'FHE [E’ALIAJVE 'FRADWIGN {N .FOHN LYLY‘S COURT DRAMAS: WITH EMPHASIS ON HIS Cf-iARACTERIZATtONS AND HIS [DEM OF LOVE Thesis for Hie Degree 0? pk. D. MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY Willi Andreas Uschald 1957 This is to certify that the thesis entitled THE ITALIAN TRADITION IN JOHN LYLY’S COURT DRAMAS: WITH EMPHASIS ON HIS CHARACTERIZATIONS AND HIS IDEAS or Lake presented by WILLI ANDREAS USCHALD has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Ph 0 D 0 degree in English Major professor Lawrence Babb [hm May 28, 1957 0-169 P—ov’h.‘ -___.__.____.,, Ou-u. THE ITALIAN TRADITION I? JOHN LYLY'S COUWT DIAMAS: WITH EKTHASIS CI PIS CHAYACTEYIZATIONS AND HIS IDEAS OF LOVE by WIILl ANDREAS UECHALD AN ABSTRACT Submitted to the School for Advenced Graiuete Studies of Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the dexree of DOCTCY CF IUITOSCIHY Department of English 1'95"? Approved 02??!”ka fiM’ V— WILLI AHUYEAS USCHALD ABSTRACT This iissertation investijates some aspects of Lyly's iebt to ltaly in orier ti contribute something toward the more complete unlerstaniing of lyly's iramatic art. A survey of the cultural relations between England ani Italy in the Renaissance reveals very clearly that Englanl is deerlv inlebtei to Italy's imaginative, intel- lectual ani artistic accomrlishmants. The anglish lebt is, in fact, immense. Enilishrea lookel to Italy for lessons not only in literature, art anl rhilosorhy, but also in politics ani gool—breeiing. at was the rule, rather than the exception, taat a scholar or a courticr should be able to reai and sreak ltalian anl be well-versed in the various fielis of Italy's cultural attainments. Lyly grew ur anl livei in an aristocratic, literary environment which exposed him to things Italian. He not only was well acquainted with tie various forms of Italian literature, but also workei within the framework of Italian literary traiitions and conventions. His iramatic technique is, on the whole, unlike that of his Enclish predecessors, but very similar to that of the mytholoqicel—rastoral-trajicomic tradition in Italy. His characterization proceeis within the established rules of ethos and decorug. lost of his "occupational-realistic" ‘ personages are lariely moiellei on Italian stock-tyres ani, ”D c. whenever necessary, modifiel and alerted to the exrosition of theories and ileas of the trattati d'anore. The trattati d'amore are Lylv's primary source. They providei him with the incentive to write court iraias. His plays are primarily expositions of iieas ani theories exnounded in these treatises. They are best exrlained as Neo-Platonic-Petrarchistic 'llegories of love. While the CL q Neo—Platonic-Fetrarchistic saie how many gentlewomen and ladies there are, that beside sound knowledge of the Gréeke and Latina toongs, are thereto no lesse skilful in the Spanish, Italian, and French, or in some one of them, it restethrxH3innmuL93 The fact that in 1578 Ietruccio Ubaldini was hired by the court "for translating of certain speeches into Italian"19 is the best proof of a fair competence in Italian on the part of the court audience. We know that the Queen herself was quite an accomylished linguist who had written Italian letters to Queen Katherine Parr as early as 155420 and who was apparently capable of carrying on negotiations with . . . . 21 foreign ambassadors and envoys in their native tongues. leaHolinshed's Chronicles of England,£kotlandenn11re- land (London, 1907), I, 553. This is a reprint of the edi- tion of 1586; the original edition appeared in 1577. 19Edmond Malone, editor, The Plays and Poems of Nil~ liar Shakespeare (London, 1921), III, 595. 20Cf. Foster Watson, "Notes and Materials on Reli- gious Refugees in their Relations to Education in England beforetfimaEdict of Nantes," Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London, IX (1911), 535. 21John Florio tells us that "no Embassador or stranger hath audience of hir Naiestie, but in his native toong; and none hath answere but in the same." "Address to the Reader" of the Worlds of Wordes (1598). 13 There are records of a number of other polyglot women of the Elizabethan nobility and even of women outside the no- bility who manifest special interest in Italian culture and language.22 On the whole, the number of Elizabethans outside the nobility who had a good knowledge of Italian had been greatly increased through the efforts of the language teachers and through University education. For a while Italian definitely challenged the supremacy of French, not only in the province of fashion and intellect, but also in the field of commerce. One cannot quite agree with Miss Lambley who believes that Italian was never "so universally pOpular as French."23 The popularity of Italian is also attested to by the great number of Italian publications in English libraries of that time and by the frequent refer- ences to them. So great was the demand that even English printers undertook the production of Italian books. For a while the 22cr. Carroll Camden, The Elizabethan Woman (Houston- New York-London, 1952), pp. 56-58, 155-156. 23Contrasting Italian with French, she states: "Though it was widely known for the sake of its literature, it was never so widely spoken or so universally popular as French. ltalian and to a minor degree Spanish were indeed seriously cultivated by the Tudor group of distinguished linguists, and so became a sort of fashion, which, spread- ing to more frivolous circles, soon degenerated into mere affectation. These dilettanti had been at a great feast of languages and had stolen the scraps, to use Shakespeare's words. . . ." Kathleen Lambley, The Teaching and Cultiva- tion of the French Language in England during Tudor and Stuart Times (Manchester, 1920), p. SE. 14 reproduction of Italian works became very profitable. One of the most outstanding of these printers and publishers was John Wolfe24 who had travelled in Italy after comple— tion of his apprenticeship in London. He was frequently in trouble for surreptitious editions and, as we know now, also had a hand in a series of forgeries connected with 25 Machiavelli, Aretino and Ubaldini. It was at his press that Giac0po Castelvetro, a nephew of the classical scholar and "Aristotelian" critic Lodovico Castelvetro, published the pastorals Pastor Fido and Aminta in 1591. V By the time of the publication of Pastor Fido and Aminta, the dramatic influence of Italy had attained an un- precedented height. A few years before, the well-known foe of the stage, Stephen Gosson, had already complained that 24See Harry R. Hoppe, "John Wolfe, Printer and Pub- lisher, 1579-1601," The Library, Ser 4, XIV (1955), 241- 90,0 L...) o 25For a general account of Wolfe's pseudo-Italian publications, see S. Bongi, Annali di Gabriel Giolito de' Ferrari, 11 (Rome, 1895), 419-25; Adolph Gerber‘s three articles in Modern Language Notes, XXII (1997), concerning the surreptitious editions of Eachiavelli, Aretino, Uba1-. dini and his chapter on "Die Wolfeschen Ausgaben mit fin- gierten italienischen Druckorten" in his Niccolo Machia- velli: die Handschriften, Ausgaben und Ubersetzungen seiner Werke im 16. und 1?. Jahrhundert (Gotha, 1912-15); Harry Sellers, "Italian books printed in England before 1640," The Library, Ser 4, V (1924), 105-28; Eleonor Rosen- berg, "Giac0po Castelvetro: Italian Publisher in Eliza- bethan London and His Patrons," The Huntington Library ggarterly, VI (1945), 119-148. 15 not only the Italian novelle but also "bawdy" Italian come- dies were "ransacked" to furnish the playhouse.26 A number of critics would like to dismiss Italian dramatic art as purely "artificial drama" or merely clumsy adaptations of Plautus, Terence and Seneca without any originality of its own. There was, nevertheless, an ex- traordinarily vital Italian dramatic tradition created by men of talent and genius. The impact of this tradition on English drama was doubtless much more intense than is gen- erally assumed. Anybody who considers this matter serious- ly will soon discern the heavy borrowings from the italian, not only from the novellg, but also from the plays and other sources, particularly free the trattati d'amore. Schelling states: If we look at this field of ltalian influence on our drama at large it may be confidently affirmed that at least one third of our old plays from Tudor times to the Restoration may be traced to Italian influ- ences in one way or another. This is a very conservative estimate. Italian literature furnished not only the subject matter and ideas, but also the machinery of Elizabethan drama, "the chorus, the echo, 26Stephen Gosson, Plays Confuted in Five Actions in The English Drama and the Stage under the Tudor and Stuart Princes, 1545-1664, ed. W. C. Hazlett (London, 18697. p. 189. On Stephen Gosson's attack on the stage in general, see William Ringler, Stephen Gosson: A Biographical and Critical Study (Princeton, 1942), chapterIIV, pp. 55-827 27Felix Schelling, Foreign Influences in Elizabethan Plays (London, 1925), p. 52. 16 the play within the play, the dumb show, the ghosts or great men as prologue, apparatus in general, and physical horrors ad terrorem."28 The astonishing existence of a continuous, strong interest in things Italian is further manifested by the tendency to give an Italian atmosphere and color to those plays that did not use Italian plots. The creation of this atmosphere by names of characters and allusions to places is well illustrated by the 1691 quarto edition of Jonson's Every Fan in His Humor with its Florentine scenery and Italian dramatis personae or by ShakeSpeare's The Tempest or The Ninter's Tale in which the setting and names are alone Italian. The Italian impact on English drama began earlier than is frequently assumed. As early as 1512-15 the semi- dramatic spectacular display "after the manner of Italy, 29 called a flask," was introduced into the English Court. These Italian masques, designed and managed by Italian ar- 50 tists, and later on also frequently presented by Italian 28Scott, p. lxxx. 29Einstein, p. 76, quotes from Hall's Chronicle a description of a court entertainment in 1512-15: "On the Day of Epiphany, at night, the King with eleven others were disguised after the manner of Italy, called a Mask, a thing not seen before in England." 30Henry VIII is known to have employed Vincentio Volpe and Antonio Toto as painters and architects and to have had in his household as many as eleven Italian musi- cians at once. actors, were very popular throughout the Tudor period. Early English comedy is, of course, directly in- debted to Iatin comedy, but probably even more so indirect— ly through the medium of Italian drama. It is generally not adequately recognized that Italy is the mediator of Iatin drama in EurOpe. Symonds' statement that "our fing- lish scholars went to school with Seneca beneath the ferule . , 21 of Italian usnors"’ holds generally true also with the other Latin dramatists. A great number of English Comedies that are now believed to be directly derived from Plautus or Terence are probably in reality nothing but translations or imitations of ltalian comedies. There certainly were enough Italian comedies available. Luigi Riccoboni in his 52 counted 565 before 1650. Histoire du Theatre Italien The first English comedies that are clearly based on Italian models are those produced at the universities and Inns of Court. The earliest play of this type is probably Laelia, a Latin play which was possibly enacted at Queen's ." O a 0 College, Cambridge, as early as 1547.5’ It is based on one 511. A. Symonds, Shakespeare's_predecessor in the English Drama (London, I884), p. 217. 32Paris, 1731, I, 101-246. 33G. C. Moore Smith in College Plays Performed in the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, 19257, p. 6, informs us that in the archives of the Queen's College there is a rec- ord of 1546/7 which refers to the comedy Laelia. It was also shown before the Earl of Essex and other nobleman during a visit to Cambridge at the Bachelors' Commencement which was held on February 28, 1594/5. See F. S. Boas, '18 of the most pOpular and most frequently imitated of the Italian intrigue comedies, Gl' Ingannati, composed by an 54 anonymous member of the Academia degli Intronati at Siena, and first acted before that academy in 1551. Laelia is at the beginning of a long list of Latin plays which includes, among others, the anonymous Hymenaeus, Abraham Fraunce's Victoria, and the famous Pedantius,35 all of which are of unquestionable ltalian origin. As the century moved on, adaptations and trans1a~ tions of Italian comedies into Latin for academic presenta- tion became quite a fashion. The Neapolitan dramatist Gio- vanni Battista della Porta appears to have enjoyed an ex- ceptional vogue as a source for material, probably on ac~ count of his complicated and ingenious plots. Walter Hawkesworth adapted Porta's La Fantesca and La Cintia into University Drama in the Tudor Age (Oxford, 1914), p. 289. LaeIia was probably derived from Charles Etienne's version of Gl'Ingannati which in 1545 appeared under the title of La comédie du sacrifice, and was republished in 1549 and I556 as Les Abusez. 54The academy was founded in 1525. Its members came from the most cultured circles of the city: Alessandro Piccolomini, Antonio Vignali, Claudio Tolomei, Marcello Cervini, the later Pepe Marcellus II, and the distinguished philologist Castelvetro who studied at Siena in the late twenties. It also had very distinguished non-Sienese mem— bers: Bembo, Giovio and Folengo. Cf. Wilhelm Creizenach, Geschichte des Neueren Dramas fHalle, 1918), II, 280. 35Cf. F. S. Boas, University Drama in the Tudor Agg, chapters VII and XII. 19 plays entitled Leander and Labyrinthus. These plays re- mained pOpular till well into the third decade of the sev- enteenth century. Labyrinthus was performed at Cambridge 6 2 as late as 1656.“ The earliest known adaptation in English of the com- media erudita in England was made by George Gascoigne in 1566 when he rendered into finglish Ariosto's I Suppositi. Akin to Gascoigne's Supposes anl of about the same date, is 37 John Jeffere's Bugbear, an adaptation of A. F. Grazzini's La Spiritata. Judging from the titles of other plays pre- served in the levels Account, these two comedies were only two out of a large number of similar alantations from the Italian.38 In the field of tragedy, in which Seneca's influence predominates, we also encounter Italian rlaywrights as me- 7». diators.)9 James Calfhill's Iatin Prosne, acted at Cam- 36Helen Kaufman, "The Influence of Italian Drama on Pre-Restoration English Comedy," Italica, XXXI (1954), 9. 37cr. L. L. Schucking, Studien fiber die stofflichen Beziehungen der englischen Kodeie zur Italiefiischen bis Lily (Hallo, 1901), chapter III, 56-55. 580h these comedies in general, see R. W. Bond, Early Plays from the Italian (Oxford, 1911), "Introduction," in which he shows "the great importance of Italian Renaissance Comedy in handing on the classical form and substance to modern EurOpe, while introducing considerable modifica— tions," p. iii. 39See the study on Senecan influence in England by L. E. Kastner and H. B. Charlton, Poetical Works of Sir Nilliam Alexander, Earl of Stirling (Edinburgh and London, 1921), introduction. Reissued by Henry Buckley Charlton, 2O bridge in 1564, was probably an adaptation of a Latin play by Gregorio Corraro, first published at Venice in 1558, al- though written about 1429.40 George Gascoigne's Jocasta (1566) was an English version of Dolce's Giocasta and Ala- baster's Latin Roxana, an adaptation of Groto's La Dalida. Robert Wilmot borrowed with slight modifications the Cupid Prologue of Dolce's Didone for a similar purpose in Gismond of Salerne (Tancred and Gismund), 1567-68. The only play of this Senecan group that does not appear to be in direct contact with an Italian tragedy is Gorboduc which, however, is composed in part by a man who is known to have travelled in Italy. In this connection it might also be of interest to point out that the first "full-fledged" English comedy Ralph Roister Doister, based on Plautus, was also written by a man who was an ardent student of things Italian. Nicholas Udall, as we know, was the translator of various scientific and philosophical works, among them the Discorsi 41 sull' Eucarestia by Pier Martire Vermigli, the great The Senecan Tradition in Renaissance Tragedy (Manchester, 19467. 4OBoas argues for its close relationship to Corraro's play without being apparently aware of the possibility that it could also be derived from an Italian version by the Venetian dramatist Lodovico Domenichi who published his play in 1561, three years before Calfhill's tragedy was enacted at Cambridge. 41In England known as Peter Martyr. 21 Italian Protestant whom we have met before as Regius Pro- fessor of Divinity at Oxford. There remains the subject of the pastoral. Despite the fact that most English critics42 have endeavoured to trace a separate deveIOpment for England, usually without being adequately familiar with Italian dramatic art, an un- biased student of the problem is most likely to agree with V. m. Jeffery's findings: "It is a recognized fact that the Elizabethan pastoral drama is wholly Italian in its ori- gin."45 I agree with Rébora when he says that he is ... di avviso Opposto di quei critici inglesi che fanno derivare i1 dramma pastorale elisabettiano dall' egIOga inglese o che tendono a risalire senz' altro ai modelli classici, senza tener conto delle rielaborazioni, qualchevolta assai profonde, eserci- tate dalle letterature moderne. Tutta la lettera- tura pastorale moderna deriverebbe in tal-modo dalla comune fonte del carmen bucolicum; poiché Teocrito, Bione, Mosco, Virgilio, Calpurnio, Nemesiano sono certo i progenitori di tale atteggiamento letterario. Ma fu appunto il Rinascimento italiano che rielabord e rammoderné tali forme che rientrano anche esse nella generale rinascita classica del quattro e cin- quecento. Si puo dire piuttosto che 1e tre princi- pali forme di componimento pastorale, l'egloga cioé, il romanzo ed il dramma, ancorché tutte derivino dal Poliziano, dal Sannazzaro, dal Mantovano e dagli a1- tri pastoralisti della fine del quattrocento, pure in Inghilterra giunsero per vie diverse; e precisa- mente, l'egloga attraverso i1 Marot, il romanzo at- traverso il Montemayor, e il dramma Io possiamo del 420f. A. H. Thorndike, Mod. Languagp Notes, XIV, no. 4, p. 228; W. W. Greg, Pastoral’Poetry & Pastoral Drama (London, 1906); R. Warwick Bond, Works of Lyly (Oxford, 1902), II, 474, "Notes on Italian Influence in Lyly's Plays." 43Jeffery, "Italian and English Pastoral Drama of the Renaissance," Modern Language Review, XIX (1924), 56. 22 resto considerare gia implicito nell'egloga aulica italiana dove l'elemento drammatico, che si rivela nella forma prevalentemente amebea dei carmi bucoli- ci di Serafino Aquilano, di Galeotto del Carretto, del Tebaldeo e di altri, é evidente.44 Sidney's The Lady of the May, which was presented before the Queen during her visit to Leicester in May, 1578,“5 may be considered the first English pastoral. Lyly, Ieele, Greene and Lodge soon follow suit. To assume, as Boni did, that Sidney's play is purely English because "a large and distinctively English element of native char- acters ani comic rusticity" or "rustic and comic style" or that Lyly, for instance, is not influenced by the Italian pastoral convention because he introduces elements which cannot be found in Tasso or Guarini, is to commit a serious error. The first assertion is easily disproved. The rus- tic and the comic style is also a feature of the Italian pastorals.=..l+6 The second is a mistake very commonly made by modern critics who have a tendency to look for literary sources only among the most outstanding works of art, those that have withstood the criticism of time. W. W. Greg for Q, example, is apparently convinced of the independence of Peele's Arraignment of Paris (1581) from Italian influence 44Piero Rébora, L'Italia nel Dramma Inglese (Milano, 1925). pr. 71-72. 45Two years before Sidney began his Arcadia, the third pastoral romance of the Renaissance, foIlowing San- nazzaro's Arcadia (1504) and Montemayor's Diana enamorada (1542 . 45 Jeffery, John Lyly and the Italian Renaissance,;x€flh 23 because "no influence of Tasso's masterpiece can be detect— ed in the Arraignment; still less is it possible to trace 1 any acquaintance with Poliziano's work";7 Put by the time of Lyly or Ieele, there were available a hundred or more pastorals besides Aminta, Pastor Fido and Orfeo! Jeffery . . . . 48 in her article on "Peele's Arraignment of Paris" actually shows a possible source for Peele's play in the Italian tragi—comedy, I1 Giuditio di Faride, by Aniello Iaulilli, published at Naples in 1566. The same writer also finds the source of Daniel's and Randolph's pastorals in a com- paratively unknown work, the Pentimento amoroso by Luigi Groto. In her studies on Lyly, of which we shall have to speak later, Jeffery also demonstrates unmistakable traces of Italian influence. In this connection it is of importance to point out that the first English court entertainment of a pastoral nature was played by Italians. From the "Revel's Accounts" we learn that in 1574 payment was male for properties "for the Italyan Ilayers that followed the progresse anl male pastyre first at Hynsor and afterwards at Reading."49 47Pastoral Ioetry and Pastoral Drama, 217. 48In modern Language Review, XIX (1924). 49A. Feuillerat, p. 225. --Elizabeth was at Windsor on July 11 and 12; on July 15, she removed to Reading and remained there to July 22. See a. K. Chambers, The Eliza- bethan~Stage (Oxford, 1925), II, 262. 24 From the material they used at Realing on July l5--staves, hooks, and lambskins for shepherds, arrows for nymphs, a scythe for Saturn, and "horstayles for the wylde mannes garment"-—it is very obvious that they performed a pas— toral. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the earliest performance of a pastoral play on English soil. This per- formance of 1574 appears to contradict very clearly the theory of the independent, parallel develorment of the Eng- lish pastoral play and to corroborate Jeffery's statement that the "Elizabethan pastoral drama is wholly Italian in its origin." Vl At this point there arises also the important ques— tion of the influence of Italian actors and companies on the English stage in general. Visits of ltalian players and traveling companies certainly helped greatly to famil- iarize Englishmen with the theatrical art of the peninshla. most of the Elizabethan playwrights display a considerable acquaintance with the plots, characters and dramatic tech- 0 . . . 5 fl . nique of the Italian porular comedy.’ we may assume With safety that much of this acquaintance was gained th”OUTh contact with plays in actual rroduction in Englanl. 50On traces of the Commedia dell'Arte in the plays of Shakespeare, Jonson, Marston, Dekker, Chapman and Middle— ton, see Henry Salerno, Commedia dell'Arte in England (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Illinois, 15567. 25 The great and early popularity which the commedia dell'arte tradition enjoyed in Europe is indicated by the fact that the first records of Italian comedians are found outside of Italy. As early as 1550 "Maistre André italien" was instructed by French authorities "de faire et composer des farces et moralitez les plus exquises" for the entry of the French king into Paris on December 12.51 After the es- tablishment of more permanent companies, beginning in the forties and especially after the performance of the first 52 extant scenario at the Bavarian court in 1568, the visits of Italian companies to various European capitals became more frequent. There are numerous records of the presence of Italian troupes in various European countries. During 1571 alone, there were at least three companies in France, that of Giovanni Tabarino (which may also be connected with the Soldino company), that of Alberto Ganassa and the fa- mous Compagnia de' Gelosi which "deserved singular cemen- dacion," as Lord Buckhurst tells us, "for the good mirth 51Armand Baschet, Les Comédiens italiens a la Cour de France (Faris, 1882), p. 4. 523eported by Massimo Troiano, the court choir- master, in his Discorsi delli trionfi, Giostre, Apparati... (Munich, 1568). The scenario is in three acts like most scenarios. It is quoted in full by L. Stoppato, La comme- dia pOpolare in Italia (Padova, 1887), p. 151 ff. See also La Commedia dell‘Arte, Storia, Tecnica, Scenari, a cura di 3. Petraccone (Napoli, 1927), p. 297 ff. Winifrid Smith in The Commedia dell'Arte (New York, 1912), p. 105 ff., gives a literal translation into English. See also Kathleen M. Lea, Italian POpular Comedy (Oxford, 1954), I, "Troiano's Performance," p. 5. 26 and handling."55 One record of the following year, however, is of greater importance to us, because it can help us in establishing evidence of the presence of Italian actors in England as early as 1547. Payments are made by the French royal treasurer on March 27, 1572, "to Anthoine Marie, ltalian comedian,"54for himself and nine companions and on April 11 of the same year, "to Soldini of Florence and An- thoine Marie of Venice, comedians of Italy." From a docu- ment belonging to the reign of Henry VIII,55 and therefore earlier than 1547 we learn that a certain Anthony Karia, together with Nicholas Andria and Marcus Antonius, was among the "King's minstrels." Baschet has already suggest- ed that Nicholas Andria and Anthony Maria might be André and Anthoine Marie. As there is some reason to assume that André or Andrea and Marcantonio were members of the company playing at Rome in 1551,56 this supposition may well be true. Certainly the conjunction of the three names would otherwise be a very strange coincidence. Most likely they were members of a regular company of ten players, the nor- mal strength of an early commedia dell'arte company, be- cause "besides a number of apparently English 'minstrels,’ 55Chambers, II, 261. 54Baschet, 56-37o 55Printed by J. P. Collier in his History of English Dramatic Poetgy (London, 1851), I, 85. 56Allardyce Nicoll, Masksj Mimes and Miracles New York, 1951), p. 299. 