A young man, trained in the strictest sect of the Pharisees, is awakened
one morning, and told that he has come into the absolute possession of a
very great fortune in lands and wealth. The time may come when he may
know himself and his powers more thoroughly, but never again, as on that
morn, will he feel such an exultant sense of mastery over the world and
his fortunes. That image[1] seems to me to explain better than any other
that remarkable outburst of literary activity which makes the
Elizabethan Period unique in English literature, and only paralleled in
the world’s literature by the century after Marathon, when Athens first
knew herself. With Elizabeth England came of age, and at the same time
entered into possession of immense spiritual treasures, which were as
novel as they were extensive. A New World promised adventures to the
adventurous, untold wealth to the enterprising. The Orient had become
newly known. The Old World of literature had been born anew. The Bible
spoke for the first time in a tongue understanded of the people. Man
faced his God and his fate without any intervention of Pope or priest.
Even the very earth beneath his feet began to move. Instead of a
universe with dimensions known and circumscribed with Dantesque
minuteness, the mystic glow of the unknown had settled down on the whole
face of Nature, who offered her secrets to the first comer. No wonder
the Elizabethans were filled with an exulting sense of man’s
capabilities, when they had all these realms of thought and action
suddenly and at once thrown open before them. There is a confidence in
the future and all it had to bring which can never recur, for while man
may come into even greater treasures of wealth or thought than the
Elizabethans dreamed of, they can never be as new to us as they were to
them. The sublime confidence of Bacon in the future of science, of which
he knew so little, and that little wrongly, is thus eminently and
characteristically Elizabethan.[2]
[Footnote 1: It was suggested to me, if I remember right, by my
friend Mr. R. G. Moulton.]
[Footnote 2: There was something Elizabethan in the tone of men of
science in England during the “seventies,” when Darwinism was to
solve all the problems. The Marlowe of the movement, the late
Professor Clifford, found no Shakespeare.]
The department of Elizabethan literature in which this exuberant energy
found its most characteristic expression was the Drama, and that for a
very simple though strange reason. To be truly great a literature must
be addressed to the nation as a whole. The subtle influence of audience
on author is shown equally though conversely in works written only for
sections of a nation. Now in the sixteenth century any literature that
should address the English nation as a whole--not necessarily all
Englishmen, but all classes of Englishmen--could not be in any literary
form intended to be merely read. For the majority of Englishmen could
not read. Hence they could only be approached by literature when read
or recited to them in church or theatre. The latter form was already
familiar to them in the Miracle Plays and Mysteries, which had been
adopted by the Church as the best means of acquainting the populace with
Sacred History. The audiences of the Miracle Plays were prepared for the
representation of human action on the stage. Meanwhile, from translation
and imitation, young scholars at the universities had become familiar
with some of the masterpieces of Ancient Drama, and with the laws of
dramatic form. But where were they to seek for matter to fill out these
forms? Where were they, in short, to get their plots?
Plot, we know, is pattern as applied to human action. A story, whether
told or acted, must tend in some definite direction if it is to be a
story at all. And the directions in which stories can go are singularly
few. Somebody in the _Athenæum_--probably Mr. Theodore Watts, he has the
habit of saying such things--has remarked that during the past century
only two novelties in plot, _Undine_ and _Monte Christo_, have been
produced in European literature. Be that as it may, nothing strikes the
student of comparative literature so much as the paucity of plots
throughout literature and the universal tendency to borrow plots rather
than attempt the almost impossible task of inventing them. That tendency
is shown at its highest in the Elizabethan Drama. Even Shakespeare is as
much a plagiarist or as wise an artist, call it which you will, as the
meanest of his fellows.
Not alone is it difficult to invent a plot; it is even difficult to see
one in real life. When the _denouement_ comes, indeed--when the wife
flees or commits suicide--when bosom friends part, or brothers speak no
more--we may know that there has been the conflict of character or the
clash of temperaments which go to make the tragedies of life. But to
recognise these opposing forces before they come to the critical point
requires somewhat rarer qualities. There must be a quasi-scientific
interest in life _quâ_ life, a dispassionate detachment from the events
observed, and at the same time an artistic capacity for selecting the
cardinal points in the action. Such an attitude can only be attained in
an older civilisation, when individuality has emerged out of
nationalism. In Europe of the sixteenth century the only country which
had reached this stage was Italy.
The literary and spiritual development of Italy has always been
conditioned by its historic position as the heir of Rome. Great nations,
as M. Renan has remarked, work themselves out in effecting their
greatness. The reason is that their great products overshadow all later
production, and prevent all competition by their very greatness. When
once a nation has worked up its mythic element into an epos, it contains
in itself no further materials out of which an epos can be elaborated.
So Italian literature has always been overshadowed by Latin literature.
Italian writers, especially in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, were
always conscious of their past, and dared not compete with the great
names of Virgil, Ovid, Horace, and the rest. At the same time, with this
consciousness of the past, they had evolved a special interest in the
problems and arts of the present. The split-up of the peninsula into so
many small states, many of them republics, had developed individual life
just as the city-states of Hellas had done in ancient times. The main
interest shifted from the state and the nation to the life and
development of the individual.[3] And with this interest arose in the
literary sphere the dramatic narrative of human action--the Novella.
[Footnote 3: See Burckhardt, _Cultur der Renaisance in Italien_,
Buch II., especially Kap. iii.]
The genealogy of the Novella is short but curious. The first known
collection of tales in modern European literature dealing with the
tragic and comic aspects of daily life was that made by Petrus Alphonsi,
a baptized Spanish Jew, who knew some Arabic.[4] His book, the
_Disciplina Clericalis_, was originally intended as seasoning for
sermons, and very strong seasoning they must have been found. The
stories were translated into French, and thus gave rise to the
_Fabliau_, which allowed full expression to the _esprit Gaulois_. From
France the _Fabliau_ passed to Italy, and came ultimately into the hands
of Boccaccio, under whose influence it became transformed into the
_Novella_.[5]
[Footnote 4: On Peter Alphonsi see my edition of Caxton’s _Æsop_,
which contains selections from him in Vol. II.]
[Footnote 5: Signor Bartoli has written on _I Precursori di
Boccaccio_, 1874, Landau on his Life and Sources (_Leben_, 1880,
_Quellen des Dekameron_, 1884), and on his successors (_Beiträge
zur Geschichte der ital. Novelle_, 1874). Mr. Symonds has an
admirable chapter on the _Novellieri_ in his _Renaissance_, vol. v.]
It is an elementary mistake to associate Boccaccio’s name with the tales
of gayer tone traceable to the _Fabliaux_. He initiated the custom of
mixing tragic with the comic tales. Nearly all the _novelle_ of the
Fourth Day, for example, deal with tragic topics. And the example he set
in this way was followed by the whole school of _Novellieri_. As
Painter’s book is so largely due to them, a few words on the
_Novellieri_ used by him seem desirable, reserving for the present the
question of his treatment of their text.
