. Th.

Wright, Camden Society, 1850, 4to. Part IV. of this work contains the celebrated "Disuasio Valerii ad Rufinum de ducenda uxore," long attributed to St. Jerome, and one of the princ.i.p.al text-books of the authors of satires against women during the Middle Ages. It was well known to the Wife of Bath, who held it in special abomination.

[17] The "Utopia" was composed in 1515-1516, and was published anonymously at Louvain, under the t.i.tle: "Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus de optimo reipublicae statu ... cura P.

aegidii ... nunc primum ... editus." Louvain 1516, 4to. It was translated into English by Ralph Robinson in 1551, and this translation has been reprinted by Arber, London, 1869. Another famous novel of the same cla.s.s was written in the following century also in Latin by another Englishman, or rather Scotchman, the celebrated "Argenis" of John Barclay (1582-1621). It was translated into English by Sir Robert Le Grys, 1629, 4to. Queen Elizabeth appears in it under the name of Hyanisbe.

[18] Ralph Robinson's translation (_ut supra_).

[19] "Pantagruel, apres avoir entierement conqueste le pays de Dispodie, en icelluy transporta une colonie des Utopiens, en nombre de 9,876,543,210 hommes, sans les femmes et pet.i.tz enfans, artisans de tous mestiers et professeurs de toutes sciences liberales, pour ledict pays refraischir, peupler et aorner, mal aultrement habite et desert en grande partie" ("Pantagruel," bk. iii. ch. 1).

[20] "Pantagruel," bk. ii. ch. 2.

[21] "Recueyll of the historyes of Troye," Bruges, 1474? Epilogue to Book iii.

[22] "Le Morte Darthur by Syr Thomas Malory," ed. O. Sommer and Andrew Lang, London, 1889, 2 vol. 8vo. Caxton's Preface, p. 3. The book was originally published at Westminster, in 1485, under the t.i.tle: "The n.o.ble and ioyous book entytled Le Morte Darthur notwythstondyng it treateth of the byrth, lyf and actes of the sayd kyng Arthur of his n.o.ble knyghtes of the rounde table, theyr marvayllous enquestes and adventures, thachyevyng of the Sangraal, and in thende the dolorous deth and departyng out of thys world of them al, whiche book was reduced into englysshe by Syr Thomas Malory knyght."

It ends with the statement that it was printed and "fynysshed in thabbey of Westmestre the last day of Juyl the yere of our lord M cccc lx.x.xv.

Caxton me fieri fecit."

[23] "And then kyng Arthur smote syr mordred under the shelde wyth a foyne of his spere thorughoute the body more than a fadom. And when syr mordred felte that he had hys dethes wounde, he thryst hymself wyth the myght that he had up to the bur of kyng Arthurs spere. And right so he smote his fader Arthur wyth his swerde holden in bothe his handes, on the syde of the heed, that the swerde persyd the helmet & the brayne panne, & therwythall syr Mordred fyl starke deed to the erthe, & the n.o.byl Arthur fyl in a swoune to the erthe & there swouned ofte times"

(_Ut supra_, book xxi. ch. iv. p. 847).

[24] "Le Morte Darthur," ed. Sommer and Lang, London, 1889, 8vo., book xviii. ch. 25, p. 771.

[25] "Auca.s.sin and Nicolete," done into English by Andrew Lang, London, 1887, pp. 6, 11, and 12.

[26] "The Scholemaster," London, 1570, 4to.

[27] "Robert the deuyll," London, Wynkyn de Worde, 1510? 8vo. "Syr Tryamoure," "Syr Beuys of Hampton," "Syr Isumbras," "Syr Degore," "The Knight of the Swanne," "Virgilius," and many others were published by W.

Copland about 1550. "Guy of Warwick" was printed in the same style about 1560, "Syr Eglamoure of Artoys," about 1570. Many others were at this period printed in the same way with engravings from the same wood blocks.

[28] London, 1560? 4to.