27 appear the names of Ihon de Bassani, Antony de Bassani, Jasper de Bassani, John Baptiste de Bassani, Nicholas de Forrewell possibly a corruption of an Italian name , Pel- legrine Symon, and Antony Symon."57 The next reference to an Italian company crossing the Channel is found on September 1, 15575, when the Town Council of Nottingham rewards "the Italyans for serteyne pastymes that they shewed before Kaister Feare and his brethren."59 In 1574 an ltali 1an company performed before the Queen at Hindsor and at Reading, as mentioned before. These are probably the same It: :lia an comedians who were cow— mended to the Lord Mayor on July 22, 1574. Somewhat later in the year they apparently performed publicly in London, because in November the preacher Thomas Norton attacks the "unchaste, shamelesse anl unnatural tomblinge of the ltal- "59 ian weomen. In 1576 "Alfruso Ferrabolle and the rest of 57Ibid., p. 530, note 8. 58John Tucker Hurray, English Dramatic Companies, 1558-1642 (London, 1910), I1, 574; E. K. Char mbers, Eliz. Stage, II, 262. 59Chambers, 11, 262. The Italian troupes differed from other companies in that they included a number of reg— ularly trained women, always three and sometimes more. Ne know of the approximate date of the introduction of women on the Italian stag e from P. M. Cecchini's Brevi discorsi (Napoli, 1616), p. 16. "lion sono cinquant' anni che si costumano donne in scene e vi si introdussero." The first English actress did not appear until 1657 in a drama by Davenant. The Italian women contributed greatly to the success of their country's plays Actresses such as the great Isabella Andreini of the Gelosi or Vittoria Piissimi, sometime member of the Gelosi (1575), the Confidenti (1580) 28 the Italian players" received payment from the Treasurer of the Chamber for a play at Court on February 27, and in April of the following year an Italian play was performed 60 Finally, on January before the Council at Durham Place. 15, 1578, the Privy Council instructed "the Lord mayor of London to geve order that one Dronsiano, an Italian, a com— mediante and his companye, may playe within the Cittie and the liberties of the same betweene this and the firsts 61 weeks of Lent." There is no doubt that the capocomico referred to is Drusiano Eartinelli, "marito di Ma Angelica," as he subscribes himself two years later in 1580 in a let- ter to the Prince Vincenzo of Mantua. He is the brother of Tristino Eartinelli, the famous Arlecchino. The company with which Drusiano62 was associated in 1578 is not known. It is possible that he came with the Gelosi to France-~they were in Blois in January--and that he took some of the players with him to England. As the Gelosi were playing at and the Gelosi-Uniti (1585-94), or even the notorious wife of Drusiano Martinelli, Angelica Alberigi (Alberghini), were greatly loved and honored. 6O Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, II, 262. 61Acts of the Irivy Council, x, 144. Quoted by w. Smith, The Commeiia dell‘Arte, p. 175. 62For his later activities, see A. D'Ancona, Origini del teatro italiano (Torino, 1891), II, ,assim; for his ac- tivities as head of the Duke of kantua's men (Uniti, 1594- 95), cf. ibid., pp. 518 ff., and Luigi Rasi, I Comici ital— iani (Florence, 1807-1005), III, 104-106. 29 Florence early in 1578, it is more likely, however, that we have here the Massimiano troupe, with Drusiano as Arlec— chino. The Italian companies not only performed the popular commedia dell'arte, but also the literary commedia erudita, and it is quite possible that they may also have given aca- demic comedies in the city as well as at court. They may even have performed English drama translated into Italian. We know that such plays were produced at court. In Janu- ary, 1579, "Patruchius Ubaldinas" (==Petruccio Ubaldini), for instance, was charged with the translation into Italian of certain speeches in a Masque of Amazons and Knights.63 Many other general references to Italian actors make it quite clear that they were more familiar to Englishmen than the few notices in official records, just discussed, would lead us to believe.64 One is inclined to agree with 63Chambers, 11, 264.--This wOuld be the Double Maske; A Masks of Amasones and A Maske of Knightes which was "shewen before her maiestie the ffrench Imbassador being presents the sonday night after Twelfdaie." See Eva Turner Clark, Hidden Allusions in Shakespeare's Plays (New York, 1951), p. 107. The French envoy arrived at the English court on January 5, 1579, to carry on negotiations for the marriage of the Queen and the Duke of Alencon. The double mask was "an entertainment in imitation of a tournament be- tween six ladies and a like number of gentlemen who surren- dered to them." See M. A. S. Hume, The Courtships of Qgeen Elizabeth (London, 1926), p. 75. 64 For more direct evidence of the Englishman's inti— mate acquaintance with the commedia dell'arte, see W. Smith, chapter VI, 170-199; Piero Hébora, L'Italia nel Dramma ingleseyyl558-1642 (Milan, 1925), pp. 114-152; Kathleen M. Lea, Italian POpular Comedy (Oxford, 1954), II, 574-588. 5O Rébora when he suggests that uno dei principali fattori d'informazione circa i gusti, la mentalita, i costumi, il carattere degli Italiani, sia stato appunto costituito dagli attori dell'arte che con 1e loro recite caratteristiche diffondevano la conoscenza di certi tipi, personaggi, atteggiamenti che bene 0 male e piu male che bene, venivano identificati con 1'Italia.6 1t is with some of these Italian "types, personages" and "attitudes," first sketched in the commedia erudite and later on crystallized in the commedia dell'arte that we shall concern ourselves in a subsequent discusSion of Lyly's plays. The following chapter will show that Lyly must have been present at some of these performances. It is therefore only natural that he should have been influ— enced by them in the composition of his comedies. In this connection it is also of interest to note that during the entire period under discussion, there is no record of the presence of French actors in England. In— deed, there is no evidence of the presence of French play- ers in England between 1495 and 1629.66 This is one of several facts contradicting such critics as Meziéres, Fari- nelli or Sir Sidney Lee who tend to over-emphasize the im- portance of France as a literary mediator between Italy and 67 England. 65Rébora, p. 115. 66Chambers, 11, 261. 6 '1 0 O o , o 0 7Scholarship, however, is 1ndebted to Sir Sidney Lee for demonstrating in his French Renaissance in England 31 It is true that some of the Italian lyrics came to England through Clement Marot, ionsard and Du Bellay and that some of the novelle (very few indeed!) arrived in England gig Boisteau, Belleforest or some other petty, te- dious adapter, and it may also be correct that "both Hyatt and Surrey acquired a substantial measure of the ltalian taste and sympathy which were reflected in the manner anl 68not in Italy itself but in France. matter of their poetry" To this may yet be added that Samuel Daniel imitated Pe- trarca in the sonnets to leia by ransacking Desportes or that Lodge in Phillis pilfers from Ronsard. But what are _these few cases of French mediation against the innumerable anl much more significant instances of direct and immediate relations with Italy? Even Sir Sidney Lee, after all, had to admit that "Lodge pillaged with equal freedom sonnets by Ariosto, Ietrarch, Sannazaro, and Bembo, as well as by a very little-known Italian sonneteer Lodovico .‘lr’aschal(.e."'69 (Oxford, 1910) that some of the Italian material, especial- ly in lyric poetry, came to England through French channels. 68Lee, p. lll.--It would appear, however, from a later publication that, the more Sir Sidney Lee occupied himself with the general problem of Italian-English rela- tions, the more he changed his_attitude in favor of direct relations between England and ltaly. See his lecture on "Shakespeare and the ltalian Renaissance" in Proceedings of the British Academy, VII (1915-1916), pp. 121-143. 69French Renaissance in England, p. 261, note 1. CHAPTER II JOHN LYLY'S LITERARY ENVIRONMENT I "Witty, comical, and facetious" John Lyly was the descendant of a family of great scholars.1 His grandfather was the Lyly of the "Paul's Accidence" or "Eton Grammar," the Hellenist Nilliam Lyly, Grocyn's godson and friend of the great humanists Erasmus, Colet and Sir Thomas More. His uncle, George Lyly, inherited the thirst for knowledge and followed proudly in the footsteps of the great grammarian. As secretary and protegé of Cardinal Reginald Pole, he attainel a great reputation as antiqua- rian, historian, and geographer. After Pole's return from exile2 and his election as ArchbishOp of Canterbury on Varch 25, 1556, George Lyly received the prebend of Kentish Town and was appointed Canon of Canterbury. His ecclesias- tical career, begun so brilliantly, however, was very 1Unless otherwise stated, biographical facts con- cerning Lyly's family are derived from Albert Feuillerat's study: John Lyly: Contribution a l'histoire de la Renais- §§nce en Angleterre (Cambridge, 19103, pp. 5-40. 21h 1549 Pole had narrowly missed being elected POpe. Pole's unswerving loyalty to the Church of Rome had earned him an attainder for treason and twenty years'- exile. Mary's accession.made his return possible. 52 55 short. He survived his protector, who died on November 17, 1558, by only a few months. John Lyly's aunt Dyonisia was a sort of sixteenth— century blue-stocking. After her father's death she mar— ried John Rightwise, who in 1522 succeeded his father-in~ law as headmaster of Saint Paul's. There is a fairly strong probability that she and not her husband composed the Latin tragedy 2129 which was enacted before Cardinal Wolsey by the students of Saint-Paul's. The pedagogic pro- fession rust have had a special attraction for her, because on the death of her first husband, she married James Jacob, another master of Saint—Paul’s. By him she had a number of children to who: she gave--characteristically enough-~the most scholarly sounding names, such as Iolydore and Scho- lastica. John's father, Peter Lyly, a younger son of the Hel- lenist anl grammarian, was at first prebendary of the Cathedral of Canterbury and later, under the erudite Arch- bishOp Parker, also principal registrar at Canterbury. Parker hal succeeded Cardinal Iole, the protector of George Iyly. Although Ieter Lyly did not, like his father or brother, attain any distinction as an author, he never- theless maintained a rather honorable position in the ec- clesiastical world. In 1544 his name appears for the first time in official documents. Henry VIII granted him certain lands of the crown. Two years later the king accorded him 34 by letter patent the first vacant prebend of the Cathedral of Canterbury. These favors show that Peter Lyly must have had some influence at Court. Some time before 1555 Peter Lyly married Jane Burgh of Yorkshire, who brought into the marriage lands and other property. The marriage proved to be a brilliant alliance for the "prebendary" in matters fi— nancial and social. About 1557 or 1558 his wife's sister, Catherine, married John Manwood, gentleman of Sandwich, a member of the most influential family of Kent. John Man- wood was the brother of the famous Sir Roger, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer under Elizabeth and one of the judges of Mary Stuart. Sir Roger was a close friend of Matthew Parker, a protegé of Hatton and also of Walsingham, to whom he was distantly related by marriage.5 It is therefore not surprising at all that in 1559 Peter Lyly benefited from the elevation of Matthew Parker to the Arch- bishOpric of Canterbury. In contrast to his brother George, Peter Lyly ap— pears to have enjoyed uninterrupted prosperity throughout his life. Although he did not attain any distinction as a scholar, he was well aware of the traditions of his family and he committed to his oldest son, John, the duty of per- petuating these traditions. We can only conjecture about the early training of John. The future writer may well 3Sir Thomas Walsingham had married a Manwooi. Cf. DNB, XXXVI, 181. 55 have received his first instruction from his father. Peter Lyly was certainly well prepared to be the tutor of his own son. He in turn had received the best possible education from his father, the great master of Saint-Paul's. At the age of fifteen or sixteen, just a few months be- fore the death of his father,4 John was sent to Oxford, where his grandfather and his uncle had gone before him. Anthony a Wood, the seventeenth-century author of Athenae Oxonienses, tells us that he "became a student in Magdalen College in the beginning of 1569, aged 16 or thereabouts,"5 where he was soon "esteemed . . . a noted wit." The intel- lectual milieu in which young John had grown up certainly must have had a good deal to do with his early attainments. Endowed with an unusual native intelligence, a keen percep- tion and a considerable poetic gift, young Lyly was reared in an intellectual atmosphere that enabled him to continue the great family tradition and made him one of the most erudite of the Elizabethan dramatists. With the possible exception of Jonson or Chapman, no other writer could mar- shal such an impressive array of learning. The house of the chief registrar of the archbishop, so frequently visit- ed by the learned dignitaries of the archbishOpric, had an intellectual atmosphere that must have been very stimulat— 4He was buried in the cathedral on October 24, 1569. SEd. Philip Bliss (London, 1815-1820), I, 676. 13.....3NKAM1Q1WIJ... u. ....I \.. 5. v C: r 56 ing to young John. It probably aroused in him rather early the great desire for distinction and instilled in him his life's ambition: recognition at court, "thinking that place the only means to climb high, and sit sure."6 A knowledge of Lyly's background7 makes his great ambition appear much less unreasonable than it might seem at first sight. He came from a family that occupied a very honorable position in the social ladier. The name "Lyly" was well-known, even revered in erudite circles. The Lylys were "gentlemen" with their own coat-of-arms. John was the grandchild of the great grammarian. On his mother's side he was related to the nobility of Yorkshire and the power- ful, influential Manwoods of Kent. Through them he could easily be introduced to the closest councillors of Eliza- beth: Walsingham and Hatton. His father must have made' many influential acquaintances through Matthew Parker, the ArchbishOp of Canterbury. The primate had gathered around 6Eupues and His England, ed. Croll-Clemons, p. 248. 7The hypothesis that the portrait of the old cour- tier Fidus in Euphues and His England possesses autobio- graphical value has thus been confirmed. Fidus' story is in accord with what we know about Lyly: "I was born in the weald of Kent, of honest parents and worshipful, whose ten— der cares (if fondness of parents may be so termed) pro- vided all things from my very cradle until their graves that might either bring me up in good letters or make me heir to great livings. I (without arrogancy be it spoken) was not inferior in wit to many; which finding in myself I flattered myself, but in the end deceived myself. For be- ing of the age of twenty years, there was no trade or kind of life that either fitted my humour or served my turn but the Court; thinking that place the only means to climb high and sit sure." Ibid., pp. 247—248. 57 him a notable group of scions of great families: Charles Gray, brother of the Earl of Kent; Egremont Ratcliff, half- brother of the Lord Chamberlain, the Earl of Sussex who was in turn a close friend of the later patron of John Lyly; Sir Richard of Bingham; Geoffrey Benton; John Stafford, son of Lady Stafford, one of the maids of honor to the Queen; Henry Harrington, brother of Lord Harrington; Edward Cob- ham, brother of the Lord Warden Cobham;8 and many others. But what is even more important is the fact that Matthew Parker was a close friend of William Cecil,9 the great Secretary of State whose influence with the Queen in- creased from day to day. The Registrar of Canterbury prob- ably knew him personally, as on January 24, 1565, the arch— bishOp mentions Lyly's name in a letter to his friend, 10 We may assume with safety that Sir William Cecil. William became acquainted with the Lyly family relatively early in his life. He was too young to have known the grammarian personally, but in the reign of Mary he must have met George Lyly, the famous uncle of our young John. As a member of the royal mission that was charged with 8Nichols, Progresses of Elizabeth, I, 203-204. 9Sir William Cecil (created Lord Burghley in 1571) was Principal Secretary of State from 1558-1572. From 1572 until his death in 1598 he was Lord Treasurer. 10Matthew ParkerA Correspondence ... Comprising let- ters written by and to him from A.D. 1555 to his death A.D. 1575. Ed. by John Bruce and the Rev. Thomas Thomason Perowne (Parker Society, Cambridge, 1853), P. 254. 58 ‘bringing back Cardinal Reginald Pole, Cecil certainly must have made the acquaintance of the Cardinal's secretary. Sometime later, Cecil also accompanied Pole on several missions. Considering these facts, it is not surprising at all that in a Latin letter to Cecil, dated May 16, 1574, young Lyly describes himself as the Lord Treasurer's alumnus and ventures to invoke this great statesman's assistance in ob- taining a fellowship at Magdalen College. Anthony a Wood tells us that John Lyly was always averse to the crabbed studies of 1031c and philos0phy. For so it was that his genie, bein naturally bent to the pleasant paths of poetry %as if Apollo had given him a wreath of his own Bays without snatching or struggling), did in a manner neglect academical studies, but not so much but that he took the Degree in Arts, that of master being compleated in 1575.11 The grandson of the great grammarian had come to Oxford with a great desire for learning, a desire which did not lag behind that of his great ancestor. But he soon found out that the Oxford of the times of Linacre, Grocyn, Colet, William Lyly and Thomas More was no longer. Although the university was still the spring-board to the court, it was no longer the uncontested asylum of learning. Despite re- forms by Edward and Elizabeth which introduced classical studies into the educational system and banished the scho- lastic theology, the spirit of scholasticism was not dead. 11Athenae Oxonienseg, ed. Bliss, 1, 676. fl. ! ....IU .9,..- i a“. 1 \~.~, J..I :1 39 The program was still based on the medieval division of the sseven arts. The trivium of grammar, rhetoric and dialectic constituted the material for the Bachelor of Arts examina- tsion, the quadrivium of the mathematic arts, the material :fWDr the Master of Arts.12 The fact that these studies were :ytet pursued with obsolete scholastic methods made matters eewven worse. Is it therefore surprising that Giordano Bruno ()1: his visit to the university finds the graduates of Ox- 1?<3rd ignorant and pedantic and the undergraduates too fond o 1‘ beer?15 Young Lyly,whose genius was "naturally bent to the I>3L£easent paths of poetry (as if Apollo had given him a '“'1?13ath of his own Bays without snatching or struggling)," “311L55t have found this academic situation particularly de- Pressing. After serious efforts to adapt himself to this anti- EFEift3hetic milieu, he was eventually thrown back on his own. :[11- "To my very good friends the Gentlemen Scholars of Ox- 14 1T<>:::d" which he added to the second edition of Euphues, SEELS; Anatomy of Wit, Lyly tells us: Yet may I of all the rest most condemn Oxford of un- kindness--of vice I cannot--who seemed to wean me . 12Introduction by A. Clark to the second volume of "E! ister of the University of Oxford. iiiiis 13Charles Edward Mallet, A History of the University EDI? Oxford (London, 1924), II, 145- 14The second edition was issued in midsummer, 1579, about six months after the first. 40 before she brought me forth, and to give me bones to gnaw before I could get the teat to suck; wherein she played the nice mother, in sending me into the country to nurse, where I tired at a dry breast three1 ears and was at the last enforced to wean my- self. Disappointed with and thwarted by "the crabbed studies of Logic and PhiIOSOphy," he had turned to the pleasures of the joyous youth of Oxford. We have reason to assume that for some time his life was anything but exem- 16 plary. Remarks made by his contemporaries and personal allusions in his Euphues, especially in the part, "Euphues and his Ephebus," indicate that it was not. Gabriel Harvey, for whatever his testimony may be worth, speaks of "his "17 horning, gaming, fooling and knaving and denounces Pappe as "the fruit of an addle and lewd wit, long since dedi- cated to a dissolute and desperate licentiousness."18 15Ed. Croll-Clemons, p. 184. 16This was not unusual, though. There are numerous documents about the intellectual and moral degeneracy of the University. In a letter to Bullinger, Jewel, for in- stance, writes: "Although it would give me the greatest pleasure, under other circumstances, to see even a dog from Zurich in England, yet I cannot at this time recommend you to send your young men to us, either for a learned or reli- gious education, unless you would have them sent back to you wicked and barbarous." -—The Zurich Letters, comprising the correspondence of several English BishOps and others, with some of the Helvetion Reformers. . .Translated . . . and edited . . . by H. Robinson. Parker Society (Cambridge, 1842-45),p. 35. Yet in the Opinion of a Jena Professor, Wittenberg, "the foul sewer of the Devil," or Marburg, with such loose morals as "Bacchus would prescribe to his Maenads and Venus to her Cupids" was much worse. 17Pierce's Supererogation," The Works of Gabriel Har- vey, ed. Grosart, II, 129. 181bid., II, 220. 41 These Spiteful remarks by Gabriel Harvey, who nursed a grudge against his former friend, however, have to be taken with a grain of salt. Harvey did not make Lyly's acquain— tance till about 1578 and he thus knew little of Lyly's Oxford career except by hearsay long after it was over. Yet Lyly's admission in his Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit-- "I have ever thought so superstitiously of wit that I fear n19__and his descrip- I have committed idolatry against wisdom tion of Euphues' youthful attitude would appear to bear out the substantial correctness of Harvey's affirmation. It is natural that this highly intelligent and gifted young man very soon became "Esteemed in the Univer- sity a noted wit." We may therefore assume with tolerable safety that--at least for some time-~Lyly was the hub of a pleasure-seeking, rebellious circle of friends who were disgusted with the narrow-mindedness of Oxford pedantry and who were most eager to adopt the latest fashion, no matter whether in dress20 or in thought. Unfortunately we know very little about Lyly's lit- erary associations at Oxford. But being ”esteemed in the University a noted wit," it appears highly probable that he became personally acquainted, if not intimate, with some of 19Ed. Croll-Clemons, p. 27. 2OVanity in dress appears to have been charactePiStiC of students. There are numerous protests by authorities against this student-foible. It plays a diSPPOPortionat‘? Part in the Statutes. C. E. Mallet. A History Of the Uni- ygrsity of Oxford, 11, 143. ' 42 his contemporaries who were to become famous as writers or explorers. Richard Hakluyt, Richard Hooker, Thomas Bodley, Edmund Campion, Thomas Lodge, Philip Sidney, Thomas Rogers, Stephen Gosson, Richard Carew, Richard Eedes, William Gager, George Peele, Walter Raleigh and possibly John Florio were at the university at least during part of Lyly's residence. We do not know when Lyly came for the first time in- to close contact with Italian culture. It may not have been until he came into the orbit of Lord Oxford's influ- ence. We are left to conjectures. It will be remembered, however, that many of his distinguished college contempo- raries manifested an exceptionally strong interest in things Italian. There is therefore a fairly strong prob- ability that Lyly already belonged to a literary set at Oxford the members of which were especially interested in Italian cultural attainments. II At Oxford Lyly came for the first time into contact with the stylistic tendencies which he then developed to produce euphuism. His publication of Euphues represents the culmination, rather than the origin of this trend. What is new in Lyly's "Euphuism" is neither its structural devices nor its moralising, but its specific combination of both in certain relative preportions. Lyly did not invent the style of this movement. But he perfected it. Neither 43 did he invent the subject-matter of his novel. But he skillfully adapted it. It is this very gift for assimilat- ing, adapting and recreating the work of others that makes him an artist, as we shall see later. To overemphasize Lyly's originality, as Bond appears to do in his negative review of Professor Schficking's doctoral thesis,21 is mere- ly to distort matters. Miss V. M. Jeffery's study of eu- phuism,22 which is primarily concerned with subject-matter, advances, for instance, considerable evidence of Lyly's debt to some ltalian authors. The history of the origin of Euphuism is so complex, its ramifications are so multitudinous and extremely in- volved that probably no completely satisfactory answer to the question of its source can be given, certainly none that admits of no argument. Perhaps no literary develop— ment can ever be fully explained. At any rate, the theo- ries of the origin of euphuism which have been advanced so 25 far by various critics are certainly not beyond dispute. 21Works of John Lyly, II, 475-85. 