Of Giovanne Boccaccio himself it is difficult for any one with a
love of letters to speak in few or measured words. He may have been a
Philistine, as Mr. Symonds calls him, but he was surely a Philistine of
genius. He has the supreme virtue of style. In fact, it may be roughly
said that in Europe for nearly two centuries there is no such thing
as a prose style but Boccaccio’s. Even when dealing with his grosser
topics--and these he derived from others--he half disarms disgust by
the lightness of his touch. And he could tell a tale, one of the most
difficult of literary tasks. When he deals with graver actions, if he
does not always rise to the occasion, he never fails to give the due
impression of seriousness and dignity. It is not for nothing that the
_Decamerone_ has been the storehouse of poetic inspiration for nearly
five centuries. In this country alone, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dryden,
Keats, Tennyson, have each in turn gone to Boccaccio for material.
In his own country he is the fountainhead of a wide stream of literary
influences that has ever broadened as it flowed. Between the fifteenth
and the eighteenth centuries the Italian presses poured forth some four
thousand _novelle_, all avowedly tracing from Boccaccio.[6] Many of
these, it is true, were imitations of the gayer strains of Boccaccio’s
genius. But a considerable proportion of them have a sterner tone, and
deal with the weightier matters of life, and in this they had none but
the master for their model. The gloom of the Black Death settles down
over the greater part of all this literature. Every memorable outburst
of the fiercer passions of men that occurred in Italy, the land of
passion, for all these years, found record in a _novella_ of Boccaccio’s
followers. The _Novelle_ answered in some respects to our newspaper
reports of trials and the earlier _Last Speech and Confession_. But the
example of Boccaccio raised these gruesome topics into the region of
art. Often these tragedies are reported of the true actors; still more
often under the disguise of fictitious names, that enabled the narrator
to have more of the artist’s freedom in dealing with such topics.
[Footnote 6: Specimens of these in somewhat wooden English were
given by Roscoe in his _Italian Novelists_.]
The other _Novellieri_ from whom Painter drew inspiration may be
dismissed very shortly. Of Ser Giovanne Fiorentino, who wrote the fifty
novels of his _Pecorone_ about 1378, little is known nor need be known;
his merits of style or matter do not raise him above mediocrity.
Straparola’s _Piacevole Notti_ were composed in Venice in the earlier
half of the sixteenth century, and are chiefly interesting for the fact
that some dozen or so of his seventy-four stories are folk-tales taken
from the mouth of the people, and were the first thus collected:
Straparola was the earliest Grimm. His contemporary Giraldi, known as
Cinthio (or Cinzio), intended his _Ecatomithi_ to include one hundred
_novelle_, but they never reached beyond seventy; he has the grace to
cause the ladies to retire when the men relate their smoking-room
anecdotes of _feminine impudiche_. Owing to Dryden’s statement
“Shakespeare’s plots are in the one hundred novels of Cinthio” (Preface
to _Astrologer_), his name has been generally fixed upon as the
representative Italian novelist from whom the Elizabethans drew their
plots. As a matter of fact only “Othello” (_Ecat._ iii. 7), and “Measure
for Measure” (_ib._ viii. 5), can be clearly traced to him, though
“Twelfth Night” has some similarity with Cinthio’s “Gravina” (v. 8):
both come from a common source, Bandello.
Bandello is indeed the next greatest name among the _Novellieri_ after
that of Boccaccio, and has perhaps had even a greater influence on
dramatic literature than his master. Matteo Bandello was born at the
end of the fifteenth century at Castelnuovo di Scrivia near Tortona. He
lived mainly in Milan, at the Dominican monastery of Sta. Maria delle
Grazie, where Leonardo painted his “Last Supper.” As he belonged to the
French party, he had to leave Milan when it was taken by the Spaniards
in 1525, and after some wanderings settled in France near Agen. About
1550 he was appointed Bishop of Agen by Henri II., and he died some time
after 1561. To do him justice, he only received the revenues of his see,
the episcopal functions of which were performed by the Bishop of Grasse.
His _novelle_ are nothing less than episcopal in tone and he had the
grace to omit his dignity from his title-pages.
Indeed Bandello’s novels[7] reflect as in a mirror all the worst sides
of Italian Renaissance life. The complete collapse of all the older
sanctions of right conduct, the execrable example given by the petty
courts, the heads of which were reckless because their position was so
insecure, the great growth of wealth and luxury, all combined to make
Italy one huge hot-bed of unblushing vice. The very interest in
individuality, the spectator-attitude towards life, made men ready to
treat life as one large experiment, and for such purposes vice is as
important as right living even though it ultimately turns out to be as
humdrum as virtue. The Italian nobles treated life in this experimental
way and the novels of Bandello and others give us the results of their
experiments. The _Novellieri_ were thus the “realists” of their day and
of them all Bandello was the most realistic. He claims to give only
incidents that really happened and makes this his excuse for telling
many incidents that should never have happened. It is but fair to add
that his most vicious tales are his dullest.
[Footnote 7: The Villon Society is to publish this year a complete
translation of Bandello by Mr. John Payne.]
That cannot be said of Queen Margaret of Navarre, who carries on the
tradition of the _Novellieri_, and is represented in Painter by some of
her best stories. She intended to give a Decameron of one hundred
stories--the number comes from the _Cento novelle antichi_, before
Boccaccio--but only got so far as the second novel of the eighth day. As
she had finished seven days her collection is known as the Heptameron.
How much of it she wrote herself is a point on which the doctors
dispute. She had in her court men like Clement Marot, and Bonaventure
des Périers, who probably wrote some of the stories. Bonaventure des
Périers in particular, had done much in the same line under his own
name, notably the collection known as _Cymbalum Mundi_. Marguerite’s
other works hardly prepare us for the narrative skill, the easy grace of
style and the knowledge of certain aspects of life shown in the
_Heptameron_. On the other hand the framework, which is more elaborate
than in Boccaccio or any of his school, is certainly from one hand, and
the book does not seem one that could have been connected with the
Queen’s name unless she had really had much to do with it. Much of its
piquancy comes from the thought of the association of one whose life was
on the whole quite blameless with anecdotes of a most blameworthy style.
Unlike the lady in the French novel who liked to play at innocent games
with persons who were not innocent, Margaret seems to have liked to talk
and write of things not innocent while remaining unspotted herself. Her
case is not a solitary one.
The whole literature of the _Novella_ has the attraction of graceful
naughtiness in which vice, as Burke put it, loses half its evil by
losing all its grossness. At all times, and for all time probably,
similar tales, more broad than long, will form favourite talk or reading
of adolescent males. They are, so to speak, pimples of the soul which
synchronise with similar excrescences of the skin. Some men have the art
of never growing old in this respect, but I cannot say I envy them their
eternal youth. However, we are not much concerned with tales of this
class on the present occasion. Very few of the _novelle_ selected by
Painter for translation depend for their attraction on mere naughtiness.
