The Palace of Pleasure Volume I Part 2

It set the ball rolling in this direction, and found many followers, some of whom may be referred to as having had an influence only second to that of Painter in providing plots for the Elizabethan Drama. There can be little doubt that it was Painter set the fashion, and one of his chief followers recognised this, as we shall see, on his t.i.tle page.

The year in which Painter's Second Tome appeared saw George (afterwards Sir George) Fenton's _Certaine Tragicall Discourses writtene oute of Frenche and Latine_ containing fourteen "histories." As four of these are identical with tales contained in Painter's Second Tome it is probable that Fenton worked independently, though it was doubtless the success of the "Palace of Pleasure" that induced Thomas Marshe, Painter's printer, to undertake a similar volume from Fenton. The _Tragicall Discourses_ ran into a second edition in 1569. T. Fortescue's _Foreste or Collection of Histories ... dooen oute of Frenche_ appeared in 1571 and reached a second edition in 1576. In the latter year appeared a work of G. Pettie that bore on its t.i.tle page--_A Pet.i.te Palace of Pettie his Pleasure_--a clear reference to Painter's book.

Notwithstanding Anthony a Wood's contemptuous judgment of his great-uncle's book it ran through no less than six editions between 1576 and 1613.[17] The year after Pettie's first edition appeared R. Smyth's _Stravnge and Tragicall histories Translated out of French_. In 1576 was also published the first of George Whetstone's collections of tales, the four parts of _The Rocke of Regard_, in which he told over again in verse several stories already better told by Painter. In the same year, 1576, appeared G. Turberville's _Tragical Tales, translated out of sundrie Italians_--ten tales in verse, chiefly from Boccaccio.

Whetstone's _Heptameron of Ciuill Discourses_ in 1582 was however a more important contribution to the English _Novella_, and it ran through two further editions by 1593.[18] Thus in the quarter of a century 1565-1590 no less than eight collections, most of them running into a second edition, made their appearance in England. Painter's work contains more than all the rest put together, and its success was the cause of the whole movement. It clearly answered a want and thus created a demand. It remains to consider the want which was thus satisfied by Painter and his school.

[Footnote 17: The tales are ten--1. Sinorix and Camma [= Tennyson's _Cup_]; 2. Tereus and Progne; 3. Germanicus and Agrippina; 4. Julius and Virginia; 5. Admetus and Alcest; 6. Silla and Minos; 7. Curiatius and Horatia; 8. Cephalus and Procris; 9. Pigmalion and his Image; 10. Alexius.]

[Footnote 18: M. Jusserand gives a list of most of these translations of French and Italian novels in his just issued _English Novel in the Elizabethan Age_, 1890, pp. 80-1. He also refers to works by Rich and Gascoigne in which novels occur.]

The quarter of a century from 1565 to 1590 was the seed-time of the Elizabethan Drama, which blossomed out in the latter year in Marlowe's _Tamburlaine the Great_. The only play which precedes that period, _Gordobuc_ or _Ferrex and Porrex_, first played in 1561, indicates what direction the English Drama would naturally have taken if nothing had intervened to take it out of its course. _Gordobuc_ is severely cla.s.sical in its unities; it is of the Senecan species. Now throughout Western Europe this was the type of the modern drama,[19] and it dominated the more serious side of the French stage down to the time of Victor Hugo. There can be little doubt that the English Drama would have followed the cla.s.sical models but for one thing. The flood of Italian _novelle_ introduced into England by Painter and his school, imported a new condition into the problem. It is essential to the Cla.s.sical Drama that the plot should be already known to the audience, that there should be but one main action, and but one tone, tragic or comic. In Painter's work and those of his followers, the would-be dramatists of Elizabeth's time had offered to them a super-abundance of actions quite novel to their audience, and alternating between grave and gay, often within the same story.[20] The very fact of their foreignness was a further attraction. At a time when all things were new, and intellectual curiosity had become a pa.s.sion, the opportunity of studying the varied life of an historic country like Italy lent an additional charm to the translated _novelle_. In an interesting essay on the "Italy of the Elizabethan Dramatists,"[21] Vernon Lee remarks that it was the very strangeness and horror of Italian life as compared with the dull decorum of English households that had its attraction for the Elizabethans. She writes as if the dramatists were themselves acquainted with the life they depicted. As a matter of fact, not a single one of the Elizabethan dramatists, as far as I know, was personally acquainted with Italy.[22]

This knowledge of Italian life and crime was almost entirely derived from the works of Painter and his school. If there had been anything corresponding to them dealing with the tragic aspects of English life, the Elizabethan dramatists would have been equally ready to tell of English vice and criminality. They used Holinshed and Fabyan readily enough for their "Histories." They would have used an English Bandello with equal readiness had he existed. But an English Bandello could not have existed at a time when the English folk had not arrived at self-consciousness, and had besides no regular school of tale-tellers like the Italians. It was then only from the Italians that the Elizabethan dramatists could have got a sufficient stock of plots to allow for that interweaving of many actions into one which is the characteristic of the Romantic Drama of Marlowe and his compeers.