[29] "The history of Graund Amoure and la bel Pucell, called the Pastime of pleasure," by Stephen Hawes, London, Tottell, 1555, 4to. The same engraving embellishes also "The Squyr of Lowe Degre," published by W.

Copland, &c.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DRAWING BY ISAAC OLIVER, AFTER AN ITALIAN MODEL.]

CHAPTER II.

TUDOR TIMES, THE FASHIONS AND THE NOVEL.

I.

One of the most remarkable effects of the Renaissance was the awakening of a slumbering curiosity. The _regime_ of the Middle Ages was just ended; its springs were exhausted, its mysteries unveiled, its terrors ridiculed. Armour was beginning to be thought troublesome; the towers of the strong castles, dark and too much confined for the pleasures of life; the reasonings of the schoolmen had grown old: blind faith was out of fashion; a world was ending, and all that was sinking with it appeared in the eyes of the young generation, out of season and "tedious as a twice-told tale." The rupture between the Middle Ages and modern times was complete in certain countries, partial in others, and consequently the Renaissance had very different results among the various peoples of Europe. But the same characteristic symptoms of an eager, newly awakened curiosity manifested itself in all. There was no longer question of continuing, but of comparing and of discovering. What did the ancient Greeks and the old Romans say? What do our neighbours think? What are their forms of style, their recent inventions? England competed with France in her youthful curiosity, and English poets and travellers following the example of their rivals beyond the seas, "plundered" (in the words of Joachim du Bellay's famous manifesto[30]), not only Athens and Rome, but Florence, Paris, Venice, and all the enlightened towns of France, Italy, and Spain.

This curiosity spurred on the English in the different paths of human knowledge and activity with an audacity worthy of the Scandinavian Vikings. After having destroyed the Armada, they were going to burn the Spanish fleet at Cadiz, to discover new lands in America and to give them the name of "Virginia" in honour of their queen, and to attempt the impossible task of discovering a way to China through the icy regions of the North Pole. The fine gentlemen and the fine wits, even the lack-dinner, lack-penny Bohemians of literature crossed the Channel, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, seeking, they too, for gold mines to work, gathering ideas, listening to stories, noting down recent discoveries, and often appropriating the elegant vices and the light morals of the southern nations. "An italianized Englishman is a devil incarnate" is a popular proverb which quiet home-keeping men were never tired of repeating.

Kindly Ascham who had personally visited Italy, had come back as much horrified with the sights he had seen as Luther had been when he returned from Rome. Of the masterpieces of art, of madonnas and palaces he has little to say; but he has much to note concerning the loose morals of the inhabitants. He beseeches his compatriots not to continue to visit this dangerous country: they will meet "Circe" there, and will certainly greatly enjoy themselves; but, behold, they will come back to their native land with an a.s.s's head and a swine's belly. In Italy, according to his experience, a man may sin to his heart's content and no one will in any way interfere. He is free to do so, "as it is free in the citie of London to chose without all blame, whether a man l.u.s.t to weare shoo or pantocle." Yet he speaks of what he has seen with his own eyes: "I was once in Italie my selfe; but I thanke G.o.d my abode there was but ix dayes. And yet I sawe in that little tyme in one citie more libertie to sinne than ever I heard tell of in our n.o.ble citie of London in ix yeare ... The lord maior of London, being but a civill officer, is commonlie for his tyme more diligent in punishing sinne ... than all the bloodie inquisitors in Italie be in seaven yeare."