In matters of sex the sublime and the ridiculous are more than usually
close neighbours. It is the tragic side of such relations that attracted
Painter, and it was this fact that gave his book its importance for the
history of English literature, both in its connection with Italian
letters and in its own internal development.
The relations of Italy and England in matters literary are due to the
revivers of the New Learning. Italy was, and still is, the repository of
all the chief MSS. of the Greek and Latin classics. Thither, therefore,
went all the young Englishmen, whom the influence of Erasmus had bitten
with a desire for the New Learning which was the Old Learning born anew.
But in Italy itself, the New Learning had even by the early years of the
sixteenth century produced its natural result of giving birth to a
national literature (Ariosto, Trissino). Thus in their search for the
New Learning, Englishmen of culture who went to Italy came back with a
tincture of what may be called the Newest Learning, the revival of
Italian Literature.
Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey “The Dioscuri of the Dawn” as
they have been called, are the representatives of this new movement in
English thought and literature, which came close on the heels of the New
Learning represented by Colet, More, Henry VIII. himself and Roger
Ascham. The adherents of the New Learning did not look with too
favourable eyes on the favourers of the Newest Learning. They took their
ground not only on literary lines, but with distinct reference to
manners and morals. The corruption of the Papal Court which had been the
chief motive cause of the Reformation--men judge creeds by the character
they produce, not by the logical consistency of their tenets--had spread
throughout Italian society. The Englishmen who came to know Italian
society could not avoid being contaminated by the contact. The Italians
themselves observed the effect and summed it up in their proverb,
_Inglese italianato è un diabolo incarnato_. What struck the Italians
must have been still more noticeable to Englishmen. We have a remarkable
proof of this in an interpolation made by Roger Ascham at the end of the
first part of his _Schoolmaster_, which from internal evidence must have
been written about 1568, the year after the appearance of Painter’s
Second Tome.[8] The whole passage is so significant of the relations of
the chief living exponent of the New Learning to the appearance of what
I have called the Newest Learning that it deserves to be quoted in full
in any introduction to the book in which the Newest Learning found its
most characteristic embodiment. I think too I shall be able to prove
that there is a distinct and significant reference to Painter in the
passage (pp. 77-85 of Arber’s edition, slightly abridged).
[Footnote 8: See Prof. Arber’s reprint, p. 8.]
But I am affraide, that ouer many of our trauelers into _Italie_, do
not exchewe the way to _Circes_ Court: but go, and ryde, and runne,
and flie thether, they make great hast to cum to her: they make
great sute to serue her: yea, I could point out some with my finger,
that neuer had gone out of England, but onelie to serue _Circes_, in
_Italie_. Vanitie and vice, and any licence to ill liuyng in England
was counted stale and rude vnto them. And so, beyng Mules and Horses
before they went, returned verie Swyne and Asses home agayne; yet
euerie where verie Foxes with as suttle and busie heades; and where
they may, verie Woolues, with cruell malicious hartes.
[Sidenote: A trewe Picture of a knight of Circes Court.]
A maruelous monster, which, for filthines of liuyng, for dulnes to
learning him selfe, for wilinesse in dealing with others, for malice
in hurting without cause, should carie at once in one bodie, the
belie of a Swyne, the head of an Asse, the brayne of a Foxe, the
wombe of a wolfe. If you thinke, we iudge amisse, and write to sore
against you, heare,
[Sidenote: The Italians iudgement of Englishmen brought vp in Italie.]
what the _Italian_ sayth of the English Man, what the master
reporteth of the scholer: who vttereth playnlie, what is taught by
him, and what learned by you, saying _Englese Italianato, e vn
diabolo incarnato_, that is to say, you remaine men in shape and
facion, but becum deuils in life and condition. This is not, the
opinion of one, for some priuate spite, but the iudgement of all, in
a common Prouerbe, which riseth, of that learnyng, and those maners,
which you gather in _Italie_:
[Sidenote: The Italian diffameth them selfe, to shame the Englishe
man.]
a good Scholehouse of wholesome doctrine, and worthy Masters of
commendable Scholers, where the Master had rather diffame hym selfe
for hys teachyng, than not shame his Scholer for his learnyng.
A good nature of the maister, and faire conditions of the scholers.
And now chose you, you _Italian_ Englishe men, whether you will be
angrie with vs, for calling you monsters, or with the _Italianes_,
for callyng you deuils, or else with your owne selues, that take so
much paines, and go so farre, to make your selues both. If some yet
do not well vnderstand,
[Sidenote: An English man Italianated.]
what is an English man Italianated, I will plainlie tell him. He,
that by liuing, and traueling in _Italie_, bringeth home into
England out of _Italie_, the Religion, the learning, the policie,
the experience, the maners of _Italie_.... These be the
inchantements of _Circes_, brought out of _Italie_, to marre mens
maners in England; much, by example of ill life, but more by
preceptes of fonde bookes,
[Sidenote: _Italian_ bokes translated into English.]
of late translated out of _Italian_ into English, sold in euery shop
in London, commended by honest titles the soner to corrupt honest
maners: dedicated ouer boldlie to vertuous and honourable
personages, the easielier to begile simple and innocent wittes.
[Sidenote: pointing finger]
It is pitie, that those, which haue authoritie and charge, to allow
and dissalow bookes to be printed, be no more circumspect herein,
than they are. Ten Sermons at Paules Crosse do not so moch good for
mouyng men to trewe doctrine, as one of those bookes do harme, with
inticing men to ill liuing. Yea, I say farder, those bookes, tend
not so moch to corrupt honest liuing, as they do, to subuert trewe
Religion. Mo Papistes be made, by your mery bookes of _Italie_, than
by your earnest bookes of _Louain_....
[Sidenote: pointing finger]
Therfore, when the busie and open Papistes abroad, could not, by
their contentious bookes, turne men in England fast enough, from
troth and right iudgement in doctrine, than the sutle and secrete
Papistes at home, procured bawdie bookes to be translated out of the
_Italian_ tonge, whereby ouer many yong willes and wittes allured to
wantonnes, do now boldly contemne all seuere bookes that founde to
honestie and godlines. In our forefathers tyme, whan Papistrie, as a
standyng poole, couered and ouerflowed all England, fewe bookes were
read in our tong, sauyng certaine bookes of Cheualrie, as they sayd,
for pastime and pleasure, which, as some say, were made in
Monasteries, by idle Monkes, or wanton Chanons: as one for example,
[Sidenote: Morte Arthur.]