[Footnote 19: A partial exception is to be made in favour of the Spanish school, which broke loose from the cla.s.sical tradition with Lope de Vega.]

[Footnote 20: It is probable however that the "mixture of tones"

came more directly from the Interludes.]

[Footnote 21: _Euphorion_, by Vernon Lee. Second edition, 1885, pp. 55-108.]

[Footnote 22: It has, of course, been suggested that Shakespeare visited Venice. But this is only one of the 1001 mare's nests of the commentators.]

That Painter was the main source of plot for the dramatists before Marlowe, we have explicit evidence. Of the very few extant dramas before Marlowe, _Appius and Virginia_, _Tancred and Gismunda,_ and _Cyrus and Panthea_ are derived from Painter.[23] We have also references in contemporary literature showing the great impression made by Painter's book on the opponents of the stage. In 1572 E. Dering, in the Epistle prefixed to _A briefe Instruction_, says: "To this purpose we have gotten our Songs and Sonnets, our Palaces of Pleasure, our unchaste Fables and Tragedies, and such like sorceries.... O that there were among us some zealous Ephesian, that books of so great vanity might be burned up." As early as 1579 Gosson began in his _School of Abuse_ the crusade against stage-plays, which culminated in Prynne's _Histriomastix_. He was answered by Lodge in his _Defence of Stage Plays_. Gosson demurred to Lodge in 1580 with his _Playes Confuted in Five Actions_, and in this he expressly mentions Painter's _Palace of Pleasure_ among the "bawdie comedies" that had been "ransacked" to supply the plots of plays. Unfortunately very few even of the t.i.tles of these early plays are extant: they probably only existed as prompt-books for stage-managers, and were not of sufficient literary value to be printed when the marriage of Drama and Literature occurred with Marlowe.

[Footnote 23: Altogether in the scanty notices of this period we can trace a dozen derivatives of Painter. See a.n.a.lytical Table on Tome I. nov. iii., v., xi., x.x.xvii., x.x.xix., xl., xlviii., lvii.; Tome II. nov. i., iii., xiv., x.x.xiv.]

But we have one convincing proof of the predominating influence of the plots of Painter and his imitators on the Elizabethan Drama.

Shakespeare's works in the first folio, and the editions derived from it, are, as is well known, divided into three parts--Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. The division is founded on a right instinct, and applies to the whole Elizabethan Drama.[24] Putting aside the Histories, which derive from Holinshed, North, and the other historians, the _dramatis personae_ of the Tragedies and Comedies are, in nineteen cases out of twenty, provided with Italian names, and the scene is placed in Italy. It had become a regular convention with the Elizabethans to give an Italian habitation and name to the whole of their dramas. This convention must have arisen in the pre-Marlowe days, and there is no other reason to be given for it but the fact that the majority of plots are taken from the "Palace of Pleasure" or its followers. A striking instance is mentioned by Charles Lamb of the tyranny of this convention. In the first draught of his _Every Man in his Humour_ Ben Jonson gave Italian names to all his _dramatis personae_.

Mistress Kitely appeared as Biancha, Master Stephen as Stephano, and even the immortal Captain Bobabil as Bobadilla. Imagine Dame Quickly as Putana, and Sir John as Corporoso, and we can see what a profound influence such a seemingly superficial thing as the names of the _dramatis personae_ has had on the Elizabethan Drama through the influence of Painter and his men.

[Footnote 24: In the _Warning for Fair Women_ there is a scene in which Tragedy, Comedy, and History dispute for precedence.]