22In John Lyly and the Italian Renaissance (Paris, 1928). pessim- 23The search for a particular "source" of euphuism began roughly with the publication of Landmann's Der Euphu- ismus, sein Wesen, seine Qgelle, seine Geschichte (Giessen, 1881), in which he attempted to prove that Lylyrs style is an imitation of the Spaniard A. Guevara. Feuillerat then suggested that it was an imitation of the classics and Pro- fessor Croll that it was merely one manifestation of the general medieval tradition, continued into the sixteenth century, of writing patterned prose: ". . . Eurhuism is 44 The excessive preoccupation of euphuism with arti- ficial style, its systematic use and abuse of a number of structural devices reminds us of other manneristic phenom- ena, such as gongorism, marinism, petrarchism and arcadian- ism. It even recalls earlier works, such as the poetry of certain troubadours or Lucan's Pharsalia (Bellum Civile) in which all resources of rhetoric are enlisted to impress the reader. At first glance, one may be tempted to agree with 24 Miss Elisha K. Kane, who perceives in Lyly's literary préciosité a symptom of decadence. She arrives at this not the product of humanistic imitation of the ancients, . . it is, on the other hand, a survival of the 'rhetoric of the schools.’ The schemata of medieval Latin, revivi- fied by being translated into the popular speech, enjoyed a brief new career of glory, to fall into their final dis- grace and desuetude before the conquering advance of natu- ralism and modern thought at the end of the sixteenth cen- tury. The humanists often tried to check their course, or confine their use within the limits of good taste; but they failed of their purpose, first, because the study of rhet- oric, which they advocated as the best approach to the classical mind, often proved to be in effect merely a school for the practice of the schemata, and, secondly, be- cause the authors whom they imitated might be used to sanc- tion the same figures." 'Introduction' to Lyly's Euphues, ed. Croll-Clemons, p. lxiv. Croll's theory is now general- ly accepted. Yet it clearly shows an imperfection in so far as it does not mention any Italian influence or media- tion. Euphuism can Certainly not be explained without tak- ing into consideration its Italian-oriented milieu, the great desire that existed in Lyly's day for Italian ele— gance. Miss V. M. Jeffery made a case for the Italians, but her evidence primarily concerns subject—matter, not style. 2 1928). 4In Gongorism and the Golden Age (Chapel Hill, 45 conclusion after a comparison with the visual arts. In architecture and sculpture, to be sure, excessive ornamen- tation is usually preceded by an age of classical simpli- city. But what may be true in the arts, is not necessarily true in literature. Petrarchism, so closely associated with Lyly's rival, Philip Sidney, certainly is the product of decadence, because of the fact that Petrarch's imitators lacked pr0per poetical inspiration and ability. Thus they were reduced to the mere.imitation of the mannerisms of the great master whom they wanted to equal. However, this does not appear to be the case with euphuism, nor, by the way, with French ppéciosité. Both styles are less symptoms of senile weakness than perhaps aberrations of taste. They both appear at a moment when the customs and manners are becoming more polished and re- fined, at least among the social élite. They manifest themselves just a few years prior to the most brilliant literary periods, which commence even before these stylis- tic trends are extinct. John Lyly precedes and influences Shakespeare just as Vincent Voiture and the Précieuses of the H6tel de Rambouillet precede the great French classi- cists. In the hands of an Oxford coterie of euphuists, such as Pattie, Lodge, Gosson, Lyly and Watson, the movement be— came an instrument which was deliberately and consciously employed for the purpose of improving the form of English 46 I prose. It aimed at a greater refinement, polish and elab- oration of the English language. For this end, it had to exhibit a certain element of exaggeration in order to ar- rest the necessary attention. Absurd as such a mannered style may appear today, it certainly was not without its uses in its own time. Novel vowel and consonant patterns gave a new suppleness and elegance, an "Italianate finish” to English prose. How highly Lyly's stylistic achievements were valued by his contemporaries can be gleaned from the words of William Webbe. Discoursing in 1586 on the "great good grace and sweet vogue which Eloquence hath attained in our Speeche," he informs us that the English language has made such strides because it hath had the helpe of such rare and singu- lar wits, as from time to time myght still adde some amendment to the same. Among whom I think there is none that will gainsay, but Master John Lyly hath deservedly moste high commendations, as he hath stept one steppe further therin than any either be- fore or since he first began the wyttie discourse of his Eu hues, whose works, surely in respect of his singular eloquence and brave composition of apt words and sentences, let the learned examine and make tryall thereof, through all the parts of Ret- oricke, in fitte phrases, in pithy sentences, in galant tropes, in flowing speeche, in plaine sense, and surely in my judgment, I think he wyll yeelde him that verdict which Quintillian giveth of both the best orators Demosthenes and Tully, that from the one, nothing may be taken away, to the other nothing may be added.2 25A Discourse of English Poetrie, ed. Arber, p. 46. 1’. 47 It may well be that John Rainoli's Latin orations represent the immediate inspiration of euphuism.26 The pe- culiar combination of stylistic devices in the lectures of this distinguished scholar of Corpus Christie College27 and tutor of Hooker could very well have exerted a crucial in- fluence on Lyly and the other Oxford euphuists. But after having waded through many a page of moderate Ciceronianism before encountering any real euphuisms in his Latin ora- tions, one is strongly inclined to question "that Rainolds stands as the culprit ultimately responsible for the unfor- tunate craze of Euphuism which afflicted England for more than a decade."28 Could not much rather the strong desire of Lyly's contemporaries for Italian elegance and refinement, for this "Italianate finish," be a crucial factor in the ap- pearance of the Euphuistic phenomenon in England? would ('3 it be so surprising; at 22 time ‘rhen the 'nglish élite 26Scholarship is greatly indebted to Professor Wil- liam Ringler for drawing attention to these Latin orations. bee William Ringler, "The Immediate Urigin of Euphuism,” PMLA, L111 (1958), 678-86; also his introduction to the edition of John Rainolds' Oratio in Laudem Artie Poeticae (Princeton, 1940). 27John Rainolds spent most of his life at Oxford. From the age of thirteen until his death in 1607, he resid- ed variously at Merton, Corpus, Queen's, New College, Uni- versity, and Oriel. He was first admitted as a scholar of Corpus in 1563. See William Ringler's introduction to John Rainolds' Oratio..., p. 3. 28William Ringler's introduction to John Rainolds' Oratio in Laudem Artis Foeticae, p. 4. 48 wears steeped in the cultural wealth of Italy, when Italian l.fiLterature furnished exemplars for English lyric, subject- nizatter for English drama and conventions for English Ar— c adianism? This is not to discredit Croll's theory that the egreat body of the medieval Latin schematic prose influenced tjhe sixteenth—century style. The deeper roots of the euphu- iistic manner certainly lay farther back in the past than ‘the late quattrocento or early cinquecento. To a certain extent, it is part of a general movement whiCh, in varying conditions, has ebbed and flowed since the time of Gorgias. In all probability it was in the Middle Ages that the first rivulets of the euphuistic stream came into clear view. They then continued to flow, to some extent concurrently, in the various countries, yet taking somewhat different forms in each literature and deveIOping more rapidly in some countries than in others. Croll's theory, however, is imperfect in so far as it ignores the Italian tributary-- and a possible Spanish one-~which was to swell the English river into a torrent. Euphuistic features are not uncommon in sixteenth- century prose. They occur in Ascham and Fisher.29 How- ever, the first to use the schemes to such an extent that \ne may speak of a Euphuistic style was a man who was esteeped in Italian culture. It was George Pattie who, as 29See Croll's introduction to Lyly's Eu hues, lei. 49 we may recall, helped to familiarize Elizabethans with Italian culture. His material comes from Italy. In a study on Pettie's style Douglas Bush points out that certain aspects of Pettie's eupheuism owe something to the latter's study of the verse of his age, "in which some euphuistic qualities were common before they became a marked element of prose."50 He then produces some evidence that Pettie pilfered from contemporary poets, eSpecially from Gascoigne. But it will be remembered that George Gas- coigne was in turn a borrower of Italian cultural wealth. He was not only the adaptor and translator of Dolce's gig- casta and Ariosto‘s I Suppositi, but also had written a few .sonnets and attempted to define the genre in his unpreten- tious Certain Notes of Instruction31 before the first large collection of English sonnets, the famous Hekatompathia, or Passionate Centurie of Love by Thomas Watson appeared in 1582. Could not Pettie and Gascoigne and the rest of the "euphuist" coterie as well have obtained those few "recog- nized characteristics of euphuism, such as alliteration, antithesis, the use of similes drawn from natural history, . . . . 2 the habit of piling up proverbs in groups"3 from a common 50"Pettie's Petty Pilfering from Poets," Philological Quarterly, V (1926), 525-29; p. 525. 31Certayne notes of instruction concerning the making of verse or ryme, ed. 3. Arber (Westminster, 1901). 321311311, Phil. Quart, v, p. 329. 50 Italian source? Italian poems with these anl other euphu- istic features are legion. These characteristics can be discerned in Petrarch's sonnets, although they are kept within moderate bounds. The sonnets of his ltalian imi- tators, however, are already surfeited with them. Nho, for instance, could hope to outdo Serafino dell' Aquila (1466- 1500) in his Strambotti, published in 1504? Amor io mora. Per chi amar tu more? Per crude che no crede—-A che? A me Va digli e dagli fé del caro core. Non val, non vuol amar amor per fé: mio pasto ho posto in pianto amar amore; po‘ m'urta morte per amar chi de‘: do‘ core mio caro, so lei ti pone in pane; in parte pene porta come tene. 0r: La fida fede ch'al tuo caro core 1 porto in parte, donna, merti io morte, per cruda che no crede amaro amore, chi t'ami e tema di sua sarte o sorte; tu gridi, si t'agrado a dar dolore, e di legare e sciorre e farti forte, e dare e dir di me c'ha vinto e1 vanto; 35 secondo scando i1 verso e conto e canto. One of the important mediators for the Oxford Euphu— ists may have been the Italian John Florio, ubiquitous when Elizabethan and Italian relations are concerned. His in- fluence among a relatively large circle of students in all probability played an important part in the rapid final de— velOpment of euphuism. John Florio was not only a teacher 55Quoted by M. Jeffery, John Lyly and the Italian Renaissance, pp. 125-26.. 51 of Italian. He was an important channel through which Italian influences reached English literature. His ltalian lessons were designed to teach not only the language, but also Italian refinement and polish and to improve the Eng- lish language, which lacked "Italian elegance." To John Florio and his circle Italian was a "noble language" which was "no less pleasing . . . than are beautiful ornaments to damsels, or fine and perfect weapons to soldiers" and "for elegance, cepiousness, clarity and beauty" Italian was "so far above all other languages, that without suspicion of exaggeration or prejudice it may truthfully claim to call itself the most worthy, terse, and excellent of all."54 The first printed result of Florio's teaching ef- forts is his First Fruits.35 Yates calls it "an attempt to train Englishmen who should be Italianate in literary pol— ish yet without a trace of the foreign devilry in morals dreaded by their elders."36 The first group of dialogues, describing mainly the ordinary activities of life, consist of simple language and are thus of small interest to us in 34From Florio's Italian dedication to Sir Edward Dyer, prefixed to the manuscript collection of Italian proverbs in the British Museum, Additional MSS 15,214. Cited by Frances A. Yates in John Florio (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 47-48. The dedication is dated from Oxford, November 12, 1582. 35Entered in the Stationers' Register on August 25, 1578. See Eggnscgipt of the StationersT Register, ed. Arber, II, 555. The Italian dedication is dated "Di Londra a di. 10. Agosto. 1578." 361:1 John Florio, p. 56. 52 this connection. But his more advanced dialogues with their strong moralising tendency and their conscious style certainly interest us. Many of these dialogues are almost entirely composed of extracts from Guevara or contain nu- merous quotations from Lodovico Guicciardini's Hore di Ri- 37 creations, translated by James Sandford, or Sanford, and dedicated to the Earl of Leicester in 1575. In his dia- logues, Florio gives ltalian and English in parallel col- umns. For his extracts from Guevara he uses the Italian translation by Francesco Portonaris da Trino. Yates now points out an extremely interesting fact. For the Guicciar- dini quotations and some other extracts from Petrarca and Ariosto, Florio uses the available translation by Sanford. .Yet for his excerpts from Guevara, Florio makes his own English version, deSpite the fact that there are a number of translations of Guevara available. In this English version Florio clearly reveals himself as a careful artist in style. He, for instance, deliberately employs all al- literation in his English version, as can be seen by a com- parison with the Italian column. "Abonda di pazzia" be- comes "he flowes in foolishness" or "Un vento importuno di una tribulations la torce" is rendered by "an importune 9 flynde of tribulation dooth wrye it,"5d 3711311., pp. 35-57. 5801tei by F. Yates. p- 40- 53 At this point it is worth mentioning that the very passages from Guevara that have been compared with passages of Lyly's are among those which Florio includel anl trans- lated in his First Fruits.59 Another popular feature of the euphuistic style must be mentioned in connection with John Florio. M. P. Tilley has found that many proverbs in Euphues and in Pettie's Petite Pallace correspond with those given by Florio in his various publicationsf+0 Florio, like most of his compa- triots, hal the highest praise for proverbs, and E. I. Tilley suggests "in connection with Florio's remarks . . . hat the pepularity of proverbs in Lyly's day was due, in . . "41 part at least, to Italian influence. Wood tells us that John Florio was appointed tutor in the Italian and French tongues to Emmanuel Barnes about 42 . . 1576. Emmanuel Barnes, interestingly enough, was a stu- Bgcompare, for instance, his dialogues 54 and 58 with the discourse on the perversity of women in Euphues, ed. Croll-Clemons, pp. 94—96, and the frailty of beauty, ibid., pp- 55-57- 40M. r. Tilley, Elizabethan ProverbILore in Lyly's "Euphues" and in PettieTs "Petite Pallace" (New York, 1926). 41Ibid., p. 54. 42"Arter Protestancy was restored by Q. Elizab. they return'd, and Florio for a time lived in this university. At length Rich Barnes, bishOp of Durham, sending his son Emanuel to Magd. coll. to obtain acad. literature in the quality of a commoner, about 1576, Florio was appointed to attend him as a tutor in the Italian and French tongues." Wood, II, 581. 54 dent at Magdalen College, from which John Lyly had obtained his M.A. on June 1, the preceding year. It might be that the Euphuist coterie attended his Italian lessons as early as 1576 at Oxford and perhaps then continued in London. We know with certainty that at least one of the group, Stephen Gosson--whose School of Abuse shows Lylian style-~was Florio's pupil, because his name appears among the contrib- 43 utors of commendatory verses to the First Fruits. It may well be that both Gosson and Lyly44 were already Florio's 43In this connection, it is of interest to note that possibly another early Euphuist, George Pettie, was among the contributors. He may have been responsible for some Italian verses to Leicester, initialed "I.P.," which were prefixed to the First Fruits. This suggestion was advanced by Frances A. Yates in John Florio, p. 51. But W. Ringler's eXplanation that T.C., I.P. and R. Wilson "fit perfectly Thomas Clarke, John Perkin, and Robert Wilson, who were shareholders in Leicester's company" sounds much more con- vincing. Cf. W. Ringler, Stephen Gossop, A Biographical and Critical Study (Princeton, 1942), p. 25. 44There is a strong probability that Lyly remained at Oxford through the year 1576. No evidence can be found that he was anywhere else. There is no reason to assume, as Feuillerat did, that "Lyly quitta Oxford vers juin 1575, aprés avoir obtenu son grade de Easter of Arts" and that after having finished his studies "rien ne 1e retenait plus a l'université, et les griefs qu'il avait contre son Alma Mater devaient l'inciter a quitter le plus tot possible un milieu antipathique" (p. 40, note 5). On the other hand, there is some evidence, indicating that Lyly most likely remained at the university for some time after having ob- tained his M.A. From a Bursar's Day-Book (record of charges for food and drink from the buttery and kitchen) of 1584, we learn that John Lyly still owed "pro communis et batellis 25s. 10d." (Bond, Works, I, 15). In all proba- bility he contracted this debt after having obtained his M.A. on June 1, 1575. In the entry of his debt, the word "communaris" is added above the line which, as R. W. Bond points out, "implies that, though not a Fellow, he had been admitted to share in the emoluments of the College, having students at Oxford. at any rate, if they did not know Florio then, they certainly knew him by the fall of 1579, when they lived in London. Gosson must have been Florio's student sometime before August, 1579, the time of the pub- lication of the First Fruits and Lyly, as we shall see later, must have come into contact with Florio through his friendship with Gabriel Harvey. John Florio’s ltalian lessons and his First Fruits will certainly have to be given careful thought and consid- eration by anybody seriously interested in euphuistic man- ners and style. During his residence at the University, Lyly prob- ably also made his first acquaintance with drama. Oxford was a seat of the comic muse. The memory was still fresh of Queen Elizabeth's visit to the University in 1566, on the 'commons' of a Fellow" (I, 15). Bond now suggests that Lyly was probably connected with the choir. However, it appears more likely that his privilege was due to the de- cree by the Convocation of 1572 which seems to have been in effect till June 29, 1576, when in turn a committee was ap- pointed to examine and correct the statutes "de lectionibus publicis et exercitiis." In 1572 the Convocation had de- creed: (1) That all masters created in the last comitia are to remain regents till the admission to Congregation of the masters created in the next comitia. (2) But, of these masters, four only (selected by proctors) shall lecture, beginning on Feb. 25 and lecturing, on every 'dies legi- bilis' till next comitia, in Dialectic, Rhetoric, Astronomy and Philosophy. (5) That the proctors shall pay each of them five shillings, to be collected "ab inceptoribus prox- ime futuris" (Bond, 1, 9, note 2). This together with the fact that "autobriographical" Eunhues becomes a sort of a "Reader in the University" strongly suggests that Lyly was at Oxford in 1576. 56 which occasion a series of plays were produced by Richard Edwardes, Master of the Children of the Chapel Roya1.45 Among; them, Palamon and Arcite apparently stirred Elizabeth and her train to particularly great enthusiasm as the Queen made very favorable comments on the performance and sent for Edwardes '8». gave him great thankes wth pmise of re— W8r~ie.'46 It is very regrettable that the records of the university stage during the period of Lyly's stay at Oxford are Very meagre.+7 The missing account-books of Christ Ch111‘ch and St. John's College could doubtless furnish more matierial on theatrical entertainments. We know, however, that Lyly was familiar with Richard EdWardes' comedies. Euphues, for instance, contains fre- Clld'lent allusions to his Damon and Pithias.0'8 We also know that at least three of Lyly's fellow-students, William Gager, Richard Eedes and Stephen Gosson, were dramatists. In the preface to Playes Confuted (1582) Gosson himself tells us of comedies which he wrote before 1577,“9 and \ 45Edwardes had been a student of Christ Church in 1547. 46 . . . F. S. Boas, University Drama, p. 105. ,3 471mm, Chapter VIII, "The Oxford Stage 1556—1582," 9- Isa-W. 4Baond, II, 258. I: 49"I was very willing to write at this time, because Eieavvsas enformed by some of you which heard it with your 1:1 bee, that since my publishing the Schole of Abuse, two @1575 of my making were brought to the Stage: the one was 57 Wood reports that Richard Eedes "Spent his earlier years in poetical fancies and composing plays."50 But in all like- lihooci Lyly did not conceive of the idea of writing come- dies till he came into the orbit of his great patron and employer, the Earl of Oxford. III By 1578 we find Lyly in the Hospice of Savoy--then a well~known haunt of literary men--composing his first lit- erary work. Gabriel Harvey tells us that he knew him there when Euphues was being written.51 Lyly was now mov- lnfi ‘vv:ithin.the orb of Lord Burleigh's Puritanical influence and D atronage . William Absolon, well-known as a pious and erudite m . an 3 was then Master of-the Savoy. He was a protege of the _\ fiaiast of Italian devises, called, The Comedie of Captains N: the other a Moral, Praise at parting. These they Duty impudently affirme to be written by me since I had set bot; my invective against them. I can not denie, they were lean mine, but they were both penned two yeeres at the ablst before I forsoke them, as by their owne friends I am Rine to prove" (fol. A7-7V, pr. 165-66; cited by William WaQSler, Stephen Gosson, p. 23). As the School of Abuse " entered in July, 157?, the plays mentioned must have 9. e . :1 written by 1577- 50 Ed B1188, I, 749. pit: 51"Papp-hatchett (for the name of thy good nature is :thfully growen out of request) thy 01 .de acquaintance in " Savoy, when young Euphues hatched the egges, that his <1er freendes laide (surely Euphues was someway a pretty fuzllow: would God Lilly had alwaies bene Euphues, and never :ab‘hatchetfl that old acquaintance, now somewhat straungely t lUted with a new remembrance, is neither lullabied with \\,‘ sweete Papr, nor scarre- -crow'd with thy souer hatchet. 131* Advertisement for Papp- --,hatchett " Works, ed. Grosart, II, 58 Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, and he also en— joyed the support of Roger Manwoozl, a distant relative of Lyly- 52 The Master Chaplain was a pedagogue of the type of the early English humanists for whom the words knowledge, religion and virtue were inseparable. The fact that Ga- briel. Harvey invokes Absolon's name55 when writing about LYIY' s residence in the Savoy seems to suggest that at least friendly, if not very close, relations existed be- tween Lyly and the Master Chaplain. But the fact that Lyly was now for the first time under the direct supervision of his protector, Lord Bur- leiE’Sh, was even more important. Lord Burleigh appears to 54 have had a certain right of control over the Savoy and we mabr Eissume that Lyly's activities were reported to him in detail. The Lord Treasurer's house in the Strand was only a few yards from the Savoy and Lyly may have taken advan- tag; of this opportunity and paid frequent visits to Cecil Houge. All his ambitious hOpes depended, after all, on the b en‘avolence of this powerful. statesman. The moral and re- \ mot: 52It will be remembered that the sister of Lyly's Lo her had married John Manwood, brother of Sir Roger, the it Chief Baron of the Exchequer. th 53"They were much deceived in him, at Oxford, and in fee Savoy, when Master Absolon lived; that tooke him onely 13h“ a dapper 8e deft companion, or a pert-conceited youth, Q0312 had gathered-togither a fewe prettie sentences, and he‘lld handsomly helpe young Euphuee to an old Simile: 8: (3 Ver thought him any such mighty doer at the sharpe."-- a{Driel Harvey, 2p. _<_:_i_t_., II, 128. 54Bond, Works of John Lyly, I, 17. 59 ligi ous discussions of his Euphuesi The Anatomy of Wit clearly demonstrate that he at least tried to give the im- pression of finally living up to the solemn promise which he had made in his letter of 1574. As we know, Italian culture for its own sake was viewed with distrust by people With Puritanical leanings. They were in constant dread of the possible perversion of English youth. In order to make it acceptable to them, Lyly--as John Florio had done a few months before in his First Fruits-«provided the Italian 55 culture with a moralized English veneer. Both works-~so dissimilar in their SCOpe--definitely appear to emanate from the same intellectual milieu. It is highly improbable that Lyly saw the First Fruits in print be fl . f0 re euphues: The Anatomy of Wit was composed, because his . . ' o o riovel was entered into the Stationers Register Just f. L""E> months after the First Fruits. It is more likely that L Yly was familiar with the manuscript, at least with part Of - it. By this time he certainly must have been personally ac Qu ainted with Florio, even if they hal not met at Oxford Etc: . \' Sliggested above. He either would have come across him i r- n Burleigh's house)6 or would have encountered him through \ Kn _ 55Lyly‘s "very good Lord and Master Sir .Villiam West islght, Lord Delaware" to whom Buphues: The Anatomy of Wit 1: dedicated, must also have strongly favoured the Protes- Q ht cause, as can be discerned from the fact that he sat cggg the trials of the Duke of Norfolk (1571-72) and the Earl Arundel (1589). 