_Morte Arthure_: the whole pleasure of which booke standeth in two
speciall poyntes, in open mans slaughter, and bold bawdrye: In which
booke those be counted the noblest Knightes, that do kill most men
without any quarrell, and commit fowlest aduoulteres by subtlest
shiftes: as Sir _Launcelote_, with the wife of king _Arthure_ his
master: Syr _Tristram_ with the wife of king _Marke_ his vncle: Syr
_Lamerocke_ with the wife of king _Lote_, that was his owne aunte.
[Sidenote: pointing finger]
This is good stuffe, for wise men to laughe att or honest men to
take pleasure at. Yet I know, when Gods Bible was banished the
Court, and _Morte Arthure_ receiued into the Princes chamber. What
toyes, the dayly readyng of such a booke, may worke in the will of a
yong ientleman, or a yong mayde, that liueth welthelie and idlelie,
wise men can iudge, and honest men do pitie. And yet ten _Morte
Arthures_ do not the tenth part so much harme, as one of these
bookes, made in _Italie_, and translated in England.
[Sidenote: pointing finger]
They open, not fond and common ways to vice, but such subtle,
cunnyng, new, and diuerse shiftes, to cary yong willes to vanitie,
and yong wittes to mischief, to teach old bawdes new schole poyntes,
as the simple head of an Englishman is not hable to inuent, nor
neuer was hard of in England before, yea when Papistrie ouerflowed
all. Suffer these bookes to be read, and they shall soone displace
all bookes of godly learnyng. For they, carying the will to vanitie
and marryng good maners,
[Sidenote: pointing finger]
shall easily corrupt the mynde with ill opinions, and false
iudgement in doctrine: first, to thinke nothyng of God hym selfe,
one speciall pointe that is to be learned in _Italie_, and _Italian_
bookes.
[Sidenote: pointing finger]
And that which is most to be lamented, and therfore more nedefull to
be looked to, there be moe of these vngratious bookes set out in
Printe within these fewe monethes, than haue bene sene in England
many score yeare before. And bicause our English men made _Italians_
can not hurt, but certaine persons, and in certaine places, therfore
these _Italian_ bookes are made English, to bryng mischief enough
openly and boldly, to all states great and meane, yong and old,
euery where.
And thus yow see, how will intised to wantonnes, doth easelie allure
the mynde to false opinions: and how corrupt maners in liuinge, breede
false iudgement in doctrine: how sinne and fleshlines, bring forth
sectes and heresies: And therefore suffer not vaine bookes to breede
vanitie in mens wills, if yow would haue Goddes trothe take roote in
mens myndes....
They geuing themselues vp to vanitie, shakinge of the motions of
Grace, driuing from them the feare of God, and running headlong into
all sinne, first, lustelie contemne God, than scornefullie mocke his
worde, and also spitefullie hate and hurte all well willers thereof.
Then they haue in more reuerence the triumphes of Petrarche: than
the Genesis of Moses: They make more account of _Tullies_ offices,
than _S. Paules_ epistles: of a tale in _Bocace_, than a storie of
the Bible. Than they counte as Fables, the holie misteries of
Christian Religion. They make Christ and his Gospell, onelie serue
Ciuill pollicie: Than neyther Religion cummeth amisse to them....
For where they dare, in cumpanie where they like, they boldlie
laughe to scorne both protestant and Papist. They care for no
scripture: They make no counte of generall councels: they contemne
the consent of the Chirch: They passe for no Doctores: They mocke
the Pope: They raile on _Luther_: They allow neyther side: They like
none, but onelie themselues: The marke they shote at, the ende they
looke for, the heauen they desire, is onelie, their owne present
pleasure, and priuate proffit: whereby, they plainlie declare, of
whose schole, of what Religion they be: that is, Epicures in liuing,
and ἄθεοι in doctrine: this last worde, is no more vnknowne now to
plaine Englishe men, than the Person was vnknown somtyme in England,
vntill som Englishe man tooke peines to fetch that deuelish opinin
out of Italie....
I was once in Italie my selfe: but I thanke God, my abode there, was
but ix. dayes:
[Sidenote: _Venice_.]
And yet I sawe in that litle time, in one Citie, more libertie to
sinne, than euer I hard tell of in our noble
[Sidenote: _London_.]
Citie of London in ix. yeare. I sawe, it was there, as free to
sinne, not onelie without all punishment, but also without any mans
marking, as it is free in the Citie of London, to chose, without all
blame, whether a man lust to weare Shoo or Pantocle....
Our Italians bring home with them other faultes from Italie, though
not so great as this of Religion, yet a great deale greater, than
many good men will beare.
[Sidenote: Contempt of mariage.]
For commonlie they cum home, common contemners of mariage and readie
persuaders of all other to the same: not because they loue
virginitie, nor yet because they hate prettie yong virgines, but,
being free in Italie, to go whither so euer lust will cary them,
they do not like, that lawe and honestie should be soche a barre to
their like libertie at home in England. And yet they be, the
greatest makers of loue, the daylie daliers, with such pleasant
wordes, with such smilyng and secret countenances, with such signes,
tokens, wagers, purposed to be lost, before they were purposed to be
made, with bargaines of wearing colours, floures and herbes, to
breede occasion of ofter meeting of him and her, and bolder talking
of this and that, etc. And although I haue seene some, innocent of
ill, and stayde in all honestie, that haue vsed these thinges
without all harme, without all suspicion of harme, yet these knackes
were brought first into England by them, that learned them before in
_Italie_ in _Circes_ Court: and how Courtlie curtesses so euer they
be counted now, yet, if the meaning and maners of some that do vse
them, were somewhat amended, it were no great hurt, neither to them
selues, nor to others....
An other propertie of this our English _Italians_ is, to be
meruelous singular in all their matters: Singular in knowledge,
ignorant in nothyng: So singular in wisedome (in their owne opinion)
as scarse they counte the best Counsellor the Prince hath,
comparable with them: Common discoursers of all matters: busie
searchers of most secret affaires: open flatterers of great men:
priuie mislikers of good men: Faire speakers, with smiling
countenances, and much curtessie openlie to all men. Ready
bakbiters, sore nippers, and spitefull reporters priuily of good
men. And beyng brought vp in _Italie_, in some free Citie, as all
Cities be there: where a man may freelie discourse against what he
will, against whom he lust: against any Prince, agaynst any
gouernement, yea against God him selfe, and his whole Religion:
where he must be, either _Guelphe_ or _Gibiline_, either _French_ or
_Spanish_: and alwayes compelled to be of some partie, of some
faction, he shall neuer be compelled to be of any Religion: And if
he medle not ouer much with Christes true Religion, he shall haue
free libertie to embrace all Religions, and becum, if he lust at
once, without any let or punishment, Iewish, Turkish, Papish, and
Deuilish.