But the effect of this Italianisation of the Elizabethan Drama due to Painter goes far deeper than mere externalities. It has been said that after Lamb's sign-post criticisms, and we may add, after Mr. Swinburne's dithyrambs, it is easy enough to discover the Elizabethan dramatists over again. But is there not the danger that we may discover too much in them? However we may explain the fact, it remains true that outside Shakespeare none of the Elizabethans has really reached the heart of the nation. There is not a single Elizabethan drama, always of course with the exception of Shakespeare's, which belongs to English literature in the sense in which _Samson Agonistes_, _Absalom and Achitophel_, _Gulliver's Travels_, _The Rape of the Lock_, _Tom Jones_, _She Stoops to Conquer_, _The School for Scandal_, belong to it. The dramas have not that direct appeal to us which the works I have mentioned have continued to exercise after the generation for whom they were written has pa.s.sed away. To an inner circle of students, to the 500 or so who really care for English literature, the Elizabethan dramas may appeal with a power greater than any of these literary products I have mentioned. We recognise in them a wealth of imaginative power, an ease in dealing with the higher issues of life, which is not shown even in those masterpieces. But the fact remains, and remains to be explained, that the Elizabethans do not appeal to the half a million or so among English folk who are capable of being touched at all by literature, who respond to the later masterpieces, and cannot be brought into _rapport_ with the earlier masters. Why is this?

Partly, I think, because owing to the Italianisation of the Elizabethan Drama the figures whom the dramatists drew are unreal, and live in an unreal world. They are neither Englishmen nor Italians, nor even Italianate Englishmen. I can only think of four tragedies in the whole range of the Elizabethan drama where the characters are English: Wilkins' _Miseries of Enforced Marriage_, and _A Yorkshire Tragedy_, both founded on a recent _cause celebre_ of one Calverly, who was executed 5 August 1605; _Arden of Faversham_, also founded on a _cause celebre_ of the reign of Edward VI.; and Heywood's _Woman Killed by Kindness_. These are, so far as I remember, the only English tragedies out of some hundred and fifty extant dramas deserving that name.[25] As a result of all this, the impression of English life which we get from the Elizabethan Drama is almost entirely derived from the comedies, or rather five-act farces, which alone appear to hold the mirror up to English nature. Judged by the drama, English men and English women under good Queen Bess would seem incapable of deep emotion and lofty endeavour. We know this to be untrue, but that the fact appears to be so is due to the Italianising of the more serious drama due to Painter and his school.

[Footnote 25: Curiously enough, two of the four have been a.s.sociated with Shakespeare's name. It should be added, perhaps, that one of the _Two Tragedies in One_ of Yarington is English.]

In fact the Italian drapery of the Elizabethan Drama disguises from us the significant light it throws upon the social history of the time.

Plot can be borrowed from abroad, but characterisation must be drawn from observation of men and women around the dramatist. Whence, then comes the problem, did Webster and the rest derive their portraits of their White Devils, those imperious women who had broken free from all the conventional bonds? At first sight it might seem impossible for the gay roysterers of Alsatia to have come into personal contact with such lofty dames. But the dramatists, though Bohemians, were mostly of gentle birth, or at any rate were from the Universities, and had come in contact with the best blood of England. It is clear too from their dedications that the young n.o.blemen of England admitted them to familiar intercourse with their families, which would include many of the _grande dames_ of Elizabeth's Court. Elizabeth's own character, recent revelations about Mistress Fitton, Shakespeare's relations with his Dark Lady, all prepare for the belief that the Elizabethan dramatists had sufficient material from their own observation to fill up the outlines given by the Italian novelists.[26] The Great Oyer of Poisoning--the case of Sir Thomas Overbury and the Somersets--in James the First's reign could vie with any Italian tale of l.u.s.t and cruelty.

[Footnote 26: The frequency of scenes in which ladies of high birth yield themselves to men of lower station is remarkable in this connection.]

Thus in some sort the Romantic Drama was an extraneous product in English literature. Even the magnificent medium in which it is composed, the decasyllabic blank verse which the genius of Marlowe adapted to the needs of the drama, is ultimately due to the Italian Trissino, and has never kept a firm hold on English poetry. Thus both the formal elements of the Drama, plot and verse, were importations from Italy. But style and characterisation were both English of the English, and after all is said it is in style and characterisation that the greatness of the Elizabethan Drama consists. It must however be repeated that in its highest flights in the tragedies, a sense of unreality is produced by the pouring of English metal into Italian moulds.

It cannot be said that even Shakespeare escapes altogether from the ill effects of this Italianisation of all the externalities of the drama. It might plausibly be urged that by pushing unreality to its extreme you get idealisation. A still more forcible objection is that the only English play of Shakespeare's, apart from his histories, is the one that leaves the least vivid impression on us, _The Merry Wives of Windsor_.

