SHAKESPEARE’S ROMAN PLAYSAND THEIR BACKGROUND

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TORONTO

SHAKESPEARE’S ROMAN PLAYS AND THEIR BACKGROUND

BY

M. W. MacCallum

M.A., Hon. LL.D., Glasgow

PROFESSOR OF MODERN LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON 1910

GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.

TO D. M. M·C.

“De Leev is Allens op de Welt, Un de is blot bi di.”

PREFACE

Shakespeare’s Roman plays may be regarded as forming a group by themselves, less because they make use of practically the same authority and deal with similar subjects, than because they follow the same method of treatment, and that method is to a great extent peculiar to themselves. They have points of contact with the English histories, they have points of contact with the free tragedies, but they are not quite on a line with either class. It seems, therefore, possible and desirable to discuss them separately.

In doing so I have tried to keep myself abreast of the literature on the subject; which is no easy task when one lives at so great a distance from European libraries, and can go home only on hurried and infrequent visits. I hope, however, that there is no serious gap in the list of authorities I have consulted.

The particular obligations of which I am conscious I have indicated in detail. I should like, however, to acknowledge how much I owe throughout to the late F. A. T. Kreyssig, to my mind one of the sanest and most suggestive expositors that Shakespeare has ever had. I am the more pleased to avow my indebtedness, that at present in Germany Kreyssig is hardly receiving the learned, and in England has never received the popular, recognition that is his due. It is strange that while Ulrici’s metaphysical lucubrations and Gervinus’s somewhat [Pg viii] ponderous commentaries found their translators and their public, Kreyssig’s purely humane and literary appreciations were passed over. I once began to translate them myself, but “habent sua fata libelli,” the time had gone by. It is almost exactly half a century ago since his lectures were first published; and now there is so much that he would wish to omit, alter, or amplify, that it would be unfair to present them after this lapse of years for the first time to the English

public. All the same he has not lost his value, and precisely in dealing with the English and the Roman histories he seems to me to be at his best.

One is naturally led from a consideration of the plays to a consideration of their background; their antecedents in the drama, and their sources, direct and indirect.

The previous treatment of Roman subjects in Latin, French, and English, is of some interest, apart from the possible connection of this or that tragedy with Shakespeare’s masterpieces, as showing by contrast the originality as well as the splendour of his achievement. For this chapter of my Introduction I therefore offer no apology.

On the other hand the sketches of the three “ancestors” of Shakespeare’s Roman histories, and especially of Plutarch, need perhaps to be defended against the charge of irrelevancy.

In examining the plays, one must examine their relations with their sources, and in examining their relations with their sources, one cannot stop short at North, who in the main contributes merely the final form, but must go back to the author who furnished the subject matter. Perhaps, too, some of the younger students of Shakespeare may be glad to have a succinct account of the man but for whom the Roman plays would never have been written. Besides, Plutarch, so far as I know, has not before been treated exactly from the point of view that [Pg ix] is here adopted. My aim has been to portray him mainly in those aspects that made him such a power in the period of the Renaissance, and gave him so great a fascination for men like Henry IV., Montaigne, and, of course, above all, Shakespeare. For the same reason I have made my quotations exclusively from Philemon Holland’s translation of the Morals (1st edition, 1603) and North’s translation of the Lives (Mr. Wyndham’s reprint), as the Elizabethan versions show how he was taken by that generation.

The essay on Amyot needs less apology. In view of the fact that he was the immediate original of North, he has received in England far less recognition than he deserves. Indeed he has met with injustice. English writers have sometimes challenged his claim to have translated from the Greek. To me it has had the zest of a pious duty to repeat and enforce the arguments of French scholars which show the extreme improbability of this theory. Unfortunately I have been unable to consult the Latin version of 1470, except in a few transcripts from the copy in the British Museum: but while admitting that a detailed comparison of that with the Greek and the French would be necessary for the formal completion of the proof, I think it has been made practically certain that Amyot dealt with all his authors at first hand. At any rate he is a man, who, by rendering Plutarch into the vernacular and in many instances furnishing the first draught of Shakespeare’s phrases, merits attention from the countrymen of Shakespeare.

Of North, even after Mr. Wyndham’s delightful and admirable study, something remains to be said in supplement. And he too has hardly had his rights. The Morall Philosophie and the Lives have been reprinted, but the Diall of Princes is still to be seen [Pg x] only in the great libraries of Europe. A hurried perusal of it two years ago convinced me that, apart from its historical significance, it was worthy of a place among the Tudor Translations and would help to clear up many obscurities in Elizabethan literature.

I at first hoped to discuss in a supplementary section the treatment of the Roman Play in England by Shakespeare’s younger contemporaries and Caroline successors, and show that while in some specimens Shakespeare’s reconciling method is still followed though less successfully, while in some antiquarian accuracy is the chief aim, and some are only to be regarded as historical romances, it ultimately tended towards the phase which it assumed in France under the influence of the next great practitioner, Corneille, who assimilated the ancient to the modern ideal of Roman life as Shakespeare never did and, perhaps fortunately, never tried to do. But certain questions, especially in regard to the sources, are complicated, and, when contemporary translations, not as yet reprinted, may have been used, are particularly troublesome to one living so far from Europe. This part of my project, therefore, if not abandoned, has to be deferred; for it would mean a long delay, and I am admonished that what there is to do must be done quickly.