It is the old quarrel of classicists and Romanticists, of the _ancien
régime_ and the new school in literature, which runs nearly through
every age. It might be Victor Cousin reproving Victor Hugo, or, say,
M. Renan protesting, if he could protest, against M. Zola. Nor is the
diatribe against the evil communication that had corrupted good manners
any novelty in the quarrel. Critics have practically recognised that
letters are a reflex of life long before Matthew Arnold formulated the
relation. And in the disputing between Classicists and Romanticists it
has invariably happened that the Classicists were the earlier
generation, and therefore more given to convention, while the
Romanticists were likely to be experimental in life as in literature.
Altogether then, we must discount somewhat Ascham’s fierce denunciation,
of the Italianate Englishman, and of the Englishing of Italian books.
There can be little doubt, I think, that in the denunciation of the
“bawdie stories” introduced from Italy, Ascham was thinking mainly and
chiefly of Painter’s “Palace of Pleasure.” The whole passage is later
than the death of Sir Thomas Sackville in 1566, and necessarily before
the death of Ascham in December 1568. Painter’s First Tome appeared in
1566, and his Second Tome in 1567. Of its immediate and striking success
there can be no doubt. A second edition of the first Tome appeared in
1569, the year after Ascham’s death, and a second edition of the whole
work in 1575, the first Tome thus going through three editions in nine
years. It is therefore practically certain that Ascham had Painter’s
book in his mind[9] in the above passage, which may be taken as a
contemporary criticism of Painter, from the point of view of an adherent
of the New-Old Learning, who conveniently forgot that scarcely a single
one of the Latin classics is free from somewhat similar blemishes to
those he found in Painter and his fellow-translators from the Italian.
[Footnote 9: Ascham was shrewd enough not to advertise the book he
was denouncing by referring to it by name. I have failed to find
in the Stationer’s Register of 1566-8 any similar book to which
his remarks could apply, except Fenton’s _Tragicall Discourses_,
and that was from the French.]
But it is time to turn to the book which roused Ascham’s ire so greatly,
and to learn something of it and its author.[10] William Painter was
probably a Kentishman, born somewhere about 1525.[11] He seems to have
taken his degree at one of the Universities, as we find him head master
of Sevenoaks’ school about 1560, and the head master had to be a
Bachelor of Arts. In the next year, however, he left the pædagogic toga
for some connection with arms, for on 9 Feb. 1561, he was appointed
Clerk of the Ordnance, with a stipend of eightpence per diem, and it is
in that character that he figures on his title page. He soon after
married Dorothy Bonham of Dowling (born about 1537, died 1617), and had
a family of at least five children. He acquired two important manors in
Gillingham, co. Kent, East Court and Twidall. Haslewood is somewhat at a
loss to account for these possessions. From documents I have discovered
and printed in an Appendix, it becomes only too clear, I fear, that
Painter’s fortune had the same origin as too many private fortunes, in
peculation of public funds.
[Footnote 10: See Haslewood’s account, reprinted _infra_,
p. xxxvii., to which I have been able to add a few documents in
the Appendix.]
[Footnote 11: His son, in a document of 1591, speaks of him as his
aged father (Appendix _infra_, p. lvii.).]
So far as we can judge from the materials at our disposal, it would seem
that Painter obtained his money by a very barefaced procedure. He seems
to have moved powder and other materials of war from Windsor to the
Tower, charged for them on delivery at the latter place as if they had
been freshly bought, and pocketed the proceeds. On the other hand, it is
fair to Painter to say that we only have the word of his accusers for
the statement, though both he and his son own to certain undefined
irregularities. It is, at any rate, something in his favour that he
remained in office till his death, unless he was kept there on the
principle of setting a peculator to catch a peculator. I fancy, too,
that the Earl of Warwick was implicated in his misdeeds, and saved him
from their consequences.
His works are but few. A translation from the Latin account, by Nicholas
Moffan, of the death of the Sultan Solyman,[12] was made by him in 1557.
In 1560 an address in prose, prefixed to Dr. W. Fulke’s
_Antiprognosticon_, was signed “Your familiar friend, William
Paynter,”[13] and dated “From Sevenoke xxii. of Octobre;” and the same
volume contains Latin verses entitled “Gulielmi Painteri, ludimagistri
Seuenochensis Tetrastichon.” It is perhaps worth while remarking that
this _Antiprognosticon_ was directed against Anthony Ascham, Roger’s
brother, which may perhaps account for some of the bitterness in the
above passage from the _Scholemaster_. These slight productions,
however, sink into insignificance in comparison with his chief work,
“The Palace of Pleasure.”
[Footnote 12: Reprinted in the Second Tome of the “Palace,”
_infra_, vol. iii. p. 395.]
[Footnote 13: In his own book, and in the document signed by him,
the name is always “Painter.”]
He seems to have started work on this before he left Seven Oaks in 1561.
For as early as 1562 he got a licence for a work to be entitled “The
Citye of Cyuelite,” as we know from the following entry in the
_Stationers’ Registers:_--
W. Jonnes--Receyued of Wylliam Jonnes for his lycense for pryntinge
of a boke intituled _The Cytie of Cyuelitie_ translated
into englisshe by WILLIAM PAYNTER.
From his own history of the work given in the dedication of the first
Tome to his patron, the Earl of Warwick, it is probable that this was
originally intended to include only tales from Livy and the Latin
historians. He seems later to have determined on adding certain of
Boccaccio’s novels, and the opportune appearance of a French translation
of Bandello in 1559 caused him to add half a dozen or so from the Bishop
of Agen. Thus a book which was originally intended to be another
contribution to the New Learning of classical antiquity turned out to be
the most important representative in English of the Newest Learning of
Italy. With the change of plan came a change of title, and the “City of
Civility,” which was to have appeared in 1562, was replaced by the
“Palace of Pleasure” in 1566.[14]
[Footnote 14: The Dedication is dated near the Tower of London
1 January 1566, which must have been new style (introduced into
France two years before).]
The success of the book seems to have been immediate. We have seen above
Ascham’s indignant testimony to this, and the appearance of the Second
Tome, half as large again as the other, within about eighteen months of
the First, confirms his account. This Second Tome was practically the
Bandello volume; more than half of the tales, and those by far the
longest, were taken from him, through the medium of his French
translators, Boaistuau and Belleforest. Within a couple of years another
edition was called for of the First Tome, which appeared in 1569, with
the addition of five more stories from the Heptameron, from which eleven
were already in the first edition. Thus the First Tome might be called
the Heptameron volume, and the second, that of Bandello. Boccaccio is
pretty evenly divided between the two, and the remainder is made up of
classic tales and anecdotes and a few _novelle_ of Ser Giovanni and
Straparola. Both Tomes were reprinted in what may be called the
definitive edition of the work in 1575.