56Florio's father, while in England, had lived in Lord h~‘r‘leigh's house and we may safely assume that his son made 60 his friendship with Harvey. Like Harvey, Florio called the Earl of Leicester his patron. It was through his friendship with Gabriel Harvey, the "Hobbinol" of Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar, that Lyly probably also came for the first time into contact with the 'Arernagos,‘ the literary club founded by Sidney, together with Sir Edward Dyer, Sir Fulke Greville and Spenser. Spenser had been a fellow-student of Harvey's at Cambridge. SinCe the time Lyly and Sidney had been fellow-students to- gether at Oxford, Sidney had made an extensive trip to the Continent, from which he had returned home in May, 1575, With a solid command of the Italian language, an extraordi- he by knowledge of Italian poetry anda great admiration for 57 l . . ta lnan art and music. The attitude of the Leicester group toward Italy, an -1 w the in particular that of Sidney, may very well have been initial cause for the change of Lyly's outlook as re— fleQ‘ted in Euphues and his England, in which the moralizing tone of his first work is entirely abandoned. Sidney's un- fa\’<>rable reaction to Gosson's attack on the theatre may be \ an 8 early effort to introduce himself at Cecil House to en- uh e the protection of such a powerful person. t9 57About the Italian influence on Sidney, see A. Lyt- Pen Sells' excellent survey "Sidney; or, the Triumph of 1:. trarch" in his book The ltalian Influence in English W (London, 1955). pp. 129-49. 58It will be remembered that in 1579, Gosson, mistak- lug: Sidney's sobriety for narrow Puritanism, dedicated The 61 interpreted as the inception of a new outlook, as the mod- erate expression of a new English temper which attempted to embrace the entire Italian Renaissance philosophy of life, accepting its refinement and elegance, its wider human ex- perience. Those who completely accepted this philosophy were willing even to abandon English moral standards. Al— though Sidney was sympathetic towards the Puritan element, he yet; refused to condemn play-writing and he even sub- scribed to the eloquent discussion of love in verse and Prose - . The exact date when Lyly came into the orbit of Lord OXfOI‘rTi '5 direct influence is not known, but judging from. the '1e‘dication of Euphues and his England, he was already in the earl's household when he published his work in the Spring of 1580.59 At any rate, by July of this year he met already have been on rather close terms with the earl, bec €112.89 he was the one of Oxford's entourage who suggested the . . at Gabriel Harvey, in his execrable hexameter poem S wum Tuscanismi, had attempted to ridicule the earl. Th e Qonnection between Lyly and Lord Oxford, Cecil's son- in‘ law, probably began some time before 1580, maybe in the \ Sc me of Abuse to Sir Philip Sidney, but "was for hys 01‘ scorned." G. Harvey, Works, ed. Grosart, I, 8. SgLicensed to Gabriel Cawood On July 24, 1579, and tw- ice issued in 1580. Feuillerat, John Lyly, pp. 568-69. 62 Savoy where Oxford rented "two txjnementg."6o It is natural that Edward de Vere, aesthete, writer, scholar, devotee of the theatre and generous patron of lit- eraryr Then and musicians, would attract Lyly. He was no or- dhuxrgr* patron, as Thomas Bedingfield or Anthony Munday had learned before Lyly. His magnanimous and helpful attitude towards his literary protegés can be perceived from his Pref5113<3ry letter and poem to Bedingfieli which appeared in 61 Bedin'vgfield's translation of Cardanus' Comforts. Lord OXfOI?Cl was sincerely interested in literary pursuits, and incolltrast to many other "patrons," he was not merely a p88535.\re recipient of a ledication, but was willing to give his 1Sime and attention to the literary works submitted to As a patron, the Earl of Oxford was well qualified m to ~Ig , . JTIfoer adVice and to make useful uggestions. Through his . . ‘Vfiast knowledge of not only Greek and Latin literature, but: . . Eilso Dante, Ariosto, Castiglione and Ronsard, he did more . . $5 for the English language ani literature than any of hie Clontemporaries. He not only attracted some of the YP 31?s: . . . “ Eltest 'Wits' of his time—-Lyly, Hunday, watson, nvl, "a QYTE563 " 7 k‘ n T I~ W V * Tie, Ieele, hereton, Deuxford's character and activities. It is even harder 'maultlfierstand why critics should continue to believe the viliejfzications of unmasked traitors, such as the Howards and thej.1? group. Even if we had no other contrary testimony than that of (:Cintemporary men of letters, such as Lyly, William Webbe, 331CU31335 Watson, Greene, and Angel Day, the Earl of Oxford wolllxi stand vindicated. We may safely assume that their stsiteaments--discounting, of course, the conventional flat- teI’LY'----are more trustworthy and reliable than those of con— Vicrteed traitors. There is a definite air of sincere ad- mir‘atzion and respect in their dedicatory epistles. Two of thefin will suffice. In 1584 Robert Greene, the most talent- ai (izisciple of Lyly, dedicated his Card of Fancy to the ea131_._ He finished his dedication: And your Honour being a worthy favourer and fos- 13erer of learning hath forced many through your ex- <3ellent virtue to offer the first-fruits of their 69 EStudy'at the shrine of your lordship's courtesy.... Two years later Angel Day, in dedicating his. book Thw- lies ‘-~33;‘g§ecretorie7o to Edward de Vere, writes, after a series 0f InaLnifestations of respect: 69Ward, p. 198. From the 1603 ed. in the British 7OWard, p. 199. 67 My honourable Lori, the exceeding bounty where- With your good Lordship hath ever wonted to enter- tain the deserts of all men, and very appearance of nQbility herself, well known to have reposed her de- llghts in the worthiness of your stately mind, war- Penteth me almost that I need not blush to recommend unto your courteous view the first-fruits of these my foremost labours, and to honour this present dis- COUrse with the memory of Lour everlasting worthi— ness. And albeit by the learned View and insight of \ Mr Lordship, whose infancy from the beginning was Eler sacred to the Muses, the whole course hereof may be found nothing such, as the lowest part of the Same may appear in any sort answerable to so great and forward excellence . . . . The Earl of Oxford refused to be judged by the old Philistines' standards. Particularly his Italian-oriented Views on literature were sufficiently unorthodox to violate the feelings of the conventional element in England which looked upon Italy as a mere sink of iniquity and vice. The earl , however, had the courage to defy this rigid tradition or English culture, because he was sincerely interested in all Cultural attainments and in particular in literary pur- s; ' . . . . . lit 8. To him, who himself was a man With strong artistic feelinjs and exquisite sensitivencss, literature was almost an Obsession. It furnished an outlet for his replete mind and tempestuous spirit. It was the vehicle for knowledge and understaniinff. of people and life. Italy, leading in plctorial art and architecture as well as literature, fur- 11153th a unique cultural exemplar. Shes indeel, represent- 9‘1 all the beauty and culture of the Renaissance. \ 71ggg. cit. Italics are mine. 68 It was within this strongly Italian-oriented, artis— tic aziii intellectual milieu that Lyly produced most of his literxaixy work. Almost all of his writing was done while he 'WaS irn.-the employ of Lord Oxford. Vere House, with Oxford as its head and Lyly as the earl' Es private secretary, became the headquarters of the muPb-uists, just as the Leicester House was the domicile of the "7¥omanticists." A group of intelligent, gifted and en- ergsrt;ic men rallied under the earl's 'Euphuistic' banner that; luad been unfurled with the appearance of Lyly's EEEEEEggs. They were all working together with enthusiasm in the Euphuist campaign to enrich the English language. The coterie looked to the master of the Vere House, " Ad- ITreclarum et nobilissimum virum E.O.,"’72 as their lead- er'illtheir novel literary endeavors. Anthony Hunday,who ‘Mas <>ne of them, expressed this feeling in his Latin poem EkhiITGBssed to his patron at the end of The Mirror of Muta- 3% (1579): :55y noble master farewell. Eire dear to us all prevail. Earnestly do I pray for .570ur'welfare and success in the struggle. To the EEUardianship of Christ I commit you and yours, till tShe day when as conquerors we may peacefully resume <3ur delightful literary discussions. \ EEiler 72"E.O." (i.e. Edward Oxford) was the signature the Psi:3 'of Oxford used in signing his poems, published in The .~_“53$lise of Dainty Devices (1576). 75Mi formose vale, valeat tua grata voluntas Deprecor Optata tutus potiaris arena. Te, cunctosque tuos Christo committo tuendos, vai Donec praestentes sermone fruamur amico. I§<1, pp. 185-86. Translation by Ward. May your desires which 67 One member of the Euphuist group, Thomas Watson, is 0f.p%airticular interest to us, because he was obviously faSCinated by the Italian "Euphuists" and was very familiar With- :[talian literature in general. He joined the ranks of EmPhNJJists at Vere House in 1582, when he dedicated his col— le°t3iuon of 'sonnets,’ called Hekatompathial the Passionate QEQEEELry of LOV€974 to the Earl of Oxford in these words: Alexander the Great passing on a time by the Vvorkshop of Apelles, curiously surveyed some of his Cloings; whose long stay in viewing them brought all tshe peOple into so great a liking of the painter's vvorkmanship that immediately after they bought up . 6311 his pictures, what price soever he set them at. And the like good hap (Right Honourable) befel linto me lately concerning these my Love Passions, Vnhich then chanced Apelles for his portraits. For sflnce the world hath understood (I know not how) ‘that your Honour had willingly vouchsafed the accep- ‘tance of this work, and at convenient leisures fa- ‘vourably perused it, being as yet but in written hand, many have oftentimes and earnestly called upon the to put it to the press, that for their money they Inight but see what your Lordship with some liking ihai already perused. . . . Although closely derivative, his work nevertheless dislDlays a certain exquisite sense 0f style. His poetry is adlnii ttedly not of the highest calibre, but, on the other hairlil it does not deserve the contempt heaped on it by some CI?‘ . it , . 3‘132Lcs, such as frofessor CourthOpe. His excellent sense sStyle is quite manifest, for instance, in his sonnet ES]_ 741t was entered on the Stationers' Register, March 3313;; 158?, by Lyly's publisher, Gabriel Cawood. Arber's ‘rlscri t, II, 409. 75Ward, p. 195. 70 No. ¢+7fi an emulation of Serafino Aquilano's "Col tempo e1 villanello al giogo mena":76 3111 time the Bull is brought to wears the yoake; :11] time all haggred Haukes will stOOpe the Lures; Ila time small wedge will cleave the sturdiest Oake; n.time the Marble weares with weakest shewres. hflore fierce is my sweete love, more hard, withall 33hen Beast or Birde, the Tree, or Stony wall. Bio yoake prevailes, she will not yeeld to might; Iqo hire will cause her stoope, she beares full gorge {30 wedge of woes make printe, she reakes no right; Ifio shewer of teares can move, she thinks I forge. Tdelp, therefore Heavenly Boy, come perce the brest UNith that same shaft, which robes me of my rest: {So let her feel thy force, that she relent; 550 keepe her lowe, that she vouchsafe a pray; 80 frame her will to right, that pride be spent So forge that I may speede, without delay, ‘Xhich if thou do, 1' le sweare, and sings with joy, That Love no longer is a blinded Boy. But we are here less concerned with the evaluation ‘Of 'fiiatson's poetry than we are with his source. His "lex— texrc)us adaptations" give us some insight into the reading haEDiLts of the Euphuist coterie. They furnish evidence of thE? unusually great familiarity of this group with ltalian 154t:eerature. Thanks to the 'scholarly' vanity and honesty or? che author, every "Passion" is provided with "adminicu— ‘1E1I7 gear," acknowledging diligently almost every debt. His $151i‘iborate apparatus criticus thus instructs us that the ma- ;jc>1? jportion of his poetry is derived from Italian sources. n3<>11g the Italians, we find, for instance, Petrarca, Sera— j’rl<> Aquilano, Agnolo Eirenzuola, Girolamo Parabosco, Er- \ 11% 76m. 105. it. Menghini, Rims di Serafino de' Cimi- \\1li dall"Aquila (Bologna, Romagnoli, 189E). 71 cole EStrozzi,77 Enea Silvio Piccolomini, Poliziano, Bat- tista Spagnuoli or "il Carmelita" or "il l‘.£antovano,"78 best known in England as Ifiantuanus or Liantuan. We may safely assume that Lyly not only read the adaptations, but was also familiar with the Italian originals, as he was a devoted friend of Watson's and had also contributed a prose epiSt 1a of conmendation "to the author his friend." It may be mentioned in passing that Watson and his a . . . . . bubhlllst friends were obViously more interested in the form or the Italian poetry than in its content. With this in ' 5' View, it is not surp-ising that Watson manifests a particu- lar liking for Serafino Aquilano79 whose poems are surfeit— (I ed “11th the greatest artificialities and "contrarieties. EVen for his adaptations from the great "canzoniere," he :2 . . . 80 . . Mel(acts the most artifiCial sonnets, written in a manner that clearly foreshadows that of Serafino de' Ciminelli. cz- - A ”lmllarly, when he chooses from Firenzuola, he takes " ' b . . . . elle donne prendano pietade" With its most speCious and EI‘ . OteSque theme of the transformation "d'huorr. che pur \ 77Watson uses the form "Strozza." (”a 78He was a Carmelita monk and a native of Mantova I1tua). tiQ 79Miss Jeffery quotes some examples of the fascina— citn which this pOpular Italian had for Watson. See _gp. \~ pp. 120-22. 3 O \ \ 0 Sell 8'Such as "S'amor non e, che dunque e quel ch'io to" or "Pace non trovo, e non ho da far guerra," Watson's SQ hrlets V and XL. 72 dianzi ardiva mirar fiso-" into a mole: "O then faire Dames bewaile my present woe--which thus am made a moale "81 O O O O IVA At Vere House, the headquarters of the literary par— ty of the Euphuists, Lyly also found suggestions and en- couragement for his dramatic inclinations. It is there that he most probably conceived for the first time the idea of writing comedies. The Earl of Oxford was much interested in things dramatic. His acquaintance with the theatre had begun in his earliest childhood. As a boy he had many times wit- nessed the performances of his father's company of actors?2 Although the company was apparently disbanded when, on his father's death, he became a loyal flard in Cecil's house— hold, he never lost his interest in drama. He is even re- puted to have been a playwright himself. Puttenham, writ— ing in 1589, ranks him with Richard Edwardes as "deserving "83 the highest praise for Comedy and Enterlude. Unfortu— nately, none of Oxford's comedies survive. 81 82E. K. Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, II, 99. There was a long dramatic tradition in the Vere family. The earls employed players as far back as 1492. . No. 78. 83Ward, The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, pr. 264, 299; Ward believes that the Arte of English Poesie (1589) was written by Oxford's cousin and friend Lord Lumley rather than by Puttenham, as is generally supposed. 75 Early in 158084 Lori Oxford took over the Earl of Warwick's men. This adult troupe can be traced in the provinces till 1590.85 The company, however, did not ap- pear in Court records after l584. The reason for this is probably the establishment of the Queen's company in 1585, which stripped Oxford's troupe of its stars. John Button joined the Queen's company on its first establishment, and his brother Laurence followed soon afterwards. This rele- gated the company to provincial status and turned it into a road company. In the winter following the establishment of the Queen's company, there is the first mention of an Oxford company at Court. The earl's "servauntes" performed on January 1 and March 3, 1584. The payee was Lord Oxford's private secretary and actor manager, our John Lyly. Although the warrant for payment seems to indicate at first sight that we are here concerned with an adult troupe rather than with a company of Choir Boys, I am, nev- 84The exact date is not known. It must, however, have been after January 1, 1580, on which date the troupe performed at Court under Warwick's patronage, and before April 15, 1583, on which day the Privy Council committed Robert Leveson and Laurence Dutton, servants of the Earl of Oxford, to the Marshalsea for a fray with certain gentlemen of the Inns of Court. The incident had occurred three days before at the theatre (Chambers, II, 100). We know, how- - ever, that Laurence Dutton was one of the actors of War- wick's company that were transferred to the Earl of Ox- ford's service (Chambers, II, 98). 85Chambers, II, 101. 74 ertheless, inclined to believe that we are dealing already with the so-called "Oxford Boys," most likely a combination of the Children of the Chapel Royal and St. Paul's Cathe- dral. This would also bear out E. K. Chamber's conjecture that the plays acted on January 1 and March 5 were Lyly's 86 respectively. According to Campaspe and Sapho and Phao, the title-pages of the early editions, both plays were per— formed "by her Maiesties Children and the Children of Paules." As intimated before, Oxford's company of choir boys probably came into existence by an amalgamation of two or possibly three boy companies. In 1580 Richard Farrant, Master of the Children of Windsor, and William Hunnis, Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal, had combined their companies with a "professional" aim in mind. Four years before, in 1576, Farrant had already leased a portion 97 of the old Blackfriars Convent“ --then belonging to Sir William More—~for the purpose of Operating a theater. The combined troupe formed an adequate company whose produc- tions became quite pOpular and attracted apparently large and noisy crowds, at any rate, too noisy for Sir William, who lived in an adjoining apartment. More undertook to break the lease. Farrant died in November, 1580. But his 86Chambers, III, 414 and 415. 8‘7The same building in which the Office of the Revels had been established since 1550. 75 partner Hunnis of the Chapel Royal continued till 1 85, when he transferred the lease to Henry Evans, who shortly afterwards sold it to Lord Oxford. The Earl of Oxford re— organized the company, doubtless with the help of his the- atrically minded secretary, John Lyly, to whom he soon passed on the lease as a gift.88 Sir flilliam continued to be displeased with the presence of the company of actors. After a certain amiunt of further litigation, the theatri- cal enterprise at Blackfriars was abandoned and moved to a building near St. Paul's callel the ”singing-school" of the Cathedral. Iyly subsequently transferred the 1\ se to the as well-known Italian fencing master Roco Bonetti,pg who es— tablished his famous school there. When in 1585 th- Earl of Oxford took over the com- pany, he added ta the twelve Children of the Chapel the boys of St. Paul's, retained Hunnis as one of the trainers of the boys and kept Evans as manager of the troupe. Lyly, as the private secretary of the patron of this company, was most probably also closely associated with the management of this new organization. E. K. Chambers remarks that Doubtless Hunnis, Lyly, and Evans were all working together under the Earl's patronage, for a company under Oxford's name was taken to Court by Lyly in the winter of 1585-4 and by Evans in the winter of 1584-5, and it seems pretty clear that in 1585-4, 88E. K. Chambers, II, 497. 89A. Feuillerat, John iyiy, p. 540. 76 it was in fact made up of boys from the Chapel and Paul's.90 Lyly's name appears in the Chamber Accounts as payee for the company on two occasions. There is every reason to believe, with E. K. Chambers, that the plays act- ed were Lyly's Campaspe and Sapho and Phao.91 Evans' name appears as payee for the performance of Agamemnon and Th_ ** Ulysses. Obviously, Lyly had acted as stage manager and coach for his own plays. ‘ It is not clear what happened to the "Oxford Boys" d after the performance in December, 1584. E. K. Chambers j _15 suggests that Oxford perhaps ceased to maintain boy players and contented himself with another company of his serv- ants, who made an appearance at Court on 1 January 1595, under John Symons, in feats of activity and vaulting. However, it is not unlikely that the Oxford Boys, made up of Her Majesty's Children and the Paul's Boys continued theatrical productions at Court under the name of the Paul's Boys, who performed through the late 80's with increasing regularity, rivaled only by the important Queen's Company. At any rate, Lyly continued to be closely connected with the Paul's Boys. All his plays, except The Woman in the Moone, are described on their title-pages as having 9OThe Elizabethan Stage, II, 497. 911bid., III, 414 and 415. 92Ibid., II, 101. 77 been performed by her "Maiesties Chillren and the Children of Paules" or "by the Children of Iaules" only. There is a strong probability that Lyly continued as a sort of unoffi- cial stage manager and coach till the dissolution of the company in 1590. This would also partly explain the mean— ing of Gabriel Harvey's statement that Lyly "hath not 11 95 played the Vicemaster of Foules, and the Foolemaster of the Theater for naughtes."94 This brings us also to another point in connection with Lyly's theatrical activities, 113., the vexed question 1 f how Lyly could have been the Queen's servant and Lord Oxford's private secretary simultaneously. We know that Lyly was in Oxford's service at least till 1589. In a le- gal contract between Lyly and Hubbard, dated May 10, 1587, Iyly is referred to as "gentleman servaunte to the righte honorable Earle of Oxenford"95 and in 158? Gabriel Harvey "96 calls him "the minion secretary. Yet in Lyly's long— 93From "Vicemaster of Paules" it has been inferred that Lyly occupied an ushership at the Paul's choir school. But this is very unlikely because, as E. K. Chambers has already pointed out, 'vice' is a common synonym for 'fool' and "vicemaster," like "foolemaster," probably means noth- ing but "playwright." See E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan §t§g§, III, 412. 94Works of Gabriel Harvey, ed. A. B. Grosart (1884), II, 212. 95A. Feuillerat, John Lyly, p. 451. 96Bond, I, 28. I do not, however, agree with Bond that Lyly probably resigned his post as private secretary "on his assumption of duties in the Revels Office in or about 1585." 78 winded petitions to the Queen, probably written between 1597 and 1631, we read: Thirteen yeares, yor: Higness Servant; Butt; yett nothinge."97 I do not believe that we have to assume, as R. N. 99 Bond does, that Lyly actually held a position in the Revels Office. The answer to this vexed question may be that Lyly acted unofficially, rather than officially, as stage manager and coach to two rival companies at Court-- the Queen's and the Paul's Boys-~which appeared alternately before the Queen through the second half of the 80's. Lyly's connection with the Queen's company, in some unofficial capacity, may have started very early. When the important adult players of Oxford's company were drafted into the Queen's company, he may well have been lent with them to act as their unofficial stage manager and coach. If so, it would have been in 1584, the year in which his name also appears twice in the Chambers Accounts as payee for Oxford's players. This is, of course, all conjectural, but so are the conclusions of all the other investigators of this problem. 97Bond, I, 70. 98Works of John Lyly, I, 40 ff. See also E. K. Cham- bers, Elizabethan Stage, III, 412: "Mr. R. W. Bond bases many conjectures about Lyly's career on a theory that he actually held the post of Clerk Comptroller in the Revels Office, but the known history of the post makes this impos- Sible." CHAPTER III THE ITALIAN INFLUENCE IN LYLY'S PLAYS: DRAMATIC GENRE AND DRAMATIC DEVICES I As has been indicated before, Lyly is highly eclec- tic, skillful and inventive in the handling of dramatic ma- terial. The investigators who have made questionable as— l _ ; sumptions concerning the sources of his plays have been misled both by his great gift for skillful combination of various features of literary genres and by their own scanty knowledge of Italian literature. We have seen that some literary historians, such as Bond and Feuillerat, even have gone so far as to assume that Lyly was unacquainted with Italian literature, primarily because they could not find numerous verbal parallels in the masterpieces of Italian drama. It is true that there is very little "influence" in the narrowest sense of the word, that is, a point to point contact from play to play. But a discussion of literary inter-relations does not consist of merely aligning "verbal Parallels" or "direct sources" for each play. There are many other ways in which authors can become deeply indebted to their predecessors. 79 80 The previous chapters have attempted to show that L314y"was exposed to things Italian and that he must have been well acquainted with Italian literature. In the fol— lowing chapters 1 shall endeavor to demonstrate that Lyly not: , the pastoral-mythological-tragicomic drama, the type 0? drvnna that Lyly appears to have used as a pattern for his dramatic technique . {Siraldi's influence on this kind of drama is usually not snifficiently realized. While his Orbecche has long been cc>nsiderei an important milestone in the develOpment 0f the Renaissance tragedy, his "tragicomedies with happy endinggg" have not been recognized adequately as a signifi- cant stzeap in the develOpment of the pastoral-mytholocical- traEiCCrniic drama. Many of the ideas, first adumbrated in 31raldi.