I have complained of the lack of books in Australia, but before concluding I should like to acknowledge my obligations to the book-loving colonists of an earlier generation, to whose irrepressible zeal for learning their successors owe access to many volumes that one would hardly expect to see under the Southern Cross. Thus a 1599 edition of Plutarch in the University Library, embodying the apparatus of Xylander and Cruserius, has helped me much in the question of Amyot’s relations to the Greek. Thus, too, I was able to utilise, among [Pg xi] other works not easily met with, the first complete translation of Seneca’s Tragedies (1581), in the collection of the late Mr. David Scott Mitchell, a “clarum et venerabile nomen” in New South Wales. May I, as a tribute of gratitude, inform my English readers that this gentleman, after spending his life in collecting books and manuscripts of literary and historical interest, which he was ever ready to place at the disposal of those competent to use them, bequeathed at his death

his splendid library to the State, together with an ample endowment for its maintenance and extension?

For much valuable help in the way of information and advice, my thanks are due to my sometime students and present colleagues, first and chiefly, Professor E. R. Holme, then Mr. C. J. Brennan, Mr. J. Le Gay Brereton, Mr. G. G. Nicholson, Dr. F. A. Todd; also to Messrs. Bladen and Wright of the Sydney Public Library for looking out books and references that I required; to Mr. M. L. MacCallum for making transcripts for me from books in the Bodleian Library; to Professor Jones of Glasgow University for various critical suggestions; above all to Professor Butler of Sydney University, who has pointed out to me many facts which I might have overlooked and protected me from many errors into which I should have fallen, and to Professor Ker of University College, London, who has most kindly undertaken the irksome task of reading through my proofs.

M. W. MacCallum

University of Sydney, 27th April, 1909.

[Pg xiii]

CHAPTER I ROMAN PLAYS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

Plays that dealt with the History of Rome were frequent on the Elizabethan stage, and all portions of it were laid under contribution. Subjects were taken from legends of the dawn like the story of Lucretia, and from rumours of the dusk like the story of Lucina; from Roman pictures of barbarian allies like Massinissa in the South, or barbarian antagonists like Caractacus in the North; as well as from the intimate records of home affairs and the careers of the great magnates of the Republic or Empire. But these plays belong more distinctively to the Stuart than to the Tudor section of the period loosely named after Elizabeth, and few have survived that were composed before the beginning of the seventeenth century. For long the Historical Drama treated by preference the traditions and annals of the island realm, and only by degrees did “the matter of Britain” yield its pride of place to “the matter of Rome the Grand.” Moreover, the earlier Roman Histories are of very inferior importance, and none of them reaches

even a moderate standard of merit till the production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in 1600 or 1601. In this department Shakespeare [Pg 2] had not the light to guide him that he found for his English Histories in Marlowe’s Edward II., or even in such plays as The Famous Victories of Henry V. The extant pieces that precede his first experiment, seem only to be groping their way, and it is fair to suppose that the others which have been lost did no better. Their interest, in so far as they have any interest at all, lies in the light they throw on the gradual progress of dramatic art in this domain. And they illustrate it pretty fully, and show it passing through some of the main general phases that may be traced in the evolution of the Elizabethan Tragedy as a whole. At the outset we have one specimen of the Roman play in which the legitimate drama is just beginning to disengage itself from the old Morality, and another in which the unique Senecan exemplar is transformed rather than translated to suit the primitive art of the time. Then we have several more artistic specimens

deriving directly or indirectly from the French imitators of Seneca, which were the most dignified and intelligent the sixteenth century had to show. And lastly we have a specimen of what the Roman play became when elaborated by the scholar-playwrights for the requirements of the popular London stage.

A survey of these will show how far the ground was prepared for Shakespeare by the traditions of this branch of the drama when he turned to cultivate it himself.

1. APPIUS AND VIRGINIA. THE TRANSLATION OF OCTAVIA

The crudest if not the earliest of the series is entitled A new Tragicall Comedie of Apius and Virginia, by R. B., initials which [Pg 3] have been supposed with some probability to stand for Richard Bower, who was master of the Chapel Royal at Windsor in 1559. It was first printed in 1575, but must have been written some years before. A phrase it contains, “perhaps a number will die of the sweat,” has been thought to refer to the prevalence of the plague in 1563, and it may be identified with a play on the same subject that was acted at that time by the boys of Westminster. At any rate several expressions show beyond doubt that it was meant for representation, but only on the old-fashioned scaffold which was soon to be out-of-date. Its character and scope belong too, in part, to a bygone age. The prologue proclaims its ethical intention with the utmost emphasis:

It is written in commendation of chastity and rebuke of vice:

No Moral Play could be more explicit in its lesson, and the Moral Play has also suggested a large number of the personages. Conscience, [Pg 4] Justice, Rumour, Comfort, Reward, Doctrine, Memory, are introduced, and some of them not only in scenes by themselves, but in association with the concrete characters. Occasionally their functions are merely figurative, and can be separated from the action that is supposed to be proceeding: and then of course they hardly count for more than the attributes that help to explain a statue. Thus, when Appius resolves to pursue his ruthless purpose, he exclaims:

and the quaint stage direction in the margin gives the comment: “Here let him make as thogh he went out, and let Consience and Justice come out of[3] him, and let Consience hold in his hande a Lamp burning, and let Justice haue a sworde and hold it before Apius brest.” Thus, too, another stage direction runs: “Here let Consience speake within:

And he answers: “Whence doth this pinching sounde desende?” Here clearly it is merely the voice of his own feelings objectified: and in both instances the interference of the Abstractions is almost wholly decorative; they add nothing to the reflections of Appius, but only serve to emphasise them. This however is not always the case. They often comport themselves in every respect like the real men and women. Comfort stays Virginius from suicide till he shall see the punishment of the wicked. Justice and Reward (that is, Requital) summoned by the unjust judge to doom the father, pronounce sentence on himself. In the end Virginius enters in company with Fame, Doctrina, and Memory. [Pg 5]

Other of the characters, again, if more than general ideas, are less than definite individuals. There is a sub-plot not at all interwoven with the main plot, in which the class types, Mansipulus, Mansipula, and their crony, Subservus, play their parts. With their help some attempt is made at presenting the humours of vulgar life. They quarrel with each other, but are presently reconciled in order to divert themselves together, and put off the business of their master and mistress, hoping to escape the punishment for their negligence by trickery and good luck. But we do not even know who their master and mistress are, and they come into no contact with either the historical or the allegorical figures.

The only personage who finds his way into both compartments of the “Tragicall Comedie” is Haphazard the Vice, who gives the story such unity as it possesses. His name happily describes the double aspect of his nature. On the one hand he stands for chance itself; on the other for dependence on chance, the recklessness that relies on accident, and trusts that all will end well though guilt has been incurred. In this way he is both the chief seducer and the chief agent, alike of the petty rogues and of the grand criminal. To the former he sings:

To Appius’ request for advice he replies:

His distinctive note is this, that he tempts men by suggesting that they may offend and escape the consequences. In the end he falls into the pit that he has digged for others, and when his hap is to be hanged, like a true Vice he accepts the contretemps with jest and jape.

Yet despite the stock-in-trade that it takes over from Morality or Interlude, Appius and Virginia has specialties of its own that were better calculated to secure it custom in the period of the Renaissance. The author bestows most care on the main story, and makes a genuine attempt to bring out the human interest of the subject and the persons. In the opening scene he tries, in his well-meaning way, to give the impression of a home in which affection is the pervading principle, but in which affection itself is not allowed to run riot, but is restrained by prudence and obligation. Father, mother, and daughter sing a ditty in illustration of this sober love or its reverse, and always return to the refrain:

There is some inarticulate feeling for effect in the contrast between the wholesomeness of this orderly family life and the incontinence of the tyrant who presently seeks to violate it. And the dramatic bent of the author—for it is no more than a bent—appears too in the portraiture of the parties concerned. The mingled perplexity and dread of Virginius, when in his consciousness of right he is [Pg 7] summoned to the court, are justly conceived; and there is magnanimity in his answer to Appius’ announcement that he must give judgment “as justice doth require”:

Similarly, the subsequent conflict in his heart between fondness for his daughter and respect for her and himself is clearly expressed. And her high-spirited demand for death is tempered and humanised by her instinctive recoil when he “proffers a blow”:

But the most ambitious and perhaps the most successful delineation is that of Appius. At the outset he is represented as overwhelmed by his sudden yearning. Apelles, he thinks, was a “prattling fool” to boast of his statue; Pygmalion was fond “with raving fits” to run mad for the beauty of his work, for he could make none like Virginia. Will not the Gods treat him as they treated Salmacis, when Hermophroditus, bathing in the Carian fountain near the Lycian Marches, denied her suit?

This, we may suppose, is intended for a mad outbreak of voluptuous passion, “the nympholepsy of some fond despair”; and, as such, it is not very much worse than some that have won the applause of more critical ages. It may suggest the style of the Interlude in the Midsummer-Night’s Dream, or more forcibly, the “King Cambyses’ vein” that was then in vogue (for Preston’s play of that name, published about a couple of years later than the probable date when this was performed, is in every way the nearest analogue to Appius and Virginia that the history of our stage has to offer). But in comparison with the normal flow of the Moralities, the lines have undoubtedly a certain urgency and glow. And there are other touches that betray the incipient playwright. Appius is not exhibited as a mere monster; through all his life his walk has been blameless, and he is well aware of his “grounded years,” his reputation as judge, and the value of good report. He is not at ease in the course he now adopts; there is a division in his nature, and he does not yield to his

temptation without forebodings and remorse.

But he always comes back to the supreme fact of his longing for Virginia:

[Pg 9] And there are the potentialities of a really powerful effect in the transition from his jubilant outburst when he thinks his waiting is at an end:

to his misgivings when he sees the old man is unaccompanied:

And immediately thereafter the severed head is displayed to his view.