Quite apart from its popularity and its influence on the English stage,
on which we shall have more to say shortly, Painter’s book deserves a
larger place in the history of English Literature than has as yet been
given to it. It introduced to England some of the best novels of
Boccaccio, Bandello, and Queen Margaret, three of the best _raconteurs_
of short stories the world has ever had. It is besides the largest work
in English prose that appeared between the _Morte Darthur_ and North’s
Plutarch.[15] Painter’s style bears the impress of French models. Though
professing to be from Italian _novellieri_, it is mainly derived from
French translations of them. Indeed, but for the presence of
translations from Ser Giovanni and Straparola, it might be doubtful
whether Painter translated from the Italian at all. He claims however to
do this from Boccaccio, and as he owns the aid of a French “crib” in the
case of Bandello, the claim may be admitted. His translations from the
French are very accurate, and only err in the way of too much
literalness.[16] From a former dominie one would have expected a far
larger proportion of Latinisms than we actually find. As a rule, his
sentences are relatively short, and he is tolerably free from the vice
of the long periods that were brought into vogue by “Ciceronianism.” He
is naturally free from Euphuism and for a very good reason, since
_Euphues and his Englande_ was not published for another dozen years or
so. The recent suggestion of Dr. Landmann and others that Euphuism came
from the influence of Guevara would seem to be negatived by the fact
that the “Letters of Trajan” in the Second Tome of Painter are taken
from Guevara and are no more Euphuistic than the rest of the volume.
[Footnote 15: Always with the exception of exceptions, the
Bishop’s Bible.]
[Footnote 16: Mr. P. A. Daniel, in his edition of Painter’s
“Romeo and Juliet,” in the New Shakespere Society’s _Originals and
Analogues_, i., 1876, gives the few passages in which Painter has
misunderstood Boaistuau. For lexicographical use, however, it
would be well to consult Painter’s original for any very striking
peculiarities of his vocabulary.]
Painter’s volume is practically the earliest volume of prose
translations from a modern language into English in the true Elizabethan
period after the influence of Caxton in literary importation had died
away with Bourchier the translator of Froissart and of Huon of Bordeaux.
It set the ball rolling in this direction, and found many followers,
some of whom may be referred to as having had an influence only second
to that of Painter in providing plots for the Elizabethan Drama. There
can be little doubt that it was Painter set the fashion, and one of his
chief followers recognised this, as we shall see, on his title page.
The year in which Painter’s Second Tome appeared saw George (afterwards
Sir George) Fenton’s _Certaine Tragicall Discourses writtene oute of
Frenche and Latine_ containing fourteen “histories.” As four of these
are identical with tales contained in Painter’s Second Tome it is
probable that Fenton worked independently, though it was doubtless the
success of the “Palace of Pleasure” that induced Thomas Marshe,
Painter’s printer, to undertake a similar volume from Fenton. The
_Tragicall Discourses_ ran into a second edition in 1569. T. Fortescue’s
_Foreste or Collection of Histories ... dooen oute of Frenche_ appeared
in 1571 and reached a second edition in 1576. In the latter year
appeared a work of G. Pettie that bore on its title page--_A Petite
Palace of Pettie his Pleasure_--a clear reference to Painter’s book.
Notwithstanding Anthony à Wood’s contemptuous judgment of his
great-uncle’s book it ran through no less than six editions between 1576
and 1613.[17] The year after Pettie’s first edition appeared R. Smyth’s
_Stravnge and Tragicall histories Translated out of French_. In 1576 was
also published the first of George Whetstone’s collections of tales, the
four parts of _The Rocke of Regard_, in which he told over again in
verse several stories already better told by Painter. In the same year,
1576, appeared G. Turberville’s _Tragical Tales, translated out of
sundrie Italians_--ten tales in verse, chiefly from Boccaccio.
Whetstone’s _Heptameron of Ciuill Discourses_ in 1582 was however a more
important contribution to the English _Novella_, and it ran through two
further editions by 1593.[18] Thus in the quarter of a century 1565-1590
no less than eight collections, most of them running into a second
edition, made their appearance in England. Painter’s work contains more
than all the rest put together, and its success was the cause of the
whole movement. It clearly answered a want and thus created a demand. It
remains to consider the want which was thus satisfied by Painter and his
school.
[Footnote 17: The tales are ten--1. Sinorix and Camma
[= Tennyson’s _Cup_]; 2. Tereus and Progne; 3. Germanicus and
Agrippina; 4. Julius and Virginia; 5. Admetus and Alcest; 6. Silla
and Minos; 7. Curiatius and Horatia; 8. Cephalus and Procris;
9. Pigmalion and his Image; 10. Alexius.]
[Footnote 18: M. Jusserand gives a list of most of these
translations of French and Italian novels in his just issued
_English Novel in the Elizabethan Age_, 1890, pp. 80-1. He also
refers to works by Rich and Gascoigne in which novels occur.]
The quarter of a century from 1565 to 1590 was the seed-time of the
Elizabethan Drama, which blossomed out in the latter year in Marlowe’s
_Tamburlaine the Great_. The only play which precedes that period,
_Gordobuc_ or _Ferrex and Porrex_, first played in 1561, indicates what
direction the English Drama would naturally have taken if nothing had
intervened to take it out of its course. _Gordobuc_ is severely
classical in its unities; it is of the Senecan species. Now throughout
Western Europe this was the type of the modern drama,[19] and it
dominated the more serious side of the French stage down to the time of
Victor Hugo. There can be little doubt that the English Drama would have
followed the classical models but for one thing. The flood of Italian
_novelle_ introduced into England by Painter and his school, imported a
new condition into the problem. It is essential to the Classical Drama
that the plot should be already known to the audience, that there should
be but one main action, and but one tone, tragic or comic. In Painter’s
work and those of his followers, the would-be dramatists of Elizabeth’s
time had offered to them a super-abundance of actions quite novel to
their audience, and alternating between grave and gay, often within the
same story.[20] The very fact of their foreignness was a further
attraction. At a time when all things were new, and intellectual
curiosity had become a passion, the opportunity of studying the varied
life of an historic country like Italy lent an additional charm to the
translated _novelle_. In an interesting essay on the “Italy of the
Elizabethan Dramatists,”[21] Vernon Lee remarks that it was the very
strangeness and horror of Italian life as compared with the dull decorum
of English households that had its attraction for the Elizabethans. She
writes as if the dramatists were themselves acquainted with the life
they depicted. As a matter of fact, not a single one of the Elizabethan
dramatists, as far as I know, was personally acquainted with Italy.[22]
This knowledge of Italian life and crime was almost entirely derived
from the works of Painter and his school. If there had been anything
corresponding to them dealing with the tragic aspects of English life,
the Elizabethan dramatists would have been equally ready to tell of
English vice and criminality. They used Holinshed and Fabyan readily
enough for their “Histories.” They would have used an English Bandello
with equal readiness had he existed. But an English Bandello could not
have existed at a time when the English folk had not arrived at
self-consciousness, and had besides no regular school of tale-tellers
like the Italians. It was then only from the Italians that the
Elizabethan dramatists could have got a sufficient stock of plots to
allow for that interweaving of many actions into one which is the
characteristic of the Romantic Drama of Marlowe and his compeers.