‘ s plays and in Giraldi's Discorso intorno a1 com- Pgifliigfglle commedia e delle tragedie (1543), were later ieveloped and elaborated by disciples of this tradition. It Call ‘therefore be said that there is an unbroken line from f}i_raldi's tragedia di fin lieto to the pastoral— tragixzc>medies of Tasso, Guarini and Lyly. Giraldi's "tragedies," though modeled on Seneca in form E3111 structure, broke with many traditional rules. Is. 83 Giraildi rejected historical subjects, introduced happy end- ings and a greater variety of characters and disregarded or enlazrged the limits of the unities. However, what is most impOthant is that, as a practical dramatist, he put the theatsrical audience first: 3 percio crede hora il Poeta nostro Che si ferme non sian le leggi poste A 1e Tragedie, che non gli sia dato Uscir fuor del prescritto in qualche parte Per ubidire a chi comandar puote 5 E servire a l'eta, a gli spettatori..... llO tliis concept of "servire a l'eta, a gli Spettatori" even AristCJtle had to yield. To avoid the incurrence of "l'in- crescnxnento degli spettatori” is one of his primary obJec- tives. II] Pond, commenting on the midway-position of Lyly's dFauna-”between the regularity of classical drama and the freedom: of the professional stage-~states that through Ivly,lnc>re than any other writer, there passes into the romantic drama of England “1:th infusion of regularity and artistic form Whlherdesses display an intense terrestial life and. are not merely sculptural and decorative. Lyly's mythological characters are also on the level of human beings. They are polished and refined men and Women of the court. Cynthia, the goddess of the moon, be- Comes the revered queen, though somewhat remote in her chas- tity. Her favorite courtier, Endymion, is no longer the K . 13The Stanze were composed in 1475-76 in honor of a 301181: on January 2.9., 1475, in which Julian de’l'.’fedici had heerl victorious. It tells the story of how the proud and uard—hearted Julian who is merely interested in the pleas— bres 0f hunting, encounters the divine Simonetta and is won y her beauty. A few years before, Poliziano's mytholOgi- :31 dI‘ama, 9332, had been presented at Mantua on the occa- ” on Of a festival in honor of the duke of Milan. Ii 14Mia I. Gerhardt, La Pastorale: Essai d'Analyse W (Assen, 1950), P- 78° 'H Va. "w... ’93 youth of classical legend, but has become purely and simply a courtier. like their Italian counterparts, they are ani- mated by an intense, terrestial life. Lyly's methoi of application of mythOIOgy was new in England. To the best of our knowledge, only very few plays before Lyly had introduced mythological elements at all. Jupiter occurs in John Heywood's. The Play of the Nether 3? / -, . . \1537‘). A few years later, about 1537, "EzeulCib-er, whom the Poets doth call the god of fire, Smith unto Jupiter," is introduced in Thersites. In Cambyses, written between 1560 j and 1569, Venus bids Cupid to shoot the king with the gold— " hearified arrow. In Gismond of Salerne by Robert Ellilmot and 15 Others, acted in 1567-69, Cupid delivers two soliloquies. ObViously none of these plays could have served Iyly as a model for his application of mythology. 3 Lyly employs the device of a dumb-show only once, in his Bndimion (II, 3). He uses it for supplementing the al~ M 15The play was revised and published in 1591-92 as EEC red and Gismund.--lt is of interest to note that Cupid's foliloquies were borrowed with some modifications from the :uFid prologue of Dolce's Didone. Cf. John W. Cunliffe, €31 Smond of Salerne," Pr.1LA',"""“XXI (1906), pp. 435-461. It illght be mentioned here that Douglas Bush, in hiythology and wenaissgnce Tradition in English Poetry (Minneapolis, Dubl . , p. 7.), comments on a dramatic festival presented at and 1n in 1528 in which the taylors acted the part of Adam and Eve; the shoe-makers represented the story of Crispin the Crispinianus; the vinters acted Bacchus and his story, r91 Carpenters that of Joseph and Mary; Vulcan and what is Cépated to him, was acted by the Smiths, and the comedy of ’ ‘ 88 , the godless of corn, by the bakers." 91 leegcxry. It represents Endimion's dream16 and forms the ccnngilement of the court history Lyly is allegorically re— Zat ing. This method of handling the dumb—show, that is, of 'ra, about which we are told that they are all tsratti dalla novella di Psiche e d'Amore, descritta naolto piacevolmente da Apuleiormfl.suo Asin d'oro, , , ea s'é andato pigliando 1e parti che son parse piu ; J Iarincipali accomodandole con quella maggior ’ ' diestrezza che s'é saputo alla commedia con inten- zzione di far parere che quel, che Operavano gli IDii nella favola degl' Intermedii, Operassino, (quasi costretti da superior potenza gli huomini zancora nella commedia.l7 The only case in which a somewhat similar type of diun1>——show had been used in England before Lyly was George (his<:<:igne's Jocasta (1566), in which the dumb-show works Endimion narrates his dream in V, i, 91-138. 17Francesco d'Ambra, La Cofanaria (Florence, 1593), p. 55- La Cofanaria was composed between 1550 and 1555, but appear on stage with the intermezzi till December i?» 315565, when it was presented on the occasion of the wed- filngi c>f Francesco de' Medici. Cf. Ireneo Sanesi, La com- ~9§3£2 (Milano, 1954), I, 342. --In the Italian drama the groYTLSSion of sumptuous intermezzi was generally considered "a 111t3rinsic part of the dramatist‘s duty, although the tigefiik;" Trissino condemned them in tragedies as distrac- shonss’ At first they were merely elaborate spectacular 81,:E5s but later on they usually contained symbolic or th €§C>rdc references to the action proper, to the theme of e I3143y. did not ’32 frequently more by analogy than symbol. Put then, Jocasta. is nothing but an English version of Dolce's Giocasta.18 The other English plays which include dumb-shows are gorboduc and Misfortunes of Arthur. In these the dumb-show is used rather to foreshadow "the spiritual meaning of what Was coming next"19 than to complement the meaning of the pl say. The plots are not derived from Italian sources. 4 The use of the dumb-show is closely connected with ballet and singing. There are no fewer than 32 songs in T) Lyly's eight plays.“O In Campaspe (V, 1) there is dancing 18There is, of course, the possibility that Gismond 0f Salerne, acted in 1567—68, employed a similar type of 111rl'i't3-show. The action of the preserved dumb-shows of the I‘EOBVIZ’Lsed edition, Tancred and Gismunda, is however identical "31th the play prOper. As the dumb-shows presented with the 0P1 ginal Gismond of Salerne are not included in the Gismond— Kass - , we will most likely never be able to find out with Cert ainty. 19Gorboduc, ed. L. Toumin Smith (Heilbronn, 1883), P3 xiii.—-l‘he dumb-show in its specific usage in tragedy was first employed in Gorboduc. Although Sackville and Norton {10 nOt follow the methods generally employed by the Ital— l'5"an and Lyly, they, nevertheless, are most probably in- debted to the Italians for the general suggestion of it. °§9Dh Quincy Adams in Chief Ire-Shakespearean Dramas (Cam- bridge, Mass., 1924), p. 503, note 1, writes: "Though the play was ultimately modeled on Seneca, the authors drew muck; of their inspiration from contemporary Italian tragedy they- blank verse, now first used in the English drama, . took over from the Italians; and the dumb-shows they erJ-Ved from the Italian intermedii." 20 editi On. Only twenty-one are handed down through Blount's hei The remaining eleven are indicated in the quartos. The E; actual words are omitted with the exception of two in “-—l~Eflgan in the Moone. See Bond II, 264-265.--There has 95 and. trumbling by Perim and Milo, the sons of a citizen of Atherris, and Loves Metamorphoses (I, 2) has a dance by the nymp>kis. In Gallathea (II, 3) and in Endimion (IV, 3) there are ‘EDallets of Fairies. The first is completely unconnect— ed wrj_th the plot, whereas the second is loosely tied up witki it. All these elements can be found in the Italian pepui]_ar drama and particularly in the commedia dell'arte, whiczk: so frequently mixed the comic and the pastoral. Egg haié1"s Hetamorphoses displays especially clearly the same retFiCDI of mixing the comic and the pastoral. Three fairies forc:ea Joculo to dance with them, just as the commedia _ Q§L1~"arte clowns are forced into dancing with nymphs and Sfi337135 in Scala's pastoral scenarios.21 Here might be added another technical device of LWLZV 's: the introduction of dreams on which the characters arecztzlate. He employs it three times: in Sapho (IV, 3), K; 'yuer1 some doubt thrown on the authorship of these songs. r7. H. Dodds, "Songs in Lyly's Flays," TLS, June 29, v. P. 511. . 21Flaminio Scala's ll Teatro delle favole rappresen- EEEEJZS; (1611) contains fifty scenarios. It is the most im- pot’tal'lt published group of scenarios from the repertory of Che (3falosi. It serves as important evidence as to what the mnpéirly played in France and probably also in England. h(,Ii'lélslé.itrio Martinelli, who appeared with his traveling com— forty 1n Enslani in 1577-79, had played with the M be- 391:r\€?<1ming to England. At the time Drusiano was with the T?~3512£ Flaminio Scala had already been directing the Gelosi. was E therefore safe to assume that Drusiano and his troupe Sc3151alniiliar with at least some of the scenarios written by by D 1for the Gelosi and that some of them were performed PuSiano in England. 19111 94 Endinmion (III, 3 & V, l) and in Mother Bombie (III, 4). Lyly may have derived this device directly from I'lautus, who had used it to foreshadow the action in .fiercator and Rudeins.22 But most likely, as in many other instances, the Italians served again as mediators. As examples we might mention Ruffo's Speculations in Is Calandria (III, 20) and Iuc ' Antonio's in La Strega (II, 2). Dreams were also very ?5 free 1y used in the commedia dell'arte.‘ 5 Lyly was virtually the first to employ dramatic dis— Wise in English drama. In Gallathea Phillida and Galla- thea appear disguisel as boys, Cupid appears as a nymph, and Neptune (in II, 2) is announced as a shepherd.24 In *3 has ‘Noman in the Moone Stesias dresses in his wife's 8P- D&J?eel.to inflict chastisement on the amorous shepherds rfiil.c>s, Learchus and Iphicles. In Mother Bombie Accius and Sllsnaare disguised as Candius and Livia, and vice versa. . 22Thus the dream of Demirho in Mercator, 225 ff., ,9- SCIELIDes how he left a she-goat in the charge of an ape, and how a kid led the goat away and then ridicule-d him. This, Bf fi=crurse, is an allegory of the plot of the play in which Pem¥€r>ho and his son, Charinus, are rivals for the favors of egglcompsa. The kid is Charinus who wins the girl in the I, 1:353?5K. M. Iea, Italian Popular Comedy (Oxford, 1354), 24Scene is not extent in the present version of the Play . 95 The disguise motive was very common in Italian novelle and drama. Particularly the number of girls who appear in Italian plays disguised as boys, the type of disguise used by Lyly in Gallathea, is simply legion.25 It is important to note that this device of the disguised heroine was un- 5 known in classic drama and could thus not have been inher— first transferred from the novel to the st acre by Italian dramatists.26 Us; 11387]. from it. It was In England disguise as a dramatic device had been known before Lyly. There are brief impersonations in rl‘om 2"" _ p «5 Ellerxand His Wife (c. 1550)27 and in the Italianate I—romgg a d C 2" . . . W932 (1578),” and the Vices of the moralities \ T31 2513930373 others, 90101'5 Ragazzo (1541); Aretino's ante (1542); Piccolomini's Alessandro (1551); Calmo's raVa @1‘ . ' ‘ . 3' .— w (1556) Parabosco s Fantesca (before 1557) Iic €010 ’ ‘ Interesse (1581); Graz- zinirflini's Ortensio (1560); Secco s . Riva ‘s Parentadi (1582) and Cecchi's Pellegrine (1567) and W (before 1587). This type of dramatic disguise also ubs in Guarini's influential pastoral tragicome'iy Pastor Fldo - Wig 26There is, of course, a possibility that Lyly's dis— 5 ~e may have been suggested by Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book IX - He]; in which Iphis is presented to her father as a boy. I‘ather promises his supposed son in marriage to Ianthe. Her and her In ' 3:102:18 actually falls in love with Ianthe. eJr's prayers are answered by Isis, who transforms Iphis into a boy T31 27‘I‘om Tayler disguises himself in hi.c friend's (Tom tereb: 3) coat and beats his friend's wife without the lat- _ discovering Tayler's identity. 28Whetstone presents Cassandra "apparelled like a “ only in a monologue scene. ‘ ' She appears, however, 96 sometimes masquerade as. virtues.29 But obviously Lyly's disguisings are nothing like these. To sum up: Lyly's plays are, on the whole, in spir— it, method ‘and dramatic technique unlike those of his Eng- lish predecessors, but very similar to those of the tragicomic—pastoral tradition in Italy. The theory of an hm“ entirely independent English development appears therefore i to be untenable. On the contrary, it may be assumed with some safet,y that the technique of Lyly's court drama is more or 1e ss the direct mitgrowth and continuation of the Italian tradition. The subsequent chapters will further substantiate Lyly's indebtedness to Italian literary tradi- tions and Conventions. 29I , _ . . , . , n Skelton s hzagnificence the hero, for instance, mistakes Fancy for Largess, Crafty Conveyance for Sure Sur- yance, , Courtly Abusion for Lusty Pleasure, Folly for Con— ceit, 31.131 Cloaked Collusion for Sober Sadness. In Lyndsay § Satire of the Three Estate§,Flattery, Falsehood, 3‘.” De°?lt change their names into Devotion, Sapience, and alscret}0n and don the costumes of friars that symbolize Oggropglately devotion, wisdom, and discretion. Cf. Victor Y5 Er I‘eeburg, Disguise Plots in Elizabethan Drama (New r ’ 1915), p. 19. pearldied on stock-characters. CHAPTER IV lYLY'S USE AND MODIFICATION OF STOCK—CHARACTERS I The early Elizabethan comic writers consciously de- Richard Edwardes, in his pro- 1C>§§11e to Damon and Pithias (1571), for instance, advances tries opinion that In comedies the greatest skill is this: rightly to touch and eke to frame each person so That by his common talk you may his nature rightLyknow. A roister ought not preach--that were too strange to hear,- so ought his words appear. The old man is sober; the young man rash; the lover triumphing in joys; The matron grave; the harlot wild, and full of wanton1 toys. All things to the quick, But, as from virtue he doth swerve, E“reint serious attempts at individualization by some Eliza- bethan comic playwrights cannot conceal this conventional Ha truzire of Elizabethan dramatic characterization. Stage types continued throughout Elizabeth's reign to ‘t><31 a point of departure for the practical dramatist, Wh<> JI?ecognized very well the value of having ready-made t . Zfrteg C: that had been successfully tried before on the stage k... \ 1Chief Ere-Shakespearean Dramas, ed. by Joseph Pu . Y 11'1ch Adams (New York, 1924), p. 572. ~ 97 98 by professional comedians. Despite excellent individuali- zat ion, Lyly's Sir Topas, Jonson's Bobadil and Shakespeare's Pal staff, for instance, clearly belong to the same type. They merely represent the miles gloriosus, the traditional. braggart soldier, at one, two or three removes respective— ’l E 157. Many other types that eke a place regularly among the dxrsiniatis personae, not only of comedies but of tragedies, tirsaggi-comedies and pastorale, could be added. Counterparts to many of the comic types of Eliza- bcztztian drama can already be found in Plautus and Terence. . Tklee latin playwrights display, indeed, a number of well- Lisef‘j.ned stock-types with "numerous variations within each type," thus showing "a wide range of human virtue and fraiity. "2 Some of the Elizabethan stock types may well have been derived directly from the Latin dramatists, but doubt- LeSS most of them found their way to the English stage t3b1x>c>ugh the medium of intervening Italian drama. The no— ticeable Italianate quality in most types suggests inter- TDE3C1Zi~ary Italian models. II Emphasis on didacticism and decorum encouraged and s . . . . . . . 111f-D'F?>C>rted the oinquecentisti in their conventionalized, \\ “513‘ 2George E. Duckworth, The Nature of Roman Comedy lnceton. 1952). r. 236. 99 type characterization. Dramatists and critics alike were in complete agreement that comedy, for instance, was——.just as Cicero had defined it--an imitation of life, a mirror of manners, and that, in accordance with Horace, its aim should be: "to delight and to instruct." It was the con— ser12311s of Opinion that "Vere commedia sono quelle che piacevole e argute dilrttano: e gravi e severe giovano som- mannerite."3 Stage tyres ensured both the pleasure and the moral value of comedy. The portrayal of "persona scioche, malediche e innamorate"4 not only could arouse laughter and thus render pleasure to the audience, but, at the same time , coul‘l guarantee the moral function of comedy by ridi- culing the extremes of behavior. By presenting a mirror of everyday life, the character showed the audience what to fOlle and what to avoid, and by observing decorum, i.e., the Horatian precept of self~consistency,5 the dramatists 5Girolamo Razzi in his Prologue to la Balia (Fi- Penze, 1560). ""' " 3 4Le Commedie di N. Machiavelli (Torino, 1932, ed. by om . Guerri, PrOIOgue to Clizia. at 5The following passage from Horace's Art of Poetry Eberted a considerable influence upon conventionalized tr25E?(:terization in Renaissance drama: "Either stick to Whe 1 tion or see that your inventions be conSistent. If Bohr-1 V'L'riting a play you introduce yet again the 'far-famed “9:1 1 es,’ make him impatient, hot—tempered, ruthless, him; . Ce; he must disown all laws: they were not made for We, his appeal will be to the sword. In like manner let a tra _ be high-hearted and unconquerable, Ino tearfu1,.IXion to tiltor, Io a wanderer, Crestes forlorn. If you bring on c («2 stage a subject unattempted yet, and are bold enough reate a fresh character, let him remain to the end such 100 vxn11.C1 leave no doubt whatever in the spectator's mind as to the:i.r? aims and intentions. Throughout the Renaissance many Italian dramatists (Knisszidered Terence and Ilautus absolute masters of comedy. In tstie prologue to Ia Cessaria Ariosto tells us that "la *fiii [\arte ... solo stima quel che gli antigui han detto per- 6 . . . . . . fet:t:c>." accordinf to Rentzvoglio, the Latin playwrights iissxniLayed such injenuity in their studies, attained such a higgri degree of perfection that -.. noi moderni :30n sappiam dir us far perfettamente lcuna cosa, se iietro ai famosi 7 \festigi lor non ci sforziam di gire. In view of this attitude, this great admiration for thee (:lassics on the part of Italian writers, it is not sur- (5 I’l—Estng to find a marked Latin influence in the Italian #4.) ’I?sinisa, not only in structure and plots, but also in charac- beFissation. The principal characters of Latin comedy such as; tzkje adulescens, senex, servus, etc., continue heir fre- quderrif: appearance on the Renaissance stage. Lorenzino de' i.’e-ii . . ' . A“. . F'Z( C21, in the prologue to his n1idos1a (comp. 1555), tells kn_53 éilldience, for instance, not to be indignant if they see \ :§J~fle> was when he first appeared--consistent throughout." W‘riilj ‘H. Gilbert, Literary Criticism: Plato to Dryden (New ’ w 1*)!10), pp. 151-52. Qii‘t- 61h Ludovico Ariosto: Le Commedie (Bologna, léao), €353— bv Eichele Catalano, I, 7. 7Ercole Bentivoglio, Prologue to I Fantasmi (Vene- Zia ’ 1 545) . 131 again young lovers, old misers, intriguing servants and similar matter; no comic playwright can do without them: Ferd non abbiate a sdegno se, altre volte avendo visto venir in scena un giovan innamorato, un vecchio avaro, un servo che inganni el padrone e simil cose (delle quali non puo uscir chi vuol far commedie), di nuovo gli vedrete. .. III The imitation of the Latins, however, is not as Sl av fish as might appear from these statements. "La imita- 21 one non é cosi servile come si vuol far credere da molti, e Spesso non ve n'ha di nessunissima guisa," Arturo Graf 9 WPites in his studies on the Italian drama. Despite the profound admiration for their illus- tr‘iOus classic predecessors and the insistence of their Petty-minded contemporary critics on observing Aristotelian I'll-les to the letter, Italian dramatists introduced into the ir plays many modifications and innovations which they ccI>r:ls:i.dered necessary in the light of the new social envi- I‘Onment. While on the one hand, they continue to extol the IneI‘its of the ancients, on the other hand, they soon dis- play a strong determination to be original, even at the risk of being censured: \ BI. 800mmedie Giocose del '5oo, edited by Anton Giulio toigaglia, I, 190, in Classici dell'Umorismo (Colombo edi— e) , vol. XIII (1946). See: 9Arturo Graf, Studi drammatici (Rome, 1878), p. 84. del a{lso G. A. Galzigna, Fine a che punto i commediografi Wascimento abbiano imitatoPlauto e Terenzio (Capo- r18. 1899-1900). pp- 39-40. L 102 .A' dotti abbiam a dir, che e' non aspettino ‘Una commedia grave, e copiosissima Di sentenze, com' una di Terenzio O d'altro antico; ma tal qual producono I tempi nostri, che non sendo simili .A quelli antichi, non é anche un miracolo Se non son simil gli uomini, e le favole Da lor composte: e'n questo caso facciane Come le pecchie; tutte il buono piglino, (Se pero ve ne fia) e il resto lascino lO Agli altri, che son piu, ui basta ridere. A risew social environment clearly demands a new procedure. Wriseri in one of Grazzini's plays Prologo advocates the ob- seeirxrance of "precetti antichi, come ne insegna Aristotile e (Dirazio," Argomento simply replies: ... Aristotile e Orazio viddero i tempi lore, ma i nostri sono d'un' altra maniera: abbiamo altri costumi, altra religione e altro modo di vivere e pero bisogna fare le commedia in altro mode: in Firenze non si vive come si viveva gia in Atene in Roma....11 Not content with a close imitation and reproduction C31? ILatin matter, the Italian dramatists--supported by the E§€3risereus patronage of the Italian nobility, who allowed {71?6363 thoughts and aspirations in dramatic matter--soon paSsed on to greater independence and a larger admixture of It a1 ian material. 5D 1OPrOIOgue to Francesco D'Ambra's I Bernardi, in II ‘£3$1$£$:o Classico del Secolo XVI, Volume Unico (Milano, Pleste, 1858), N. 7, p. 41. D'Ambra (1499-1558) was a ember of the Florentine Academy. His three comedies--_I_1 -—EEJEJE{, I Bernardi and La Cofanaria-~were printed after his 198th, between 1560 and 1565' in. 11Pr0108ue to La Stre a by Anton Francesco Grazzini, SEIEEEmedie Giocose del '555, IV, 229, In W 105 Most cinquecentisti used such personages as the leno urns, amator fervidus, servolus callidus, arr-ica illu- R3 e1:- ens , sodalis epitulata, miles praeliator, parasitus edax, . l2 parentes tenaces, meretrices procaces, etc., merely as a p. point of departure for their faithful portrayal of actual sixteenth—century characters. As they proceeded with gre star and greater freedom and originality, they soon even introduced new characters. Alongside the old fixed types, we find new representatives of the new social order. The commedia erudita displays such types as i1 frate, 1a monaca, LE1 pinzochera, i1 pedante, lo scholaro d'universita, i_l_ Egromante, la stregg, la balia and la fanciulla libera. Hiany of them are portrayed from direct observation; others are derived from the novelle. Most of them are eventually bequeathed to the commedia dell'arte. Many of these characters left their imprint on the European Renaissance drama. Cinquecento Italy was regarded as ‘a classic age throughout Renaissance Europe, and any Subsequent recreating of classics was bound to include or reflect Cinquecento modifications or innovations. IV Lyly's characterizations follow the principles of moi and decorum in their simplicity and self-consistency. \ 12 ,, Anton Giulio Bragaglia, Commedie Giocose del '500, Inc r0111). ction," p. 8. 4?- ..- -..-.1 I, 3 104 He might have learned these principles from the precepts and practice of the ancients, from the Cinquecentisti, or from both. His methods of characterization, in any case, parallel those of the Italians. A character of Lyly's exhibits just those traits which will fit him for his role. Lyly was not striving for such complexity of character as one finds in ShakeSpeare's persons. His characters never change. Alexander displays a gallant, majestic attitude towards women throughout 939;— Lagpg, from the moment he generously forgives Timoclea un— til the end when he cedes Campaspe to his rival Appelles and sets out to conquer the world. To further change and complic ate Alexander's character would have meant the vio- lation of the law of self-consistency which was closely ob- served by the cinguecentisti. The same self-consistency is displayed by other CharBCte rs. Sapho, the virtuous Queen of Syracuse, having been st puck by Cupid's arrows, is incapable of transcending her imPotent lamentations and complaints until Venus, moti- vated by jealousy, effects a solution. Phao is eternally undecided, immobilized by the great respect for his mis- tress- Not even the encouraging advice by Sybilla can ov echme his inertia. Endimion does nothing but sigh, and cha stfi, cold and remote Cinthia in her indifference con- sent S will to kiss him only at the dictates of the oracle. She hot reciprocate his love, although she condescends to 105 accept his homage: "Endimion, this honorable respect of thine, shalbe christned loue in thee, So my reward for it fauc1rn."13 Midas allows misfortune upon misfortune to pile up 011 his imbecile head without doing anything but taking notic:e3 of his mishaps and silently enduring them. Neptune in Eggjllathea is continually incensed just as are the waves whicli he symbolizes. In Sapho and Phao Vulcan is the kind- namizreed husband, forever desperately trying to satisfy the caprti<:es of his flighty Spouse, Venus, the lascivious God- dess,, :forever tormented by voluptuous desires, and so on. These few examples suffice to show that complexity and deemrelopment of character in the modern sense is not found :izq Lyly's protagonists. A few words were enough to portragr the one or two dominant traits for which these his- toricafl and.mythological figures were known. They had been handed Clown to the Renaissance writers as stereotypes with defini1363 attitudes, actions and qualities assigned to them. V IMany of Lyly's "occupational—realistic"14 person— nages are to a large extent modelled on Latin or Italian \ 13v, iii, 179-80 in Bond, III, 76. filni 1I‘LIn.the Renaissance theory of characterization we Me1_ a varied number of categories of characters. Erasmus, mobglkzhthon and Minturno offered as many as a dozen or tuii ~ Characters are class1f1ed by nationality, sex, for— age, rank, etc. For our purposes, however, Lyly's characters are he sat: arranged into two major groups, basically following a 106 stock-types. To be sure, Memphio in Mother Bombie is little more than the avaricious old man of the Latin drama, Candius of the same play the typical young man in love, 15 Lais in Campaspe the courtezan, Sir Tophas in Endimion the miles gloriosus. They are perhaps all directly derived from Plautus and Terence. But it is much more conceivable that they came to the English stage through the intervening ‘ medium of Italian drama. ' o o \ o C' o ‘1. 