When Englishmen come back from Italy they are full of smiles; they have a ready wit, and delight in vain talk. They give up all idea of getting married; love and no marriage is their only wish; they arrange a.s.signations; they behave most improperly. "They be the greatest makers of love, the daylie daliers, with such pleasant wordes, with such smilyng & secret countenances, with such signes, tokens, wagers, purposed to be lost before they were purposed to be made, with bargaines of wearing colours, floures & herbes, to breede occasion of often meeting of him & her & bolder talking of this & that, &c."[31]

According to some, travelling increased, in a certain number of Englishmen, the tendency we have already noticed, to feel contempt towards their mother tongue. There are persons, wrote George Pettie in 1581, "who will set light by my labours, because I write in English: and those are some nice travailours who retourne home with such queasie stomachs that nothing will downe with them but French, Italian or Spanish ... They count [our tongue] barren: they count it barbarous: they count it unworthy to be accounted of." The more reason, thinks Pettie, to try to polish it; if it is barren it can be enriched by borrowing from other languages, especially the Latin: "It is indeed the readie waie to inrich our tongue and make it copious; and it is the waie which all tongues have taken to inrich themselves."[32] Pettie, as we see, wished Du Bellay's advice to be followed, and Rome to be "plundered."

But Ascham's pleading, though many others spoke to the same effect,[33]

had very little result. Learned and well informed as he was, his "conservatism" in all things was so intense that much might be laid to the account of this tendency of his mind. Had he not written that "his soul had such an horror of English or Latin books containing new doctrines that, except the psalter and the New Testament, this last, too, in the Greek text, he had never taken any book, 'either small or big,' to use Plato's words, concerning Christian religion"?[34] Had he not recommended the bow as, even in those gunpowder times, the best weapon in war? "If I were of authority, I would counsel all the gentlemen and yeomen of England not to change it with any other thing, how good soever it seems to be; but that still, according to the old wont of England, youths should use it for the most honest pastime in peace, that men might handle it as a most sure weapon in war."[35] The other "strong weapons" must not lead men to forget this one: a thing they have nevertheless done.

Nothing dismayed by the threat of the dire consequences of Circe's wiles, travellers eager to see her crowded to the south. They continued not to "exchewe the way to Circes court, but go & ryde & runne & flie thether."[36] No education was complete without a sojourn on the continent. Surrey, Wyatt, Sidney, penniless Robert Greene, and hundreds if not thousands of others went there. There was an eagerness to see and to learn that no sight and no knowledge could satisfy, that no threat nor sermon could stop. Paris, Venice, Rome, Vienna, the Low Countries, received an ever-increasing flood of English visitors.

II.

England in her turn, not to mention the cla.s.sics of antiquity that were being speedily translated, was flooded with French, Spanish, and Italian books, again to the great dismay of good Ascham. If "Morte d'Arthur" was bad, nothing worse could well be imagined than Italian books in general.

"Ten 'Morte d'Arthures' do not the tenth part so much harme as one of these bookes made in Italie and translated in England." They are to be found "in every shop in London," and each of them can do more mischief than ten sermons at St. Paul's Cross can do good. They introduce into the land such refinements in vice "as the single head of an Englishman is not hable to invent."[37]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRONTISPIECE TO HARINGTON'S TRANSLATION OF ARIOSTO, 1591, BY c.o.xON AND GIROLAMO PORRO.]

But, if unable to invent, the English seemed at least determined to enjoy and imitate, for translating and adapting went on at a marvellous pace. Boccaccio's "Filocopo,"[38] for instance, to speak only of the better known of these works, was translated in 1567, his "Amorous Fiametta, wherein is sette downe a catalogue of all and singular pa.s.sions of love," in 1587; his "Decameron" in 1620. Guazzo's "Civile Conversation" was translated in 1586; Ta.s.so's "Amynta" in 1587, and his "Recoverie of Hierusalem" in 1594. Castiglione's "Courtier ... very necessary and profitable for young gentlemen abiding in court, palace or place" was published in English in 1588. It was "profitable" in a rather different sense from the one Ascham would have given the word, for it contains lengthy precepts concerning a.s.signations and love-making: "In my minde, the way which the courtier ought to take, to make his love knowne to the woman, me think should be to declare them in figures and tokens more than in wordes. For a.s.suredly there is otherwhile a greater affection of love perceived in a sigh, in a respect, in a feare, than in a thousand wordes. Afterwarde, to make the eyes the trustie messengers that may carrie the Amba.s.sades of the hart."[39] Many heroes in the English novels we shall have to study were apparently well read in Castiglione's "Courtier." Montemayor's Spanish "Diana," a tale of princes and shepherds, well known to Sidney, was published in 1598.