[Footnote 19: A partial exception is to be made in favour of the
Spanish school, which broke loose from the classical tradition
with Lope de Vega.]
[Footnote 20: It is probable however that the “mixture of tones”
came more directly from the Interludes.]
[Footnote 21: _Euphorion_, by Vernon Lee. Second edition, 1885,
pp. 55-108.]
[Footnote 22: It has, of course, been suggested that Shakespeare
visited Venice. But this is only one of the 1001 mare’s nests of
the commentators.]
That Painter was the main source of plot for the dramatists before
Marlowe, we have explicit evidence. Of the very few extant dramas before
Marlowe, _Appius and Virginia_, _Tancred and Gismunda,_ and _Cyrus and
Panthea_ are derived from Painter.[23] We have also references in
contemporary literature showing the great impression made by Painter’s
book on the opponents of the stage. In 1572 E. Dering, in the Epistle
prefixed to _A briefe Instruction_, says: “To this purpose we have
gotten our Songs and Sonnets, our Palaces of Pleasure, our unchaste
Fables and Tragedies, and such like sorceries.... O that there were
among us some zealous Ephesian, that books of so great vanity might be
burned up.” As early as 1579 Gosson began in his _School of Abuse_ the
crusade against stage-plays, which culminated in Prynne’s
_Histriomastix_. He was answered by Lodge in his _Defence of Stage
Plays_. Gosson demurred to Lodge in 1580 with his _Playes Confuted in
Five Actions_, and in this he expressly mentions Painter’s _Palace of
Pleasure_ among the “bawdie comedies” that had been “ransacked” to
supply the plots of plays. Unfortunately very few even of the titles of
these early plays are extant: they probably only existed as prompt-books
for stage-managers, and were not of sufficient literary value to be
printed when the marriage of Drama and Literature occurred with Marlowe.
[Footnote 23: Altogether in the scanty notices of this period we
can trace a dozen derivatives of Painter. See Analytical Table on
Tome I. nov. iii., v., xi., xxxvii., xxxix., xl., xlviii., lvii.;
Tome II. nov. i., iii., xiv., xxxiv.]
But we have one convincing proof of the predominating influence of the
plots of Painter and his imitators on the Elizabethan Drama.
Shakespeare’s works in the first folio, and the editions derived from
it, are, as is well known, divided into three parts--Comedies,
Histories, and Tragedies. The division is founded on a right instinct,
and applies to the whole Elizabethan Drama.[24] Putting aside the
Histories, which derive from Holinshed, North, and the other historians,
the _dramatis personæ_ of the Tragedies and Comedies are, in nineteen
cases out of twenty, provided with Italian names, and the scene is
placed in Italy. It had become a regular convention with the
Elizabethans to give an Italian habitation and name to the whole of
their dramas. This convention must have arisen in the pre-Marlowe days,
and there is no other reason to be given for it but the fact that the
majority of plots are taken from the “Palace of Pleasure” or its
followers. A striking instance is mentioned by Charles Lamb of the
tyranny of this convention. In the first draught of his _Every Man in
his Humour_ Ben Jonson gave Italian names to all his _dramatis personæ_.
Mistress Kitely appeared as Biancha, Master Stephen as Stephano, and
even the immortal Captain Bobabil as Bobadilla. Imagine Dame Quickly as
Putana, and Sir John as Corporoso, and we can see what a profound
influence such a seemingly superficial thing as the names of the
_dramatis personæ_ has had on the Elizabethan Drama through the
influence of Painter and his men.
[Footnote 24: In the _Warning for Fair Women_ there is a scene in
which Tragedy, Comedy, and History dispute for precedence.]
But the effect of this Italianisation of the Elizabethan Drama due to
Painter goes far deeper than mere externalities. It has been said that
after Lamb’s sign-post criticisms, and we may add, after Mr. Swinburne’s
dithyrambs, it is easy enough to discover the Elizabethan dramatists
over again. But is there not the danger that we may discover too much in
them? However we may explain the fact, it remains true that outside
Shakespeare none of the Elizabethans has really reached the heart of the
nation. There is not a single Elizabethan drama, always of course with
the exception of Shakespeare’s, which belongs to English literature in
the sense in which _Samson Agonistes_, _Absalom and Achitophel_,
_Gulliver’s Travels_, _The Rape of the Lock_, _Tom Jones_, _She Stoops
to Conquer_, _The School for Scandal_, belong to it. The dramas have not
that direct appeal to us which the works I have mentioned have continued
to exercise after the generation for whom they were written has passed
away. To an inner circle of students, to the 500 or so who really care
for English literature, the Elizabethan dramas may appeal with a power
greater than any of these literary products I have mentioned. We
recognise in them a wealth of imaginative power, an ease in dealing with
the higher issues of life, which is not shown even in those
masterpieces. But the fact remains, and remains to be explained, that
the Elizabethans do not appeal to the half a million or so among English
folk who are capable of being touched at all by literature, who respond
to the later masterpieces, and cannot be brought into _rapport_ with the
earlier masters. Why is this?
Partly, I think, because owing to the Italianisation of the Elizabethan
Drama the figures whom the dramatists drew are unreal, and live in an
unreal world. They are neither Englishmen nor Italians, nor even
Italianate Englishmen. I can only think of four tragedies in the whole
range of the Elizabethan drama where the characters are English:
Wilkins’ _Miseries of Enforced Marriage_, and _A Yorkshire Tragedy_,
both founded on a recent _cause celèbre_ of one Calverly, who was
executed 5 August 1605; _Arden of Faversham_, also founded on a _cause
celèbre_ of the reign of Edward VI.; and Heywood’s _Woman Killed by
Kindness_. These are, so far as I remember, the only English tragedies
out of some hundred and fifty extant dramas deserving that name.[25] As
a result of all this, the impression of English life which we get from
the Elizabethan Drama is almost entirely derived from the comedies, or
rather five-act farces, which alone appear to hold the mirror up to
English nature. Judged by the drama, English men and English women under
good Queen Bess would seem incapable of deep emotion and lofty
endeavour. We know this to be untrue, but that the fact appears to be so
is due to the Italianising of the more serious drama due to Painter and
his school.
[Footnote 25: Curiously enough, two of the four have been
associated with Shakespeare’s name. It should be added, perhaps,
that one of the _Two Tragedies in One_ of Yarington is English.]
In fact the Italian drapery of the Elizabethan Drama disguises from us
the significant light it throws upon the social history of the time.