16 Lyly s precoc1ous, mischievous, swaggering pages have much in common with the Italian paggio (page) and ragazzo (boy).17 The pedant Pandion in Sapho and Phao, suggestion for classification advanced by the Italian laywrig‘nt and critic Giovan Giorgio Trissino in his oetica (1565). Trissino had divided characters into two classes, the general and the particular. The generalized characters are philos0phical and invite to virtue and deter from vice. The particularized characters are rhetorical and are in agreement with nature. They are portrayed ac- cording to age, fortune, disposition, education, etc. Cf. Giovanni Giorgio Trissino, La Poetica (Venice, 1529-65), II, 55 ff. To the first category we would assign Lyly's his- torio-mythological-allegorica1 personages, such as Alexan- der, Sapho, Phao, Endimion, Cinthia, etc., to the second, the occupational-realistic characters, such as servants, pages, maids-of-honor, alchemists, astrologers, etc. On Renaissance theory of characterization in general, see Marvin T. Herrick, Comic Theory in the Sixteenth Century (Urbana, 1950), pp. 150-75. 15L. L. Schficking, pp. 101—03; Violet M. Jeffery, fighn Lyly and the Italian Renaissance, pp. 98-102. 16The Page to Alexander (Campas g); Criticus, Molus (Sapho and Phao); Dares, Samias, Epiton (Endimion); Licio, Petulus, Minutius (Midas). 17 . . 0n the Italian aggio or rasazzo see A. Salza Delle commedia di Lodovico Dolce ZMeIfi,,1899), p. 56 ff. 107 though not as well deveIOped as his colleagues of the Ital- ian drama, may yet have been suggested by his many Italian counterparts. The obnoxious old nurse Vicinia in Mother Bombie is the Italian Eilié and the Sergeant of the same play is most likely a direct descendant of the Italian 18 sbirro. Ariosto's negpomante and his many colleagues in drama and novella definitely are the model for Lyly's Alchemist in Gallathea.19 The soothsayers Sybilla in Sapho and Phao and Mother Bombie in the play to which she gives her name, and the witch Dipsas in Endimion are the Italian fgttucchiera or strega or maga, modified by theories and ideas of the trattatisti. As we shall see in the chapter on "Women, Beauty and Love," Lyly's plays are primarily ex— positions of his Neo—Platonic-Petrarchistic love-theories, and even his "occupational-realistic" characters were fre— quently employed and modified to fit into his scheme. 20 largely To this group we might add Lyly‘s nymphs, inspired by their Italian counterparts, but also employed and modified for the purpose of expounding Neo—Platonic- Petrarchistic love-theories. An excellent illustration of how a type was modified and adapted to the exposition of theories and ideas of the 18L. L. Schucking, p. 99. 19Ibid., p. 88; see also V. M. Jeffery, John Lyly and 3‘s Italian Renaissance, p. 97. 2OTelusa, Eurota, Ramia, Larissa‘(Gallathea) and Nisa, Celia, Niobe, Tirtena (Love's Metamopphosis). 108 trattatisti is furnished in the character of the witch. However, before we discuss this stock-type in Iyly, first a few words on magic and witchcraft in general and then a few remarks on the stock-type of magician and witch in Italian literature are necessary. VI “ Occult sciences were, of course, not unknown in Roman times. There were numerous "Locustas" who were al- 3 ways willing to make some extra money by telling fortunes, ”1“ . +~_ but much of magic art was still a recognized part of the Roman religion in the hands of priests. It is therefore not surprising that despite the great amount of supersti- tion in ancient Rome, we have only a small element of magic in its comedy. Any attempt by a comic playwright to deal with matters of religion was bound to meet with great dif- ficulties. Therefore, except for the ominous dreams, the haunted house in the Mostellaria, Gripus' suggestion that Palaestra might be able to divine the contents of the gistella by the help of supernatural powers,21 and, except for an occasional reference to a woman as ygpefica, magic arts are not represented in Roman comedy. The range of magic and demonology increased in the Middle Ages, after having been strengthened and reinforced by deities and rituals of pagan Europe, by the very ma- 21Rudens, IV, iv, 95-96. 109 berial which the Christian Church had hOped to discredit. It received a further impulse in the late fifteenth century by the bull of Innocent VIII (1484) and the operations of Sprenger and Kramer. Occult sciences flourished. Witches and magicians abounded in real life and soon also in lit- erature. But not all men of letters who introduced magic int: 0 their works approved of it. Among others, Petrarch ani Boccaccio, then Piccolomini and Politian and somewhat later, the dramatists almost as a body, Opposed the current ideas on magic and used necromancers and witches primarily as (zomic relief in their literature. The best—known ex- alee is Ariosto's Negromante. In the pastoral tradition with its Arcadian atmos- phe I?e the necromancer frequently becomes the Deus ex TEESEEEQQ, shaping, rearranging and unravelling the threads of the complicated plots. The magic element becomes more and more important. There is a rapid and constant growth, from Giraldi's §g_l_e (1545)-—in which the satyr, the "uom selvaggio" of the eCIOgues, becomes a kind and honest "111360" who makes lovers fall asleep in order to hear their secrets--to Matteaccio's Fillidoro (1613) and Girolamo Vida' s Filliria (1621) in which we find an overpowering, staggering succession of incantations and transformations. Side by side with the type of the mago, negromante or stregone who abounded in the novelle22 and in comedy, A 22There are, for instance, true negromanti in Boc- caccio, Decamerone VIII, 7, 9; Giovanni Sabadino degli (In. .‘u. 110 we find also the Italian strega, the offspring of the Hora- 23 tian Canidia or Ovidian Dipsas. Like the classical en- chantress or conjuress, she was credited with the power of exciting love and hatred between man and woman. She was different from the Northern counterpart with her hysterical dreams and marvelous journeys through the air. "The busi- ness of the 'strega,'" says Burckhardt, "was to provide for other peOple's pleasures," and By far the most important field of the activity of the "strega" lay . . . in love-affairs, and includ- ed the stirring up of love and hatred, the produc— ing of abortion, the pretended murder of the un- faithful man or woman by ma ical arts, and even the manufacture of poisons. She is skilled in herbs and she is credited with the most amazing powers, such as to turn ... li correnti fiumi facendoli tornare nelle lor fonti ... facendo ancora muovere le stanti selve e tremare gli eccelsi monti e ne corpi morti tornare dalle paludi stigie 1e loro ombre, e Vivi uscire de sepolcri; e tal volta tirarti, o lune alla tua rotondita ... facendo ancora tel volta la chiara faccia del sole impallidire. Arienti, Le Porrettane (Bologna, 1495) XXV; Lasca, Cene, I, 5; II, 4; III, I0; Bandello, I, 20, 29, 56; Straparola, Piacevoli Notti, IX, L. For a list of necromancers in com- edy, see G. A. Galzigna, Fino a chegpunto i comrediografi ...., part II, pp. 14-17. , ' 23H0race. §g£i£ss. I viii. and Epo des, v and XVII. 0v1d, Amores, I. V111. 24Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renais- sgnce in Italy, ed. Modern Library, p. 599. 25G. Boccaccio, Filocolo, Book IV, ed. Moutier (Flor- ence, 1829), p. 54. Ill The best example of a strega in comedy is furnished by Lasca (Anton Francesco Grazzini) in his La Strega. lbnna Sabattina is a "gran donna nello stregare e nelle malie." There was never "negli incantesimi maggiore donna 26 da Circe in qua." The type was also taken over by the commedia dell’arte. A late example is the malicious en- ,1___ chantress of a scenario of the Corsini manuscript, entitled Ia Maga, who is depicted as having power of turning love into hate and hate into love. She enchants a fountain, ‘ giving it "virtu di cambiare l'amor in oiio, et l'odio in ; amore."27 (I The novelle and the drama are not the only genres in which the element of magic plays an important role. The question "se si pué oer magica piegar l'animo ad amare" is frequently discussed by the trattatisti who, as will be seen in the next chapter, exerted a decisive influence on Lyly's concept of love. A condemnation of magic, love- philtres, sleeping draughts, etc., was an essential part of the love-discussion in the trattati d'amore. In Castiglione's Qgrtigiano, Bernardo strongly Opposes those who in love "practise enchauntmentes, sorceries, and otherwhile plaine force, sometime meanes to cast them in sleepe and suche 26In Commedie Giocose del '500, IV, 256. La Strega, I, ii. 27Reproduced by K. M. Lea in Italian Popular Comedy (Oxford, 1954), II, 617. 112 . 28 2 . like matters." squicola warns not to seek incantamenti; né imagini, ne alla magica osserva~ tione dei celesti influssi; ne segni con parole de— terminate, percio che tutte son delusioni, tutte fraudi, tutte armi a creduli; tutte reti, dove si inviluppano 1i semplicetti....2 In the "Dialogue on the Remedies for Love" of his Dia- loghi30 Lodovico Domenichi tells us that magic will never heal a wound causei by love nor make a woman love against It will be seen that precisely the same attitude towards magic and witchcraft is displayed by Lyly in, for instance, his treatment of the witch Dipsas in Endimion. VII Lyly's witch-characters, Sybille, mother Bombie and Dipsas, are more or less descendants of the ancient en- chantress of the Horatian or Ovidian tvpe. But the direct source of suggestion is found in Italian literature. There are no prototypes in Latin comedy. Lyly's treatment of them comes clearly into line with the Italian tradition, for he imposes such limitations on witchcraft as the Ital— ian trattatisti do. 28The Book of The Courtier from the Italian of Count Egldassare Castiglione: Done into English by Sir Thomas Hoby, anno 156T. With an Introduction by Walter Raleigh. (London, 1900), p. 202. f 29Libro della Natura d'Amore, Bk. V (Venice, 1525), . 157. EOLodovico Domenichi, Dialoshi (Venice, 1562), p. 113. 11} Mother Bombie is the least developed character of the three. She is of no interest for our purpose, because she is really unessential to the plot anl the theme of the play. bhe merely tells'some characters their fortune. As she occurs in Lyly's only realistic, that is, non- alleeorical play, her short and insignificant role is not ~ lmm surprising. Lyly did not have to use her in the exposition I i of his theories and ileas. It is different with Sybille and Dipsas. Sybille, : "an amed Soothsayer," is really not a witch in the strict sense. She is noble-minded and kind-hearted, ready to ad- vise Fhao in his difficulties. By so doing, she also ful- fills a very important function in the exposition of Lyly's system of love. With her practical worldly wisdom, she stands in strong contrast to Sapho's clear—sightedness and Spiritual resistance. She warns Phao not to make "too much of fading bewty, which is fair in the cradle, & foul in the graue";31 and advises him not to lose "the pleasaunt time of ... youth, then the which there is nothing swifter, nothing sweeter."32 She expounds to him the typical Egg amoris precepts of seduction: Loue, faire child, is to be gouerned by arts, as thy boat by an care: for fancie, thogh it cometh by hazari, is ruled by wisdome. If my preceptes may perswade, . . . I woulde wish thee first to 51Sapho and Phao, II, i, ss-se. 521bii., II, 1, 99-100. 114 be diligent: for womenne desire nothing more then to haue their seruants officious. Be alwaies in sight. . . . Flatter, I meane lie; little things catch light minds. . . . Imagine with thy selfe all are to bee won. . . . Chuse such words as may melt her minde . . . write and persist in writing . . . in attire braue, but not too curious; when she smileth, laugh outright; if rise, stande v,; if sit, lye downe. . . . Can you sing, shew your cunning, can you daunce, vse your legges; can you play vpo any instrument, practise your fingers. . . . Looke pale, and learns to be leane. . . . Vse no sorcerie to hasten thy successe: wit is a witch. . . . Be not coy, beare sooth, sweare, die to please thy Lady. . . . If thou haue a ryuall, be pacient; arte must winde him out, not malice . . . her change, and thy constancie. Whatever she weareth, sweare it becomes her. In thy loue be secrete....33 Despite the Ovidian tradition, one notes the some- what "Italianate" tone of the passage in general, the re— flection of the trattatisti. Note particularly the instruc- tion not to use sorcery in love—affairs, an attitude which, as we have seen, was so prevalent in the trattati d'amore. She can even "manifest the causes," but she "cannot remoue 4- . . . . . the effectes."5 Her "sound aduice may mitigate' Phao's (" miseries, but cannot remove them. she "may deferre, though not take away."35 The same attitude towards magic, only more clearly elaborated, is displayed in the treatment of Dipsas in Endimion. Dipsas has amazing powers. Just like, for in- 3311311., II, iv, 55 ff. 54Sapho and Phao, II, i, 120-21. 351mm, II, iv, 55 and 49. 115 stance, Sannazaro's witch in Arcalie, she "can darken the . V I 6 Sunne by 51:11, and remooue the Inoone out of her course."5 Esknxee can furthermore "restore youth to the aged, and make «57 t1:i.]_s without bottoms, just like her Italian counterparts. "71311ere is nothing that I can not doe, . . . but . . . rule It 38 tlJELITtS, she 8838» When she is asked by Tellus in the typ- - ‘ —+.C:=al manner of the trattatisti whether it is possible by kE—Efelrbes, stones, spels, incantation, enchauntment, exor— C3~3—S¥res, fire, mettals, plannets, or any practise, to plant Elf'-15‘ection where it is not, anl to supplant it where it - 2( 3-53 - "’3 bhe can "breede slacknes in loue, though never ‘* C><>fite it out."40 Lyly is also in line with those Italian comic play- W'll‘iights and trattatisti who opposed popular superstition 511153- belief in magic arts when Dipsas' witchcraft is depict- EBC1» as the most damnable of instruments for obtaining one's 1e o ' [+1 1 ° , .° ~o:Lres, wnen her schemes are ruined and when, despite \ 561, iii, 20-21. 571, iii, 21-22. 581, iii, 24. 391, iii, 14-17. 401, iii, 52-54. n, 4lin I, iv, 6-7, Floscula, for instance, tells Tellus: fQ)1?" . for there cannot bee a thing more monstrous then to as; $E<3 affection by sorcery." Cynthia refers to witchcraft (\r ‘that detested wickednes" or "most vnnatural practise" ’ iii, 21-22 anl 65-64). 116 her magic powers, she comes to a sad end from which only Cynthia can save her. CHAPTER V WOXEH, BEAUTY AND LOVE. 1. The Tradition of the Trattati d'Amore 1 In Athens and Rome love was primarily conceived of as simple pleasure or intellectual friendship. Human beauty in general or feminine beauty in particular was one of the many forms with which the universe adorned itself. Woman was an instrument of pleasure and as such she was already the object of brilliant glorifications and vulgar vitupera- tion. Nith the coming of the Church Fathers, the eternal theme was modified by Christianity. Human beauty in gen— eral or feminine beauty in particular was looked upon as a diabolical temptation. Human love unless associrted with conception was thought of as sinful or at least as a shame- ful weakness which one had to hide. Even with the benedic- tion of God, it was not compatible with perfect virtue. Virginity was preferable to marriage. Annoyed by the Jo- vinianists, who denied the perpetual virginity of Mary and believed that, other things being equal, a virgin was no better in the eyes of God than a wife or a widow, these 117 118 Church Fathers produced veritable compendiums of feminine vices in order to prove their point. By dwelling on the faults and wickedness of women, they tried to popularize celibacy. Jerome's Against Jovinian is the best known ex- ample. Thus we find already two contradictory attituies in the Fathers. On the one hand, woman is abused as the origi- nator of carnal pleasure, wh reas, on the other, she is ex- alted and deified as "T e Virgin." With the coming of chivalric customs the woman was glorified as the mother of soldiers, the stimulus to virtue j J and the bestower of grace, while,on the one hand, the mi- sogynist literature continued to flourish and, on the other hand, goliarlic songs of the clerici vagantes could be heard in the medieval cities. A new direction was given by the founder of the dolce stil nuovo, Guido Guinicelli of Bologna. His views on the 'gentle heart' are propounded in his most beautiful and famous canzone, Al cor gentil ripara sempre amore. He and the other poets of the period, Cino da Pistoia and Guido Cavalcanti, Dante's intimate friend, approached love from the viewpoint of-mysticism, allegory and metaphysical interpretation. The beloved tends to become a mere alle- gorical figure. The poets blended the memory of the woman who had incited passion in their souls with those high thoughts and exalted feelings which were then regarded as concomitant of true love, till the woman disappeared in a 119 cloud of adoration and a maze of philosophical, metaphysi- cal conceptions. The greatest exaltation and sublimation of the woman occurred in Italy when Dante carried Guinicelli's concept of the corggentil to the point of transforming Beatrice in- to a religious symbol. But this pure Dantesque transcend- ence was weakened again in Petrarca in whom the physical element was re-asserted. His Laura is no longer a mystical, allegorical figure, but a real woman. The love Petrarca bears to Laura is not of the exalted quality of Guinicelli's, or of the beatific temper of Dante's. Although a certain idealization is apparent, it is an earthly human love which is subject to the vicissitudes of human passion. In Boccaccio the attitude towards woman reverts to a more classical concept. Woman becomes again primarily an instrument of pleasure. She is the expression of the wily and sensual femininity. With the beginning of humanism, woman is fast becom— ing an equal, a sweet companion of man, suffused with bash- fulness, but yet vibrant with desire just like Botticelli's Venus. Her degradation from her high position, occasioned by a hostile medieval attitude toward women revived by the classical view of sex, was only temporary. With the foundation of the Florentine Academy and the study of love as a cosmological force, the way for the redemption of woman was prepared. By the time Cardinal 120 Bembo writes his Asolani, woman is well on the way to be- coming the most "potent of all factors in spiritual exalta- tion." ian rises to God through the contemplation of the beautiful, and woman is the nearest to divine beauty. Her beauty is un arra delle cose celesti, una immagine e un . . . l . ~ . Simulacro de' beni del paradiso," writes Agnolo Firenzuola, one of the important trattatista of the platonic-petrerch- istic trend. Woman's significance is best summed up by the same author in his disguisitions Delle bellezze delle donne (1541): Le bellezza e 1e donne belle ... meritano d'esser commendate e tenute carissime de ognuno; perciocché 1a donna belle e il piu bello obbietto che si ri- miri, e la bellezza e il maggior dono che fecesse Iddio all'umena creature; conciossieché per la di lei virtu noi ne indirizziamo l'animo alla con- templazione, e per la contemplazione a1 desiderio delle cose del cielo: ond' ella e per saggio e per arra state mandate tre noi, ed e di tanta forza e di tento velore, ch'ella é state posta de' savi per la prima e piu eccellente cosa che sia tra i sub- bietti amabili, anzi l'hanno chiamata 1a sede stes- se, 11 nido e l'albergo d'amore; d'amore dico, origine e fonte di tutti i comodi umani.2 In the first decade of the Cinquecento various trends had merged into a new and artificial concept of love from which there appeared a type of metaphysics woman who ex- isted merely in the world of arts. This sort of "falsified Beatrice" existed side by side with the cortigiane of the 1A. Firenzuola, Opera (Milano, 1802), I, 51. 2A. Firenzuola, Prose scelte, annotated by 8. Ferrari (Firenze, 1915), pp. 115-16. 121 humanistic tradition of free love. in the world of courtly art we encounter a peculiar double standard by which the medonne and the cortigiana can be extolled and loved by one and the same poet. 2 Petrerch's attitude had already opened the way for fusing the older Provencal tradition with certain neo- platonic concepts, such as the Ladder of Love, which al- lowed a View of love as at once of the flesh and the spir- it. The Platonic element was then to produce the second great modification in the Italian love tradition. The cult of Plato first spread from Florence. A Latin comment on the Symposium bv Narsilio Ficino of the Accedemie Platonica was the primary means of arousing gen- eral interest in Platonic love concepts.5 It is the first complete and systematic treatise on love in modern times. Ficino accepts the doctrines of Plato in the main. But he develops his theme under Christian influence. The tran— scendentalism of Plato's §ymposium and Phaedrus was not op- posed to Christian concepts and made Christienization of the Platonic concept of love relatively easy. 3Ficino's translation of Plato's complete works was published in Florence in 1485-84. The Latin comment on the S osium appeared in 1496. The Italian translation of it By gic1no himself came out under the title: Marsilio Fi- ginojSopra lo Amore over' Convito di Platone (Florence, 1544 . 122 Ficino's exposition of Plato's Symposium struck a religious note at the very outset. He wrote: The supreme Love of the Divine Providence, to re- call us to the right way (of love) which we had lost, inspired of old in Greece a most chaste woman named Diotima, a priestess; who, finding the philosonher Socrates especially consecrated to love, revealed to him what this ardent desire was, and how we can fall thereby into the greatest evil, and how we can ascend thereby to the Supreme Good . . . . may the Holy Spirit of Divine Love, who inspired Diotima, illumine our minds, and inflame our wills, in such fashion that we may love Him in all His beautiful works, and then love His works in Him, and so come to rejoice infinitely in His infinite Beauty.4 To Ficino and the Neoplatonists love is a desire for beauty, and beauty in all its manifestations is a reflec- tion or a ray of the Divine Bounty. It is "il raggio di Dio, infuso in que' quattro cerchi, che intorno a Dio si 5 rivolgono." This represents in questi quattro cerchi, tutte le spezie di tutte 1e cose: e noi chiemiamo quelle spezie, nella Mente Angelica, idee; nell' Anima, ragioni; nelle Nature, semi; e nella Meteria, forme. Per il che, in quattro cerchi, quattro splendori appariscono: lo splendore delle idee, nel primo; lo splendore delle ragioni, nel secondo; lo splendore de' semi, nel terzo; e lo splendor delle forme, nell' ultimo. 4Prefatory letters to Bernardo del Nero % Antonio Manetti: Mersilio Ficino sopra l'Amore evero Convito di Pletone (Florence, l544). Quoted by Edmund G. Gardner in his introduction to A Platonic Discourse upon Love by Pico della Mirendola (Boston, 1914), pp. xv-xvi. 5M. Ficino, SOpra lo Amore ovvero Convito di Platone, ed. by G. Rensi (Lanciano, Cerebba, 1914), p. 50. 6 Ibid., p. 50. 125 If love is the desire for beauty and if beauty is a H ! reflection or raggio di Dio,‘ then it is obvious that what lovers seek and desire unknowingly is God: ... l'impeto dello Amatore non si spegne per es- petto o tetto di corpo alcuno: perché egli non desilera questo corpo o quello: ma desidere lo splendore della maeste superna, refulgente ne' corpi: e di questo si maraviglia. Per 1a qual cosa gli Amanti non senno quello si desiderino, 0 ~ '** cerchino: perché ei non conoscono Dio.... Ancore di qui sempre avviene che gli Amanti hanno timore , e riverenze all'aspetto delle persona emata.... : Quel fulgore della divinita, che risplende nel corpo bello, costringe gli amenti a merevigliarsi, temere e venerare dette persona, come una statue di Dio. Per la ragione medesima 1'Amatore sprezza per la persona emata ricchezze e onori.... Avviene eziandio spesse volte, che lo Amante desiiera trensferirsi nella persona amata: e meritamente. Perché in questo atto egli appetisce, e sforzasi di uomo farsi Dio. The Platonism of Ficino was soon further developed and pOpularized by other Platonic enthusiasts. From the standpoint of literature, two treatises-~the Cenzone d'Amore8 by Girolamo Benivieni (1455-1542) and Pico della 71bid., p. 34. 80f St - . anze 11. lo diro, com'Amor dal divin fonte Dell'Increeto Ben quaggiu s'infonle: Quando in prie neto, e donde Zuove i1 Ciel, l'alme informe e '1 Mondo regge. Come, poi ch'entro agli umen cor s'esconde, Con quali, e quento al ferir destre e pronte Armi, a lever la fronte De terra sforzi al Ciel l'umane gregge. Com'arda, infiammi, avvampi, e con qual legge Quest'al Ciel volge, e quello e terra or pieghi, Or ingra questi due l'inclini e fermi.... (Dell'emore celeste e divino, by G. Benivieni with commen— tary by Count G. Pico Mirandolano Elucca, 175i] , p.5.) A translation of the cenzone can be found in A Pletonick Dis- 124 Mirandola's commentary on it--ere the most interesting pro- duction of the immediate followers. The Cenzope is de— scribed by Benivieni himself as an attempt to summarize in a few verses what Ficino had discussed at length in his commentary on Plato's Symppsium. Together with Iico's com- mentary it furnishes the best elucidation and illustration _._ of the neo-platonic school. Pico furnishes us with the most comprehensive, ordered account of the Platonic concept of the ascent of the soul by various stages to a vision of Heavenly Beauty: J From Material Beauty we ascend to the first Foun— tain by six Degrees: the Soul through the sight represents to her self the Beauty of some partic- ular Person, inclines to it, is pleased with it, and while she rests here, is in the first, the most imperfect material degree. 