But one cannot help feeling regret that the great master did not express more directly in his immortal verse the finer issues and deeper pa.s.sions of the men and women around him. Charles Lamb, who seems to have said all that is worth saying about the dramatists in the dozen pages or so to which his notes extend, has also expressed his regret. "I am sometimes jealous," he says, "that Shakespere laid so few of his scenes at home." But every art has it conventions, and by the time Shakespeare began to write it was a convention of English drama that the scene of its most serious productions should be laid abroad. The convention was indeed a necessary one, for there did not exist in English any other store of plots but that offered by the inexhaustible treasury of the Italian _Novellieri_.

Having mentioned Shakespeare, it seems desirable to make an exception in his case,[27] and discuss briefly the use he made of Painter's book and its influence on his work. On the young Shakespeare it seems to have had very great influence indeed. The second heir of his invention, _The Rape of Lucrece_, is from Painter. So too is _Romeo and Juliet_,[28] his earliest tragedy, and _All's Well_, which under the t.i.tle _Love's Labour Won_, was his second comedy, is Painter's _Giletta of Narbonne_ (i. 38) from Bandello.[29] I suspect too that there are two plays a.s.sociated with Shakespeare's name which contain only rough drafts left unfinished in his youthful period, and finished by another writer. At any rate it is a tolerably easy task to eliminate the Shakespearian parts of _Timon of Athens_ and _Edward III._, by ascertaining those portions which are directly due to Painter.[30] In this early period indeed it is somewhat remarkable with what closeness he followed his model. Thus some gushing critics have pointed out the subtle significance of making Romeo at first in love with Rosalind before he meets with Juliet. If it is a subtlety, it is Bandello's, not Shakespeare's. Again, others have attempted to defend the indefensible age of Juliet at fourteen years old, by remarking on the precocity of Italian maidens. As a matter of fact Bandello makes her eighteen years old. It is ba.n.a.lities like these that cause one sometimes to feel tempted to turn and rend the criticasters by some violent outburst against Shakespeare himself. There is indeed a tradition, that Matthew Arnold had things to say about Shakespeare which he dared not utter, because the British public would not stand them. But the British public has stood some very severe things about the Bible, which is even yet reckoned of higher sanct.i.ty than Shakespeare. And certainly there is as much cant about Shakespeare to be cleared away as about the Bible. However this is scarcely the place to do it. It is clear enough, however, from his usage of Painter, that Shakespeare was no more original in plot than any of his fellows, and it is only the unwise and rash who could ask for originality in plot from a dramatic artist.

[Footnote 27: The other Elizabethan dramatists who used Painter are: Beaumont (I. xlii.; II. xvii.), Fletcher (I. xlii.; II. xvii., xxii.), Greene (I. lvii.), Heywood (I. ii.), Marston (I. lxvi.; II. vii., xxiv., xxvi.), Ma.s.singer (II. xxviii.), Middleton (I. x.x.xiii.), Peele (I. xl.), Shirley (I. lviii.), Webster (I. v.; II. xxiii.). See also I. vii., xxiv., lxvi.]

[Footnote 28: Shakespeare also used Arthur Brook's poem. On the exact relations of the poet to his two sources see Mr. P. A.

Daniel in the New Shakespere Society's _Originals and a.n.a.logies_, i., and Dr. Schulze in _Jahrb. d. deutsch. Shakespeare Gesellschaft_ xi. 218-20.]

[Footnote 29: Delius has discussed _Shakespeare's "All Well" und Paynter's "Giletta von Narbonne"_ in the Jahrbuch xxii. 27-44, in an article which is also reprinted in his _Abhandlungen_ ii.]

[Footnote 30: I hope to publish elsewhere detailed substantiation of this contention.]

But if the use of Italian _novelle_ as the basis of plots was an evil that has given an air of unreality and extraneousness to the whole of Elizabethan Tragedy, it was, as we must repeat, a necessary evil.

Suppose Painter's work and those that followed it not to have appeared, where would the dramatists have found their plots? There was nothing in English literature to have given them plot-material, and little signs that such a set of tales could be derived from the tragedies going on in daily life. But for Painter and his school the Elizabethan Drama would have been mainly historical, and its tragedies would have been either vamped-up versions of cla.s.sical tales or adaptations of contemporary _causes celebres_.