Plot can be borrowed from abroad, but characterisation must be drawn
from observation of men and women around the dramatist. Whence, then
comes the problem, did Webster and the rest derive their portraits of
their White Devils, those imperious women who had broken free from all
the conventional bonds? At first sight it might seem impossible for the
gay roysterers of Alsatia to have come into personal contact with such
lofty dames. But the dramatists, though Bohemians, were mostly of gentle
birth, or at any rate were from the Universities, and had come in
contact with the best blood of England. It is clear too from their
dedications that the young noblemen of England admitted them to familiar
intercourse with their families, which would include many of the _grande
dames_ of Elizabeth’s Court. Elizabeth’s own character, recent
revelations about Mistress Fitton, Shakespeare’s relations with his Dark
Lady, all prepare for the belief that the Elizabethan dramatists had
sufficient material from their own observation to fill up the outlines
given by the Italian novelists.[26] The Great Oyer of Poisoning--the
case of Sir Thomas Overbury and the Somersets--in James the First’s
reign could vie with any Italian tale of lust and cruelty.
[Footnote 26: The frequency of scenes in which ladies of high
birth yield themselves to men of lower station is remarkable in
this connection.]
Thus in some sort the Romantic Drama was an extraneous product in
English literature. Even the magnificent medium in which it is composed,
the decasyllabic blank verse which the genius of Marlowe adapted to the
needs of the drama, is ultimately due to the Italian Trissino, and has
never kept a firm hold on English poetry. Thus both the formal elements
of the Drama, plot and verse, were importations from Italy. But style
and characterisation were both English of the English, and after all is
said it is in style and characterisation that the greatness of the
Elizabethan Drama consists. It must however be repeated that in its
highest flights in the tragedies, a sense of unreality is produced by
the pouring of English metal into Italian moulds.
It cannot be said that even Shakespeare escapes altogether from the ill
effects of this Italianisation of all the externalities of the drama. It
might plausibly be urged that by pushing unreality to its extreme you
get idealisation. A still more forcible objection is that the only
English play of Shakespeare’s, apart from his histories, is the one that
leaves the least vivid impression on us, _The Merry Wives of Windsor_.
But one cannot help feeling regret that the great master did not express
more directly in his immortal verse the finer issues and deeper passions
of the men and women around him. Charles Lamb, who seems to have said
all that is worth saying about the dramatists in the dozen pages or so
to which his notes extend, has also expressed his regret. “I am
sometimes jealous,” he says, “that Shakespere laid so few of his scenes
at home.” But every art has it conventions, and by the time Shakespeare
began to write it was a convention of English drama that the scene of
its most serious productions should be laid abroad. The convention was
indeed a necessary one, for there did not exist in English any other
store of plots but that offered by the inexhaustible treasury of the
Italian _Novellieri_.
Having mentioned Shakespeare, it seems desirable to make an exception in
his case,[27] and discuss briefly the use he made of Painter’s book and
its influence on his work. On the young Shakespeare it seems to have had
very great influence indeed. The second heir of his invention, _The Rape
of Lucrece_, is from Painter. So too is _Romeo and Juliet_,[28] his
earliest tragedy, and _All’s Well_, which under the title _Love’s Labour
Won_, was his second comedy, is Painter’s _Giletta of Narbonne_ (i. 38)
from Bandello.[29] I suspect too that there are two plays associated
with Shakespeare’s name which contain only rough drafts left unfinished
in his youthful period, and finished by another writer. At any rate it
is a tolerably easy task to eliminate the Shakespearian parts of _Timon
of Athens_ and _Edward III._, by ascertaining those portions which are
directly due to Painter.[30] In this early period indeed it is somewhat
remarkable with what closeness he followed his model. Thus some gushing
critics have pointed out the subtle significance of making Romeo at
first in love with Rosalind before he meets with Juliet. If it is a
subtlety, it is Bandello’s, not Shakespeare’s. Again, others have
attempted to defend the indefensible age of Juliet at fourteen years
old, by remarking on the precocity of Italian maidens. As a matter of
fact Bandello makes her eighteen years old. It is banalities like these
that cause one sometimes to feel tempted to turn and rend the
criticasters by some violent outburst against Shakespeare himself. There
is indeed a tradition, that Matthew Arnold had things to say about
Shakespeare which he dared not utter, because the British public would
not stand them. But the British public has stood some very severe things
about the Bible, which is even yet reckoned of higher sanctity than
Shakespeare. And certainly there is as much cant about Shakespeare to be
cleared away as about the Bible. However this is scarcely the place to
do it. It is clear enough, however, from his usage of Painter, that
Shakespeare was no more original in plot than any of his fellows, and it
is only the unwise and rash who could ask for originality in plot from a
dramatic artist.
[Footnote 27: The other Elizabethan dramatists who used Painter
are: Beaumont (I. xlii.; II. xvii.), Fletcher (I. xlii.; II. xvii.,
xxii.), Greene (I. lvii.), Heywood (I. ii.), Marston (I. lxvi.;
II. vii., xxiv., xxvi.), Massinger (II. xxviii.), Middleton
(I. xxxiii.), Peele (I. xl.), Shirley (I. lviii.), Webster (I. v.;
II. xxiii.). See also I. vii., xxiv., lxvi.]
[Footnote 28: Shakespeare also used Arthur Brook’s poem. On the
exact relations of the poet to his two sources see Mr. P. A.
Daniel in the New Shakespere Society’s _Originals and Analogies_,
i., and Dr. Schulze in _Jahrb. d. deutsch. Shakespeare
Gesellschaft_ xi. 218-20.]
[Footnote 29: Delius has discussed _Shakespeare’s “All Well” und
Paynter’s “Giletta von Narbonne”_ in the Jahrbuch xxii. 27-44,
in an article which is also reprinted in his _Abhandlungen_ ii.]
[Footnote 30: I hope to publish elsewhere detailed substantiation
of this contention.]
But if the use of Italian _novelle_ as the basis of plots was an evil
that has given an air of unreality and extraneousness to the whole of
Elizabethan Tragedy, it was, as we must repeat, a necessary evil.
Suppose Painter’s work and those that followed it not to have appeared,
where would the dramatists have found their plots? There was nothing in
English literature to have given them plot-material, and little signs
that such a set of tales could be derived from the tragedies going on in
daily life. But for Painter and his school the Elizabethan Drama would
have been mainly historical, and its tragedies would have been either
vamped-up versions of classical tales or adaptations of contemporary
_causes celèbres_.
And so we have achieved the task set before us in this Introduction to
Painter’s tales. We have given the previous history of the _genre_ of
literature to which they belong, and mentioned the chief _novellieri_
who were their original authors. We have given some account of Painter’s
life and the circumstances under which his book appeared, and the style
in which he translates. We have seen how his book was greeted on its
first appearance by the adherents of the New Learning and by the
opponents of the stage. The many followers in the wake of Painter have
been enumerated, and some account given of their works. It has been
shown how great was the influence of the whole school on the Elizabethan
dramatists, and even on the greatest master among them. And having
touched upon all these points, we have perhaps sufficiently introduced
reader and author, who may now be left to make further acquaintance with
one another.