2. She reforms by her imagination the Image she hath received, making it more perfect as more spiritual; and sep— areting it from Matter, brings it a little nearer Ideal Beauty. 3. By the light of the agent In- tellect abstracting this Form from all singulari- ty, she considers the universal Nature of Corpor- eel Beauty by it self: this is the highest de- gree the Soul can reach whilest she goes no fur- ther than Sense. 4. Reflecting upon her own Op- eration, the knowledge of universal Beauty, and considering that every thing founded in flatter is particular, she concludes this universality pro- ceeds not from the outward Object, but her In- trinsecal Power: and reasons thus: If in the dimme Glasse of Material Phantasmes this Beauty is represented by vertue of my Light, it follows that, beholding it in the clear Mirrour of my sub- stance devested of those Clouds, it will appear more porspicuous: thus turning into her self, she findes the Image of Ideal Beauty communicated to her by the Intellect, the Object of Celestiall course upon Love by Pico della Mirandola, edited by Edmund G. Gardner (Boston, 1714), pp. 51-53. 125 Love. 5. She ascends from this Idea in her self, to the place where Celestial Venus is, in her proper form: Who in fullness of her Beauty not being comprehensible, by any particular Intellect, she, as much as in her lies, endeavours to be united to the first Minde, the chiefest of Crea- tures, and general Habitation of Ideal Beauty. Obtaining this, she terminates, and fixeth her journey; this is the sixth and last degree. Ficino's and Pico's relatively abstract neoplatonism .. 1_ . . .— . . , l? is continued by wrancesco Cettani da Diacceto (1466—1522) 3 l . . 1 With an exal-‘ and brought to a conclusion by Leone Ebreo tation of love as a cosmic force, a cohesive universal force, guasi pantheistic. Without love there would be no existence in this world: "Non solamente mancarebbe 1a bea— titudine se mancasse l'amore, ma né i1 mondo arebbe essere né cosa alcune in lui si troverebbe." God produces, gov- erns end unites the world with love. ... i1 mondo spirituale si unisce col mondo cor- porale mediante l'amore; né mai l'intelligenzie separate, 0 angeli divini, s'unirebbero con li corpi celesti né l'informerebbero né gli sarebbero anime donanti vita, as non l'amassero; ne l'anime q a . , a. -. ’A Platonicx Discourse upon Love bv Pico della Mirandola, pp. 77- 4. 10In his snort Panegirico all‘amore, arpenled to I tre libri d'amore (Venice, 1561), p. 143, Diacceto con— siders beauty as ”portinaria alla abitezione secretissima della divine bonta, quasi sia necessario a qualunque cerchi 1e divinite, prime incontrarsi nelle bellezze." 11His real name was Leon Abravanel (Abarbanel). He was born in Lisbon between 1460-65 as the son of the fa— mous Rabbinical scholar Isaac Abravanel ©ee T. F. Crane, Italian Social Customs, p. 120). He died sometime before 1555, the year in which his Dieloghi d'amore were published posthumously. 126 intellettive s'uniriano con 1i corpi umeni per farli razionali, se non ve le costringessi l'amore; né s'unirebbe quest'enima del mondo con questo globo de la generazione e corruzione, se non fusse l'amore. Ancore, gl'inferiori s‘uniscono con li suoi superiori, i1 mondo corporale con il spiri- tuale, e il corruttibile con l'eterno, e 1'universo tutte col suo creatore mediante l'amore che gli ha e il suo desiderio che he d'unirsi con lui e di beatificarsi ne la sua divinita.12 3 The theme of Platonic love continued to inspire ltalian writers throughout the Cinquecento. Lodovico Do- menichi writes in his Dialogo d'amore: "Amore é desiderio di fruire e generare i1 bello nel bello e 016 confessa anchor Platone nel Convito."13 Definitions of precisely the same nature are legion. Authors of treatises dealing with the essence, nature and effects of love all tread to a large extent in the footsteps of Plato or rather Ficino and P100. The general conclusion is that love is a ladder by which man reaches God. There are three types of love: "amor celeste o divino," "amor umano," and "amor bestiale o 14 ferino." The lowest rung of the ladder-~emor ferino--is mere sensual love of physical beauty; the highest is the l2Leone Ebreo, Dialoghi d'emore, ed. by-S. Caramella (Bari, 192?), p. 165. 15Lodovico Domenichi, Dialoahi (Venice, 1562), 12 mo. 14 Cf. Benedetto Verchi, Opere (Trieste, 1859), II, 499. 127 spiritual and divine love, and contemplation of God. Amgg umano lies between the two extremes and combines the phys— ical and spiritual. Plato's distinction between visual, auditive and in— tellectual beauty is not forgotten in the Cinquecento. Stefano Guazzo in his Civile Conversezione states that there are three types of beauty, those of the soul, the body and the voice. The first is conceived by the mind, the second by the eyes and the third by the ears. Amore é desiderio di bellezza e la bellezze e di tre sorti, cioé d'animo, di corpo, di voce. Le prime si comprende con la mente, la seconda con gli occhi, 1a terze con 1e orecchie.15 Beauty is "grazia" which Springs from harmony and perfect preportions. It can be found both in the body and the soul. True human love is the desire for the beauty of 16 It is the soul as well as the beauty of the body. through our senses that we perceive spiritual and physical beauty. The senses are the instruments of love. Yet only two of our five senses--hearing and seeing-~participate ac- tively in the recognition of true love: "di cinque sensi che abbiamo due solamente possono participare della cogni— ‘7 zione della vere bellezza, quali sono l'udire, i1 vedere."; 15Stefano Guazzo, Civile Conversazione (Venice, 1577), p. 274. 16Pietro Bembo's Gli Asolani, translated by Rudolf B. Gottfried (Bloomington, 1954), p. 157. l . . 7"La Leonora, Regionamento sepra 1a vere Bellezza d1 Y . 128 Through hearing we establish contact with the soul. Through seeing we reach the body: . . . in order to reach that end and objecthTits longing, love Spreads and beats its wings. And on its flight two senses guide it: hearing, which leads it to the mind's attractions, and sight, which turns it to the body's.18 Finally soul and body are enjoyed in thought, which was given to us as a third means of enjoyment. The trattatisti thus conclude that we are led to "virtuous love" by our eyes, ears and thoughts. Other pleasures, obtained by "taste and touch and smell are no more able to reveal the body's beauty than the mind's, for these three senses are limited to more material objects than the others are." . .. 1 They are, indeed, "harmful, dirty, and profane." 9 The ways in which Cufil may attain his enls through the two su- perior senses are multitudinous: Una paroletta, un sorriso, un muover d'occhi, con maravigliosa forza ci prendono gli enimi; ... un portamento, un andere, un vedere sono l'esce di grendissimi e inestinguibili fuochi.20 The theory of the eyes and the ears as servants of love is also well presented in Castiglione's Cortegiano: Messer Biuseppe Betussi," in Tretteti d'Amore, ed. Zonta, p. 556. See also "I1 Reverta," Ibid., p. 67. 18Bembo's Gli Asoleni, p. 157. 19Ibid., p. 158. 2ONobile Socio, Le Miserie de li amanti (Venice, 1555), quoted by P. Lorenzetti, La bellezza e l'amore nei trattati del Cinquecento (Pisa, 1917), p. 59. 'J 4. A4- . ‘2‘; 129 Let him laye aside therefore the blinde judgmente of the sense, and injoye wyth his eyes the bryght- ness, the comelyness, the lovynge sparkles, laugh— ters, gestures and all the other pleasant fourni— tours of beawty: especially with heeringe the sweetnesse of her voice, the tuneablenesse of her woordes, the melodie of her singinge . . . and so shall he with most deintie feede feede the soule through the meanes of these two senses....2l I may tell you, it is not a small token that a mum woman loveth, when she giveth unto her lover her beawtye, which is so precious a matter: and by ‘ the wayes that be a passage to the soule (that is to say, the sight and the heeringe) sendeth the lookes of her eyes, the image of her countenance, and the voice of her woordes, that perce into the t lovers hart, and give a witness of her love.22 4"! The doctrine of the eyes and the heart, as old as Plato ’z_s 25 (Phaedrus, 251), is explained at length in the same book. 4 Many of the Cinquecento trattatisti—-Bembo, Cas- tiglione, Speroni, Betussi and Sansovino, just to mention a few--added, modified and combined the various Platonic elements with Petrarchism. Whereas Ficino, Pico and Leone Ebreo are primarily concerned with the elaboration of a philOSOphy, these writers are first artists, men of let- ters, and then thinkers. Abstract and esoteric Neo- Platonism is given a human and social application. The perfect courtier is endowed with a knowledge of Platonic 21The Courtier, p. 355. 221bid., p. 554. 25Pp. 278-79. 150 theories. His life as a lover is basically guided by them. But these theories are no longer clouded with abstruse and difficult metaphysics. They are advanced in a lucid and intelligible language. Dialectic Platonism gives way to humanized Platonism. It is to this group of writers that Lyly owes more {L‘Am— for his love-apprehension than to either Ficino, Benivieni or Pico, although he may have derived his Platonic frame- 3 work of love from the latter. “I" _ The Petrarchistic prepensity of this group becomes particularly evident in the descriptions of feminine beauty. The most conspicuous portraits of the physical endowments of women can be found in Giangiorgio Trissino's I ritratti (1524), in the discourses Delle bellezze delle donne (1541) by Agnolo Firenzuola and in Federico Luigini's I1 libro della belle donna (1554). It is important to note, however, that these tratta— tisti do not overlook the significance of internal beauty. Luigini, for instance, places honor and chastity as gifts of the soul, for above physical beauty: - Primieramente adunque 1e sere in cure ed in pro- tezione, vie piu che chose del mondo, i1 suo onore e la sua castita, altissimo e singolarissimo pregio di ciascheduna donne, della quele guelunque per male sue sorte priva resta, né donna e piu, né viva.... 24Tretteti del Cinquecento sulla Donna, ed. by Giu- seppe Zonte (Bari, 1915), p. 295. 151 In contrast to Ficinian Platonism which considered love primarily from the point of View of sublimation, the Neo-Platonic-Petrarchistic tradition attempted to find an equilibrium between realism and ilealism. The lover is not only a philosOpher on the quest for Heavenly Beauty, but.he is also a man very much aware of and sensitive to the beauty of women. This new trend had already been usherel in by Lorenzo il Magnifico (1449-1492), the great patron of Fi— o . o o . - 7' . .' o . oino, P100 and Ben1v1en1. In Lorenzo de' Radio; s writings the realistic element frequently gains the upper hand and a sort of naturalism displaces Ficinian platonism: Nessuna cosa é piu naturals che l'appetito d'unirsi colla cosa bella, e questo appetito e stato ordi- nato dalla natura negli uomini per la propagazione umana, cosa molto necessaria alla conservazione dell'umana spezie. Ed a questo la vera ragione che ci debba muovere, non e nobilta di sanjue, ne spe- ranza di possessioni, li ricchezza o altra commodi- ta, ma solamente la elezione naturals non sforzata ne occupata d'alcun altro rispetto, ma solamente mossa da una certa conformita e preporzione che hanno insieme la cosa amata e lo amante a fine della prOpagazione dell' umana spezie.25 This tendency is also discernible in other writers. De— Spite the eulOgy of spiritual, ideal love in Bembo's Gli Asolani or Castiglione's Cortegiano, the predominant tone remains "worldly." It is a brilliant, aristocratic, lit- erary worldliness that pervades these disquieitions. The 25Lorenzo de' Medici, Opera (Bari, 1915-14), I, 14. 152 same sniritis further accentuated by other trattatisti, such as Speroni, Betussi, Sansovino. Sperone Speroni (1590-1599) finls even an Opportunity to alvance an apology for the cortigiana as a bestower of love. Né vile né bassa non dicea e711 [11 Broccardé] la cortiniana ... e711 ... on ora 1a cortigiana a7— rua7lianlola a1 Sole, il qu ale, perché sia cosa r___ celeste, non ede7na mai di farci parte del suo f splendore.... Francesco Sansovino (1521—1593L givinj suitable advice to men on how to seduce women in his Raqionamento (1545), be- comes at times so realistic that he appears to discard the , Platonic concept entirely: Ma lasciamoli [i platonici] andare, essendo sos- pette 1e loro azzioni. Conciosiache essi non s' aveggano che, se piaces e tanto loro 1a perfez- zione, amarebbero piu tosto un uomo attempato che un giovanetto inesrerto, e che, quando il 7iovane entra nell’ eta virile, non lo lasciarebbero. Altra che, essi non sr. nno che, 1a dove puo cader i1 desiderio 1:13nesto del terreno amore, non puo 7 cader l'amor contemplativo compitamente perfetto. 5 While many writers were dealing with love philOSOph— ically and iiealistically, others were offering practical instruction on conduct. The tendency amen; these is Ovid- ian, realistic, cynical. Sansovino's Ragionamento, a book "nel quale brevemente s'inse7na ai giovan uomini 1a bella 26Sperone Speroni, Dialoqhi (Venice, 1596), pp. 21-22. 27Trattati d' amore del Cinquecento, e1. G. Zonta (Bari, 1312), prfli650 155 sirte d’amore," already approaches at times the attitude rnanifested ,y a group of realistic-didactic trattatisti \Nhose newfangled "art of love—making" most likely exerted (:onsiderable influence on the canduct of Lyly's characters. In Iiccolomini's La Raffaela or Dialoro della bella creanza ~:de 1e Donne (1543) and particularly in Bartolomeo Gotti— e fredi's Specchio d'Amore nel guale alle giovani s'insegna i innarorarsi (1547), love becomes definitely cynical and im- moral. The shrewd old Madonna Raffaela explains to young margarita that a woman's honor does not consist in her acts : } "but in her reputation: "E questo parinente si ha da dir Iita, p. 45. 29 50 Trattati d'amore, ed. by Zonta, p. 275. Ibid., pp. 285, 284. 154 izhe Middle Ages by such works as Andreas Caprelanus ye _§£te honeste amandi, later revived by some quattrocentisti such as L. B. Alberti and Leonardo da Vinci, these tratta- tisti advanced primarily the precepts for a fixed behavior ;pattern of the love game. They set forth devices by which win and terminate love. The significance of one may cause, gifts, bribes, clothing, the utility of sighing, flatter- ing, etc., is constantly brought to our attention. It has been pointed out here that also the other treatises, discussed before, offer their share of precepts. . .7.» _p .All love treatises concern themselves more or less with a .fixed set of questions: What is true love? Is love a good ‘bhing or an evil thing? What beauty is most desirable in a vvoman, the Spiritual.on1y or the spiritual and the physical How should one acquire this love? What vb e auty combined? IDC>sitions do the different types of love occupy in respect t3C> each other in the ladder of love? These questions af- fC>rd the writers an Opportunity to display the various at— t3itudes toward woman and love then current in Italy. They a:‘Lso give them a chance to advance some of the well-known precepts. An attack on love or women, usually followed by a C153*:E‘ence and a reconciliation of both points of view,31 also 31Bembo's Gli Asolani exemplifies the pattern. Pe- ggttino delivers a tirade against love, deriving its name abom amaro (bitter) and declaring it to be the source of :141 woe. Gismondo attempts to prove that love is the 155 zaffords a great Opportunity to display the physical charac- teristics of lovers, particularly their sufferings: . . . afflictions, tourmentes, greefes, pining, travaile, so that to be wann, vexed with contin- uall tears, and sighes, to lyve with a discontent- ed minde, to be alwaies dumbe, or to lament, to covet death, in conclusion to be most unlucky are the progerties which (they saye) beelonge to lovers. 2 Misogynists such as Gasparo Pallavicino in Castiglione's Cortegiano or Domenichi in Betussi's I1 Raverta continue the long anti-feminist tradition headed in Italy by Boc— caccio. Cruelty, vanity, fickleness, frivolity, ambition 53 are characteristics of women. These attacks are ordinarily followed by an eulogy c>f women. In 11 Raverta, Domenichi, after having quoted lFetrarca, St. Augustine, Virgil and Dante to prove that vvouwn are "cosa varia e mutabile,"34 is followed by Baffa, vV'ho exonerates her sex by the recital of a list of loyal \_ EPVveetest and most helpful of human experiences and that it C361n therefore never be evil. In the third book Lavinello then tries to reconcile both statements. The truth is that J~§§ve can be both, good and evil, depending on the end in "§F€Mn. Finally the hermit declares good love to be the de- 55¥~re of true beauty, and true beauty is not mortal, but di- 2::Llle and immortal. This rung in the ladder of love should titan be the object of our desires. 53,. 52The Book of the Courtier . . . done into English by (:ldr Thomas Hoby, anno 1561. Introduction by Walter Raleigh London, 1900), pp. 344-45. 53The Courtier, pp. 285—87. 54Trattati d'Amore, ed. Zonta, p. 71. ‘II n. “.3 156 vvomen: "Non fu costante e fida Argia? non fu Evadne? non lLaodamia? non la belle asiana Pantea? Dunque fu instabile IIbnelope, 1a quale venti anni attese il suo marit ? ... Che :direte pur_di Porzia, di Giulia, cosi stabili e salde?"35 6 There are many trends in the Italian thought of the subject of love. "Aristotelico dunque e platonico, idea- listico e razionalistico, raganeggiante e cristianeggiante, fu a un tempo il carattere dei nostri trattati nel sec. iX'VI."36 Zonta divides the Italian love-treatises into "Opere encomiastiche, in Opera misogine, in Opere didasca- Iliche morali ed in Opera didascaliche fisiche"57 and To- rielli differentiates three major trends: "epicureo- Efristotelico-realistica, platoneggiante" or "platonico- n58 IDestrarcheggiante" and "moralistico-religiosa. The subject is greatly complicated by the fact that 'tlfiee various ideas are not always presented coherently. )IEBiCy frequently thoughts from vrrious sources are found in 61 3~53 youth in Latin. In 1509 it was translated into Italian tn. one of his nephews. Two years later the translation was 133:};ified and enlarged by Equicola himself. It was then 1.§§:Lnted at Venice in 1525, shortly before his death. In 554 it was reprinted by Lodovico Dolce. 40 M. Equicola, Libro di natura d'amore (Venice, 1554), D s 13’). 159 The following elements of Lyly's love—apprehension sippear in the Neo-Platonic-Petrarchistic trattatisti dis- <3ussed in this chapter: (a) Women inspire love. Love is a desire for beauty, and -w0man is the closest to True Beauty. (b) Love is an exalted cosmic power or an instinctive force <~As-m that may at times subrOgate or overpower even intelli- 7ence. (c) There are three types of love: Amor divino, amor umano and amor ferino, i.e., Divine, human and vulgar or ani— T j mal love. (71) A just and rational love, that is, a human love, the aim of which is matrimony,41 is praiseworthy, although it is not the highest level. An apology for this kind of love usually comes at the close of the discourse. Ce) Love is a ladder by which man reaches God. The lowest rung of the ladder is corporeal or animal love, the highest is the spiritual or Divine Love, and the con- templation of God. (f) There is emphasis on the significance of senses through which love produces itself. Through the eyes we reach the bOdy and the heartenuithrough the ears we gain ac- cess to the soul. \ "Xr 41Cf. F. Lorenzetti, La Bellezza e l'amore, p. 162: <3dete come tutti gli scrittori si accordino nel dichiare 1§- . . 3LIle dell'amore umano il matr1mon10...." 159 No English courtier or literary man could afford to ignore the Italian Neo-Ilatonic—Petrarchistic tradition of love and woman-worship. To put these doctrines into an at- tractive literary form ensured in advance a favorable re- ception at Court and guaranteed the support of the fash- ionable aristocratic circles. Lyly's plays are primarily 1_”M such an exposition, with one slight modification, however: the motif of renunciation of love for chastity's sake. This change, of course, was brought about by the desire to flatter a Virgin Queen. 1 For the analysis of Lyly's plays we have, however, to bear in mind that, as a dramatist, Lyly is not much in- 'terested in proving or disproving coherently all philo— 230phical points advanced bv the trattatisti as he is inter- EBsted in balancing one way of thinking against another. To an :dramatist the study and projection of the impulses are of Eslaeater interest than the judgment of their results. II. Lyly's Plays and the trattatisti's attitude toward women, beauty and love 1 Different sorts of allegory may at times jostle each Qther in Lyly's plays, but there is only one with which he 1‘5? constantly concerned: the allegory of love. The whole tkleme of his plays is love, just as it was in Euphue . His QCDnception of love is that of the trattatisti, or more pre- cziisely, that of the Nee-Platomic-Petrarchistic group. His 140 Iilays are an exposition of their love-concerts with, per— flaps, an additional complication of some masked contenpo~ I?ary meanings. Lyly was a court poet and his plays may reflect some c>f the court activities, just as the trattatisti reflected Uiuch of the courtly environment they were working in. bome c>f the personal references may well escape us now. We can :10 longer respond as directly as the first audience. How- eever, I believe that it is futile to try to impose too much (of such personal, historical allegory on Lyly's plays. Ddany explanations have been advanced. They are inconsis- 1sent within themselves, and they are frequently also very Innconvincing. Lyly's allegorical plays are best explained 845 allegories of love and may have been conceived by Lyly 5153 such only.42 We must not be misled too much by the fact t3flet Lyly built his Rec-Platonic love theories around the ‘75.Igfin Queen in order to flatten her. At the English court an:‘y‘body who dealt with the problem of love had to take E31iizabeth into consideration. She was of necessity the \ 42The futility of the historical or personal inter- gil’fatation of Endimion, for instance, has already been indi- 195:13ed by Percy N. Io ong in "The Purport of Lyly' s Endimion," Oh\inlm XXIV (1909). 164-84. Bernard F. Huppé in h"—““"1s article C Allegory of Love in Lyly' s Court Comedies ," ELH,14 1~§347 7), 95- -ll3, suggested that Lyly' s Sapho and Phao, En— 1r§E@_ion, Love's Metamorphoses, The Woman in the Moon are “all 3?<3<3ncerned with the subject of love, as that subject is set §LC3JPth 1n Euphues and Euphues and His England." However, he (3635 not concern himself with the source of Lyly's love— QIncept. 141 1?ocal point of all courtly eroticism. The courtiers were saccustomed to paying a reverent semi-religious adoration to Other suggestions in the plays of historical ‘the Queen. ‘rersons, however, may be more accidental than intentional. it has to be admitted here, though, that some of the plays strongly suggest some element of personal allegory. r m 2 Lyly's concept of love displays the traditional di— i lemma. There is always the problem of choosing between the i J. i ”I two extremes: the immoral and moral, passion and chastity. {In his Eunhues Lyly had already discussed this problem in ‘the manner of the trattatisti. In the characteristic way c>f the Neo—Ilatonic trattati d'amore Philautus and Euphues whether an ideal lover debate the traditional topic: =3kiould desire the spiritual beauty of the lady only, or SSmiritual and physical beauty combined. Euphues insists tIl’iat The effect of love is faith not lust, delightful conference not detestable concupiscence, which be- ginneth with folly and endeth with repentance. For mine own part I would wish nothing, if again I should fall into that vein, than to have the com- pany of her in common conference that I best loved, to hear her sober talk, her wise answers, to behold her sharp capacity, and to be persuaded of her constancy. And in these things do we only differ from brute beastsfi who have no pleasure but in sensual appetite. \ 1. 45Lyly's Euphues, ed. Croll and Clemons (London, q§<316), p. 380. Compare this with the many instances of the \‘Elme vieWpoint in the trattatisti. "Tre sono 1e specie 142 Fhilautus, however, declares himself for a combination of both, the spiritual and the physical, just as the Neo- Platonic-Petrarchistic trattatisti had done: No, no Euphues, thou makest love nothing but a continual wooing if thou bar it of the effect, and then is it infinite; or if thou allow it and yet forbid it, a perpetual warfare, and then is it in— tolerable. From this opinion no man shall with- draw me, that the end of fishing is catching, not angling; of birding, taking, not whistling; of love, wedding, not wooing. Otherwise it is no better than hanging.44 Lyly then concludes the discussion by siding with Ihilautus: I must needs conclude with Philautus, though I should cavil with Euphues, that the end of love is the full fruition of the party beloved, at all times and in all places. For it cannot follow in reason that because the sauce is good which should provoke mine appetite, therefore I should forsake the meat for which it was made. Believe me, the qualities of the mind, the beauty of the body, either in man or woman, are but the sauce to whet our stomachs, not the meat to fill them. For they that live by the view of beauty still look very lean, and they that feed only upon virtue at board will go with an hungry belly to bed.“ d'amanti circa le cose mortali; alcuni amano il corpo e a1 coito come bruti correno; alcuni dell' amata s'apagano, e oltra non cercano; alcuni di udir ben pronunciar parole se dilettano." (V. Mario Equicola, Libro de Nature d' Amore, ed. 1531, f. 71). "Mentre adunque amore e guidato sola- mente da gli occhi dall' orecchie e della mente, egli é veramente honesto, e bisogna che i saggi amanti si conten- tino di goder solamente questi frutti senza pensar piu avanti--né merita nome d' amore, ma di rabbia, e di libidine, quando é sospinto da altri sensi." Stefano Guazzo, Civile Conversazione (Venice, 1577), p. 174. 