And so we have achieved the task set before us in this Introduction to Painter's tales. We have given the previous history of the _genre_ of literature to which they belong, and mentioned the chief _novellieri_ who were their original authors. We have given some account of Painter's life and the circ.u.mstances under which his book appeared, and the style in which he translates. We have seen how his book was greeted on its first appearance by the adherents of the New Learning and by the opponents of the stage. The many followers in the wake of Painter have been enumerated, and some account given of their works. It has been shown how great was the influence of the whole school on the Elizabethan dramatists, and even on the greatest master among them. And having touched upon all these points, we have perhaps sufficiently introduced reader and author, who may now be left to make further acquaintance with one another.

HASLEWOOD'S

Preliminary Matter.

_OF THE TRANSLATOR._

William Painter was, probably, descended from some branch of the family of that name which resided in Kent. Except a few official dates there is little else of his personal history known. Neither the time nor place of his birth has been discovered. All the heralds in their Visitations are uniformly content with making him the root of the pedigree.[31] His liberal education is, in part, a testimony of the respectability of his family, and, it may be observed, he was enabled to make purchases of landed property in Kent, but whether from an hereditary fortune is uncertain.

[Footnote 31: The Visitation Book of 1619, in the Heralds College, supplied Hasted with his account. There may also be consulted Harl.

MSS. 1106, 2230 and 6138.]

The materials for his life are so scanty, that a chronological notice of his Writings may be admitted, without being deemed to interrupt a narrative, of which it must form the princ.i.p.al contents.

He himself furnishes us with a circ.u.mstance,[32] from whence we may fix a date of some importance in ascertaining both the time of the publication and of his own appearance as an author. He translated from the Latin of Nicholas Moffan, (a soldier serving under Charles the Fifth, and taken prisoner by the Turks)[33] the relation of the Murder which Sultan Solyman caused to be perpetrated on his eldest Son Mustapha.[34] This was first dedicated to Sir William Cobham Knight, afterwards Lord Cobham, Warden of the Cinque Ports; and it is material to remark, that that n.o.bleman succeeded to the t.i.tle Sept. the 29th, 1558;[35] and from the author being a prisoner until Sept. 1555, it is not likely that the Translation was finished earlier than circa 1557-8.

[Footnote 32: Palace of Pleasure, Vol. II. p. 663.]

[Footnote 33: The translation is reprinted in the second volume.

Of the original edition there is not any notice in Herbert.]

[Footnote 34: This happened in 1552, and Moffan remained a captive until Sept. 1555.]

[Footnote 35: Brydge's _Peerage_, Vol. IX. p. 466. Banks's _Dormant Peerage_, Vol. II. p. 108.]

In 1560 the learned William Fulke, D.D. attacked some inconsistent, though popular, opinions, in a small Latin tract called "Antiprognosticon contra invtiles astrologorvm praedictiones Nostrodami, &c." and at the back of the t.i.tle are Verses,[36] by friends of the author, the first being ent.i.tled "Gulielmi Painteri ludimagistri Seuenochensis Tetrasticon." This has been considered by Tanner as our author,[37] nor does there appear any reason for attempting to controvert that opinion; and a translation of Fulke's Tract also seems to identify our author with the master of Sevenoaks School. The t.i.tle is "Antiprognosticon, that is to saye, an Inuectiue agaynst the vayne and unprofitable predictions of the Astrologians as Nostrodame, &c.

Translated out of Latine into Englishe. Whereunto is added by the author a shorte Treatise in Englyshe as well for the utter subversion of that fained arte, as well for the better understandynge of the common people, unto whom the fyrst labour semeth not sufficient. _Habet & musca splenem & formice sua bilis inest._ 1560" 12mo. At the back of the t.i.tle is a sonnet by Henry Bennet: followed in the next page by Painter's Address.

On the reverse of this last page is a prose address "to his louyng frende W. F." dated "From Seuenoke XXII of Octobre," and signed "Your familiar frende William Paynter."[38]

[Footnote 36: These verses were answered by another Kentish writer. "In conuersium Palengenii Barnabae Gogae carmen E. Deringe Cantiani," prefixed to _the firste sixe bokes of the mooste christian poet Marcellus Palingenius, called the Zodiake of Life_.

Translated by Barnabe Googe, 1561. 12mo. See Cens. Lit. Vol. II.

p. 212. Where it appears that Barnaby Googe was connected with several Kentish families. He married a Darell. His grandmother was Lady Hales.]