Ariosto's "Orlando furioso" appeared in 1591, in a magnificently ill.u.s.trated edition, and was dedicated to the Queen. The engravings, though sometimes said to be English, were in fact printed from the Italian plates of Girolamo Porro, of Padua, and had been used before in Italy.[40] Their circulation in England is none the less remarkable, and the influence such a publication may have had in the diffusing of Italian tastes in this country cannot be exaggerated. For those who had not been able to leave their native land, it was the best revelation yet placed before the public of the art of the Renaissance. That it was an important undertaking and a rather risky one, the translator, John Harington, was well aware; for he prefaced his book not only with his dedication to the Queen, a sort of thing to which Ascham had had great objection,[41] but by a "briefe apologie of poetrie," especially of that of Ariosto. It must be confessed that his arguments are far from convincing, and it would have been much better to have left the thing alone than to have defended the moral purposes of his author by such observations as these: "It may be and is by some objected that, although he writes christianly in some places, yet in some other, he is too lascivious.... Alas if this be a fault pardon him this one fault; though I doubt too many of you, gentle readers, wil be to exorable in this point, yea me thinks I see some of you searching already for those places of the booke and you are halfe offended that I have not made some directions that you might finde out and reade them immediately. But I beseech you ... to read them as my author ment them, to breed detestation and not delectation," &c. And he then appends to his book a table, by means of which the gentle readers will have no trouble in finding the objectionable pa.s.sages enumerated in the "Apologie" itself.

At the same time as translations proper, many imitations were published, especially imitations of those shorter prose stories which were so numerous on the continent, and which had never been properly acclimatized in England during the Middle Ages. Their introduction into this country had a great influence on the further development of the novel; their success showed that there was a public for such literature; hence the writing of original tales of this sort in English. Among collections of foreign tales translated or imitated may be quoted Paynter's "Palace of Pleasure," 1566,[42] containing histories from Boccaccio, Bandello, Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, Straparole, the Spaniard Guevara, the Queen of Navarre, "and other italian and french authours."

One of them is the history of "Rhomeo and Iulietta," from which Shakespeare derived his immortal drama; another tale in the same collection supplied the plot of "All's Well," and another the main events of "Measure for Measure." Then came G. Fenton's "Tragicall Discourses," 1567, finished at Paris and published by the author as the first-fruits of his travels; T. Fortescue's "Foreste or collection of histories ... done out of French," 1571; George Pettie's "Pettie Pallace of Pettie his pleasure," 1576; Robert Smyth's "Straunge and tragicall histories translated out of french," 1577; Barnabe Rich's "Farewell to militarie profession," 1584, where Shakespeare found the plot of "Twelfth Night"; G. Whetstone's "Heptameron of civill discourses," 1582; Ed. Grimeston's translation of the "Admirable and memorable histories"

of Goulart, 1607, and several others.

Besides such collections many stories were separately translated and widely circulated. A number have been lost, but some remain, such, for instance, as "The adventures pa.s.sed by Master F. I.," adapted by Gascoigne from the Italian,[43] or a certain "Hystorie of Hamblet,"

1608,[44] which was destined to have great importance in English literature, or the "Goodli history of the ... Ladye Lucres of Scene in Tuskane and of her lover Eurialus," a translation from the Latin of aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, and one of the most popular novels of the time. It went through twenty-three editions in the fifteenth century, and was eight times translated, one of the French translations being made "a la priere et requeste des dames." A German translation by Nicolaus von Wyle is embellished with coloured woodcuts of the most nave and amusing description. Three English translations were published, one before 1550, another in 1669, and a third in 1741.[45]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE KNIGHT EURIALUS GETTING SECRETLY INTO HIS LADY-LOVE'S CHAMBER, 1477.]