44 Lyly's Euphues, ed. Croll and Clemons, p. 381. “51bid., pp. 382-383. 143 It is of interest to note here that at the time when Lyly sided Openly with Philautus, who was for "wedding, not " marriage negotiations were in progress between the wooing, Virgin Queen and the Due d'Anjou. When Lyly, however, addresses the Queen directly, he praises her unimpeachable chastity as a virtue of the tri- umphant conqueror. She is chaste, not because her virtue has never been assailed, but because it is impregnable. She is adorned with singular beauty and chastity, excel- ling in the one Venus, in the other Vesta. Who knoweth not how rare a thing it is, ladies, to match virginity with beauty, 8 chaste mind with an amiable face, divine cogitations with a comely countenance? But such is the grace bestowed upon this earthly goddess that, having the beauty that might allure all Princes, she hath the chastity also to refuse all, accounting it no less praise to be called a virgin than to be esteemed a Venus, thinking it as great honour to be found chaste as thought amiable.46 It is noteworthy here that "grace" has already the meaning of the technical term "grazia" of the Italian Hee- Platonists, that is, spiritual beauty which participates in the divine idea of the Heavenly Beauty. . From the preceding remarks it would appear that Lyly's concept of love in his Euphues was already that of his plays, i.e., that of the Nee-Platonic Ietrarchistic trattatisti. True love becomes Virtuous Love, best consum- 46Lyly's Euphues, ed. Croll and Clemons, p. 458. 144 mated in marriage. Lyly has to compromise and somewhat modify his concept, however, when he addresses the Virgin Queen directly. 3 As I have said before, Lyly's plays can best be ex- plained as Neo-Platonie—Ietrarchistic allegories of love. Lyly's approach to drama is striking and new in English literature. Though never exactly sensuous, he enlists un- der Cupid's banner. Love becomes dramatic and his love- apprehension challenges a religious preoccupation which had held sway over English drama for centuries. His new ideas Lyly owes primarily to Italy. In our discussion of women and love in Lyly's plays, we shall confine ourselves to the study of the important points of contact with the Italian Neo-Platonic-Petrarchis- tic treatises as these points have been summarized at the end of our survey of the trattati d'amore. The passages, which are quoted from the various plays, should, of course, be considered in their contexts. (a) The significance of women as inspirers of love. Women play a much more important role in Lyly's lit- erary work than they ever had before in English literature. His attitude towards women is that of the Italian Renais- sance courtier who looked upon her above all as a creature with a certain capacity for arousing love and a creature of 145 great wit, endowed with an unusual skill and dexterity for discussing the phenomena of love. Beauty, to inspire love, and wit to discuss love, were the primary, and it appears at times, the sole requisites for the ladies of such Eggp- tatisti as Bembo, Castiglione, Speroni and Sansovino. Just like these trattatisti, Lyly is also preoccupied with dis- playing the beauty and the wit of his women.47 As Lyly's plays are primarily an exposition of a con— cept of love manifested by these trattatisti, it is not surprising at all that women should dominate the main ac- tion of the plays. feither is it surprising that we have such an unusually large nusher of female characters in the sub-action, particularly if we consider also the courtly environment in which Iyly moved. The Queen and her Court were of necessity the focal point of any exposition of "fashionable" love theories, just as the Italian courts and their rulers had been for the trattatisti. Sapho, Diana, Cynthia and Ceres are always surrounded b? a flock of nymphs or maids-of—honor whose discussions of love afford Lyly an excellent Opportunity for expounding his theories and also for displaying his knowledge of the ars amatoria 1 i — tradition. Iyly's ladies are constantly absorbed in af- 47Compare also his women in Euphues. Lucilla, Livia, Iffida, Camilla and Flavia show the same characteristics as the women of the trattatisti. 48 Cf. Gallathea, IV, ii, or Sapho and Theo, IV, iii. 146 fairs of the heart. They pursue their amours with a strict observance of the Neo-Ilatonic conventions of love. Various classifications have been suggested for Lyly's women. Steinhauser divided them into solche, welche auf dem Standpunkt prfider Keusch— heit stehend (Cynthia, Diana, Sapho), auch die Ehe fur verwerflich halten, und andere, welche wie Livia und Suavia 'know honest love to be in- separable from their sexe."49 Bond differentiated between "sober, serious women" and "Wittyéflfiilight-hearted ones."50 As Lyly's women are pri- marily employed to expound Neo-Ilatonic—Ietrarchistic love theories, the various degrees of love, such as Varehi's tripartite "amor divino," "amor umano" and "amor ferino" are also reflected by the various attitudes toward love dis-' played by Lyly's female characters. Ne have, therefore, on the one hand, his semi-divine characters, Sapho, Diana and Cynthia, who stand for Divine Love, as Opposed, on the other hand, by the large group of female characters that sway between "amor ferino" and "amor umano." (b) Love as a cosmic force. In Lyly's love-apprehension, just as in that of the trattatisti, love becomes a cosmic force "no more to bee suppressed then comprehended": agKarl Steinhauser, John Lyly als Dramatiker: Inaugural-Dissertation (Halls, 1894), p. 44. 50Bond, 11, 293. 147 O diuine loue! and therefore diuine, because loue, whose deitie no conceite canne compase, and therfore no authoritie canne constrains; as miraculous in working as mightie, & no more to bee suppressed then comprehended.51 I;<:>‘ve's power manifests itself in all its paradox and irra- t'i Qnality: O deuine Loue, which art therfore called deuine, because thou ouer-reachest the wisest, conquerest the chastest, and doost all things both vnlikely and impossible, because thou art Loue. Thou makest the bashfull impudent, the wise fond, the chast wanton, and workest contraries to our reach, because thy selfe is beyond reason.52 Ju st as in the Neo—Platonic-Petrarchists, love is a compact C>.1T contradictions of pains and joys: A heate full Of coldnesse, a sweet full of bitter— nesse, a paine ful of pleasantnesse; which maketh thoughts haue eyes, and harts eares; bred by de- sire, nursed by delight, weaned by ielousie, kild by dissegbling, buried by ingratitude; and this is loue!)§ Love is a force beyond our reason, because "if loue ‘Vvere not a thing beyonde reason," Ramia replies to Diana's ireprimand, "we might then giue a reason Of our doings." Ihit, she continues, "so deuine is his force, that it work- €3th effects as contrarie to that was wishe, as vnreasonable "54 Eigainst that wee ought. love is a force which even 5lsgpho and Phao, II, iv, 14—17. 52 Gallathea, III, 1, 102-107. 55Ibid., I, ii, 16-19. SAGgllathea, III, iv, 54-57. 148 "i_T31mortall Gods cannot redresse."55 "Dare they blaspheme 3X57 godhead," asks Cupid in Love's Metamorphoses, "which {Tc>‘\re doth worship, Neptune reverence, and all the gods t: r emble at?"56 Love's great power is best exemplified by Cupii's VIi.<3tory over Ceres' nymphs in Love's Metamorpheses. "But let, us to the Temple of f . . . ". Cupid and offer sacrifice , say C:EB'Ic-es to her'nymphs, "they that thinke it straunge for cklastitie to humble it selfe to Cupid, knowe neither the 33>C>ywer of loue, nor the nature of virginitie: th'one hauing EiTt>solute authoritie to commaund, the other difficultie to II“€2sist."57 No normal human being can resist this great, :l-Irrational God. If Cynthia and Diana are above him, and ~55Jlexander and Sapho eventually conquer him, then it is only ‘Zuecause they are already conceived of as semi-divine. (:c) Amor divino, amor umano and amor ferino. Iyly's classes of characters also reflect his Neo- JFlatonic ares—perception. They correspond roughly to the ‘three types of love. His semi-iivine characters, such as Jklexander, Sapho, Cynthia and Diana, show that they are Eibove the lower types of love by asserting their absolute i.ndependence of Cupid, that is, fleshly desire They per- 55Sapho and Phao, I, 1, 42-42. 561v, 1, 60-61. 5711, i, 38—45. 149 sonify Rational or Spiritual or Divine Love. They stand for the iieal of the "marriage of true minds." In them reason attains absolute primacy over Cupid. Sapho and Alexander portray a subtle conflict between Divine and Earthly Iove ani the victory of the former. They stand in contrast to the lower characters who sway frequently be- tween amor umggg and amor ferino. Some of these espouse frankly and consistently the pleasures of the flesh. "Beleeve me Ladies," says Mileta who is guilty of making direct advances to beautiful Phao, r9 n)v Flgures like Dipsas stand "'give' is a pretie thing. clearly for sensual pleasures only: ". . . were it in my power to place affection by appointment," she says to Tellus, "I would make such euill appetites, such inoriinate lusts, such cursed desires, as all the worlde should be filled both with supersticious heates, and extreame n59 loue. In most characters, however, amor umano eventual- ly gains the upperhani and the prickings of purely sensual . . 6O . desires are eased by thoughts of marriage. It is not to amor umano, but the insubstantiality of amor ferino, the purely sexual attraction, that Diana, conqueror of "loose & 5BSapho and Phao, I, iv, 26-27. 59Endimion, I, iv, 24-28. 60 . . . h . . See, for instance, Corsites and Tellus in andimion. 150 ‘Ilntamed appetites"61 really objects. She berates her la- :dies because they have become "unchast in desires, immoder- ate in affection, untemperate in love, in foolish loue, in 6 . . ‘base loue," 2 because they cast their "best des1res upon a shadows."63 "And howe is your loue placed?" she asks, "upon pelting boys, perhaps base of birth, without doubt weake of discretion. I but they are fayre.n64 (d) Exaltation of Divine love and apology for Human love. What else is the meaning of Alexander's conquest ever love for a beautiful commoner, if not an exaltation, a triumph of Divine Love or True Love?65 Or what else is the significance of Sapho's conquest over love for a beautiful ferryman? Against Sapho are arrayed all the forces of sensual love! Fhao has been made irresistibly beautiful. But True Love is only possible between equals. If Sapho succumbs to Phao, she succumbs to exterior beauty. It will mean the 61Gallathea, III, iv, 68. 62Ibid., III, iv, 51-33. 65The word "shadow" here is the English rendering of che technical term ombra which Italian Platonists applied tzo the mundane reflection of the fourth, i.e., the lowest (zircle of "lo splendore di D10" or ideal of perfection. 64Gallathea, III, iv, 49—50. 65"The conquering of Thebes was not so honourable as tShe subduing of these thoughts," says Hephaestion, Alex- ‘Etnder's general. Campaspe, V, iv, 149-49. 151 triumph of amor ferino. Sapho finds herself in a great di- lemma. "If hee yeelde, then shal I shame to embrace one so she tells Venus; "if not, die, because I cannot em- 66 meane,‘ brace one so meane." This difference in status is fur- ther accentuated by Sybilla's advice to Phao: "Love, faire "67 childe, is to be governed by art..., an advice which is based on the assumption that all women "will yield in time." When Sapho eventually emerges as mistress over Sensual 3e— sire, over Phao's exterior beauty, a beauty so captivating that not even Venus could resist it, Divine or Spiritual or Rational or True Love triumphs. Sapho stands for "reason 68 . n . She is above Cupid and thus not yeeliing to appetite." wins him as her servant. She will new direct his "arrowes with better aime" than Venus who is "not worthy to be the Iadye of loue," because she yields "so often to the im- pressions of loue" and transgresses "so farre from the "69 staye of . . . honour! 66Sapho and Phao, IV, i, 15-17. 67ibid., II, iv, 55rr. 68Sapho and Phao, V, ii, 36. 691bid., v, ii, 26; 59; 61. Note the special meaning of the word honor. Cf. chapter 9, "The Courtly Traditions of Love and Honor," in Hiram Haydn, The Counter-Renaissance (New Yor, 1950), p. 575: ". . . the ethical code of Honor is fundamentally a courtly one, which raises honor from its subordinate position for the humanists (that of meaning a =deserved1y virtuous reputation) to the highest seat of all ‘~-that reserved by traditional orthodoxy for reason. Honor 'becomes 'the ruling principle of . . . conduct,‘ instead of lDeason; it replaces reason as the guide to virtue; and it 152 But in his plays, just as in his Euphues, Lyly's 'love—perception shows a strong leaning towards amor umano, legitimate love. Love is best consummated in marriage. Ceres, initially swaying between jealousy of marriage and exhortations to her nymphs to submit to Cupid, is told by Cupid: Why, Ceres, doe you thinks that lust followeth loue? Ceres, louers are chast: for what is loue, divine loue, but the quintescens of chas- titie, and affections binding by heauenly motions, that cannot be vndone by earthly meanes, and must not be comptrolled by any man?7 And Ceres submits to Cupid. "Wee will honour thee with continuall sacrifice," she tells him, "warme vs with mild affections; lest being too hotte, wee seeme immodest like wentons, or too cold, immoueable like stockes."71 Marriage is like "the tuning of two Lutes in one key,’ explains Mileta, "for strikinge the stringes of the one, strawes will stirre upon the stringes of the other, and in two mindes lincked in loue, one cannot be delighted but the "72 To Lyly, chastity obviously does not other reioyceth. mean physical renunciation. But any apologist of amor umano had to consider the ‘Virgin Queen with her idea of unimpeachable chastity. ‘— Ibecomes the natural 'spur' that leads man away from vice-- Insurping natural reason's prerogative." 7OLove's Metamorphoses, II, i, l25-126. 7llbid., II, i, 127-129. 725apho and Phao, IV, iii, 75-78. 155 Therefore, all Neo-Ilatonic-Ietrarchistic love-allegories which were directly addressed to the Queen and performed at .court, would exalt and identify Ychastity' with Divine Love or Heavenly Beauty, obviously to flatter Queen Elizabeth. Poets had to be very careful that the views expressed in their writings found the Queen's approval. She had a very forthright way of showing her dislike.75 Therefore, in all central, dominating figures which invite, or even only slightly suggest, a comparison with the Virgin Queen, un- yielding, unimpeachable chastity had to triumph. Lyly had to guard himself against any suggestion that these figures hal actually surrendered themselves to physical love--and thus by suggestion, Elizabeth. Is it a mere coincidence that in Love's Ketamorphoses, a play that was not performed before Queen Elizabeth,74 Ceres (Chastity) should submit to Cupid's powerand instruct her nymphs not to be "so stately as not to stoore to love, nor so light as presently to yeeld"?75 1’ 73.. p. S. Boas in University Drama in the Tudor Age (Oxford, 1914), p. 583, gives an example of her displeasure at a University Play: "the Queen was so angry that she at once entered her chamber using strong language and the men who held the torches, it being night, left them in the dark. . . ." Cf. Prologue to Gallathea. / 7+Cf. A. Feuillerat, John Lyly, p. 194, note 2. 75v, iv, 164-165. 154 (e) Concept of the Ladder of Love. The concept of the ladder of love is implied in all of Lyly's allegorical plays. In none does it appear, how- ever, as clearly as in Endimion, in which Endimion pro- gresses from a devotion to Earthly Beauty to an adoration 76 of Heavenly Beauty, although he cannot quite attain his aspiration to lift himself to the level of Divine Love. Cynthia's perfection simply "alloweth no companion, nor "77 comparison. Endimion had been enthralled by Tellus or Sensual Love or amor ferino. But now he dedicates his endeavors to Cynthia or Spiritual or Divine Love: Sweet Cynthia, how wouldst thou be pleased, how possessed. wil labours (patient of all extremi- ties) obtaine thy loue? There is no Mountain so steepe that I will not climbe, no monster so cruell that I will not tame, no action so desper— ate that 1 will not attempt. Desirest thou the passions of loue, the sad and melancholie moodes of perplexed mindes, the not to be expressed tor- ments of racked thoughts? Beholde my sad teares, my deepe sighes, my hollowe eyes, my broken sleepes, my heauie countenaunce. Wouldst thou haue mee vowde onelie to thy beautie? and con— sume euerie minute of time in thy seruice? re- member my solitarie life, almost these seauen yeeres: whom haue I entertained but mine owne thoughts, and thy vertue? What companie haue I vsed but contemplation?78 760f. I. W. Long, "The Purport of Lyly's Endimion," PMLA, 24 (1909), p. 178: "By a series of steps he passes from the love of Earthly Beauty to the adoration of Heaven- ly Beauty." 77Endimion, ll, i, 26. 78Endimion, II, 1, 4—16. 155 Tellus, or amor ferino, seeks to regain Endimion through all sorts of women's sleights. "I will entangle him in such sweet nette," she tells Floscula, "that he shall neither find the meanes to come out, nor desire it.'79 "Be- tween my amorous deuises, and his owne loose desires, there shall such dissolute thoughts take roote in his head," she O H: continues, "that neither hepe of prefermcnt, nor feare punishment, nor counsel of the wisest, no" company of the worthiest, shall alter his humor, nor make him once to n 8 "3 thinke of his honor. He shall spend his youth in "vn- 81 . " She even tamed thoughts, and vnbridled affections. plots with the witch Dipsas, despite the strong iissuasions of her confidante Floscula. She would "rather vse vnlawfull . "82 - meanes, then try vntolleratle paines. But Dipsas cannot change Endimion's affections. She can only "breede slack- . ' . 8 ness in loue, though neuer roote it out." 5 Tellus' stormy passion, her amor ferino, turns into jealous hatred. When Dipsas asks her, "Would you haue his loue, eyther by ab- sence or sicknes aslaked? would you that Cynthia should . . . . . 4 mistrust him, or-be 1ealous of him Without colour?"8 she 791bid., 1, ii, 41-42. 801bid., 1, ii, 46-50. 9 “11bid., I, ii, so. 82Ibid., 1, ii, 91-82. 83Ibid., I, iv, 52-35. 8"'Ibi-i., 1, iv, 39-41. 156 replies, "It is the onlie thing 1 craue, that seeing my loue to Endimion vnspotted, cannot be accepted, hys truth to Cynthia (though it be vnspeakeable) may bee suspected."85 Endimion is charmed by Dipsas into a slumber of forty years, wasting away his youth as a captive of 2222 ferino. However, Tellus' triumph is by no means perfect. He has merely lapsed in his service to Divine Love. He has not betrayed it. A Platonic kiss, wherein soul meets sou1,86 bestowed by Cynthia (Divine Love), delivers him from the Spell. He will continue his service, his "dutie, Q loyaltie, and reuerence"‘7 to Cynthia. 85Ibid., I, iv, 42-44. 86Compare this with the trattatisti's theory on kissing: "For sins a kisse is a knitting together both of body and soule, it is to be feared, least the sensuall lover will be more inclined to the part of the bodye, then of the soule: but the reasonable lover woteth well, that although the mouthe be a percell of the bodye, yet it is an issue for the wordes, that be the enterpreters of the soule, and for the inwards breth, whiche is also called the soule: and therfore hath a delite to joigne hys mouth with the womans beloved with a kysse: not to stirr him to anye unhonest desire, but because he feeleth that, that bonds is the Openynge of an entrey to the soules, whiche drawen with a coveting the one of the other, power them selves by tourn, the one into the others bodye, and be so mingled together, that ech of them hath two soules, and one alone so framed of them both ruleth (in a maner) two bodyes. Wherupon a kiss may be said to be rather a cooplinge together of the soule, then of the bodye. . . ." The Courtier from the Italian_cd7 Count Baldassare Castiglione: Done into English by Sir Thomas Hoby, anno 1561; ed. Walter Raleigh (London, 1900). pp. 355-356. 87Endimion, v, iii, 169. 157 There is no definite conclusion to Endimion's love- endeavors, except the encouragement given by Cynthia: "Endimion continue as thou hast begun, and thou shalte finde that Cynthia shyneth not on thee in vaine."?9 Lyly simply had to guard himself against any suggestion that Cynthia, who could be taken to be Elizabeth, had actually surrendered. (f) The significance of the two senses, sight and hearing. The doctrine of the eyes and the heart. Lyly's plays are replete with allusions to the senses through which love produces itself. The eyes and the ears are the instruments through which we become first aware of beauty. "How did it take you first Telusa?" asks Eurota, "By the eyes, my wanton eyes which conceiued the picture of his face, and hangd it on the verie strings of my hart,"89 replies Telusa. And "hon did it take you Eurota?" In her turn, Telusa asks the amorous Eurota. "By the eares, whose sweete words suncke so deepe into my head, that the remembrance of his wit hath bereaued was of O . . . . "9 AlluSions to the Significance of the my wisedome. senses, such as these, are legion. In every case they fall into line with the Nee—Platonic theories. 88v, iii, 186-187. 89Gallathea, III, i, 55-57. 9oibid., III, i, 58-61. 159 Even small details are being followed. "0 Lalies, loe your eyes begin to loue collours, whose harts were wont to loath them?"91 Diana asks her nymphs. It will be remem- berei that the Platonists differentiatel between visual, ! auiitive ani intellectual beauty ani that "collours' and light were the manifestation of the first kini of beauty. 4 Only major points of contact on the subject of love couli be discussed in the preceding charter. A more exten- sive comparison between the trattatisti ani Lyly's plays would unioubtedly also reveal Lyly's discipleship in many other roints, as ha. been occasionally iniicatei in the course of the iiscussion. flot only iii Lyly ierive from the trattatisti a new and striking love-apprehension, but also he founi them to be a storehouse of moiels for court— ly, argumentative ani dramatic dialosues. It may well be that such trattatisti as Castiglione, Bembo, Guazzo, Spe— roni, Betussi, Sansovino or in particular Leone Ebreo with his highly dramatic style, may claim a much more important place in the develorment of Elizabethan drama than has gen- erally been assumed. 91ibid., III, iv, 51-52. CHATTER VI CCYCLUS Of A survey of the cultural relations between England and Italy in the Renaissance reveals very clearly that England is deeply indebted to Italy's imaginative, intel— lectual an} artistic accomplishments. The English debt is, nse. Englishmen looked to Italy for lessons 5..) in fact, (D not only in literature, art and philosophy, but also in politics and good-breeding. It was the rule, rather than the exception, that a scholar or a courtier should be able to real and speak Italian and be well-versed in the various fields of Ital 's cultural attainments. Lyly grew up ani lived in an aristocratic, literary environment which exposed him to things Italian. He was not only well acquainted with the various forms of Italian literature, but also worked within the framework of Italian literary traditions and conventions. His dramatic technique is, on the whole, unlike that of his English predecessors, but very similar to that of the mytholegical-pastoral-tragicomic tradition in Italy. His characterization proceeds within the established rules of ethos and decorum. Host of his "occupational-realistic" personaies are largely modelled on Italian stock—types and, 159 I60 whenever necessary, modified and adapted to the eXposition of theories and ideas of the trattati d'amore. The trattati d'amore are lyly’s primary source. They provided him with the incentive to write court dramas. His plays are primarily expositions of ideas and theories expounded in these treatises. They are best explained as Neo-Platonic-Petrarchistic allegories of love. While the Neo-Platonic-Petrarchistic group of trattatisti provided him with his conception of love, the realistic-didactic group, with its newfangled "art of love—making," furnished him with a pattern for the conduct of his characters. His court society is modelled on the Italian society depicted by the trattatisti. His women converse freely with men on equal terms. They discuss freely, like their Italian coun- terparts, the various problems of love, no matter how eru- dite or how shocking. The task of determining, understanding and interpret- ing the sources of Lyly's court dramas is particularly dif- ficult anl complex because of Lyly's eclectic, skillful and inventive handling of dramatic material. Lyly displays an unusual gift for combining the various features of differ— ent forms of Italian literature. He accepts whatever is useful and rejects whatever does not fit into his scheme. Without a complete awareness of this highly eclectic method, we cannot properly appreciate the genius of Lyly. It is primarily the failure to recognize his method that has led the anti-Italian critics to completely erro- _ #-i‘-_ 161 neous assumptions and the Tro-Italian critics to unsatis- factory conclusions: After this investigation of the background of Lyly's plays, what, it will naturally be asked, remains as his own? Lyly, the dramatist, is much more original than is “enerally assumed. Love becomes dramatic in his plays, and his Nee-Ilatonic-letrarchistic love-apprehension challenges a religious preoccupation which had prevailed in English drama for centuries. Vfiis originality does not show itself in inventinf subject-matter, as Bond tries to demonstrate, but in the skillful combination anl adaptation of ltalian material and its fusion into a new English dramatic type. In so doing, he shows himself a truly creative artist. 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"I ‘k «J ”#7377165 S‘Vb4 c MTITI'IWEHTILIEEIL/Ifi!fillWlIfififliflfifiJ/EIEI‘WV