TUDOR TIMES, THE FASHIONS AND THE NOVEL.
I.
One of the most remarkable effects of the Renaissance was the awakening
of a slumbering curiosity. The _regime_ of the Middle Ages was just
ended; its springs were exhausted, its mysteries unveiled, its terrors
ridiculed. Armour was beginning to be thought troublesome; the towers of
the strong castles, dark and too much confined for the pleasures of
life; the reasonings of the schoolmen had grown old: blind faith was
out of fashion; a world was ending, and all that was sinking with it
appeared in the eyes of the young generation, out of season and "tedious
as a twice-told tale." The rupture between the Middle Ages and modern
times was complete in certain countries, partial in others, and
consequently the Renaissance had very different results among the
various peoples of Europe. But the same characteristic symptoms of an
eager, newly awakened curiosity manifested itself in all. There was no
longer question of continuing, but of comparing and of discovering. What
did the ancient Greeks and the old Romans say? What do our neighbours
think? What are their forms of style, their recent inventions? England
competed with France in her youthful curiosity, and English poets and
travellers following the example of their rivals beyond the seas,
"plundered" (in the words of Joachim du Bellay's famous manifesto[30]),
not only Athens and Rome, but Florence, Paris, Venice, and all the
enlightened towns of France, Italy, and Spain.
This curiosity spurred on the English in the different paths of human
knowledge and activity with an audacity worthy of the Scandinavian
Vikings. After having destroyed the Armada, they were going to burn the
Spanish fleet at Cadiz, to discover new lands in America and to give
them the name of "Virginia" in honour of their queen, and to attempt
the impossible task of discovering a way to China through the icy
regions of the North Pole. The fine gentlemen and the fine wits, even
the lack-dinner, lack-penny Bohemians of literature crossed the Channel,
the Alps, and the Pyrenees, seeking, they too, for gold mines to work,
gathering ideas, listening to stories, noting down recent discoveries,
and often appropriating the elegant vices and the light morals of the
southern nations. "An italianized Englishman is a devil incarnate" is a
popular proverb which quiet home-keeping men were never tired of
repeating.
Kindly Ascham who had personally visited Italy, had come back as much
horrified with the sights he had seen as Luther had been when he
returned from Rome. Of the masterpieces of art, of madonnas and palaces
he has little to say; but he has much to note concerning the loose
morals of the inhabitants. He beseeches his compatriots not to continue
to visit this dangerous country: they will meet "Circe" there, and will
certainly greatly enjoy themselves; but, behold, they will come back to
their native land with an ass's head and a swine's belly. In Italy,
according to his experience, a man may sin to his heart's content and no
one will in any way interfere. He is free to do so, "as it is free in
the citie of London to chose without all blame, whether a man lust to
weare shoo or pantocle." Yet he speaks of what he has seen with his own
eyes: "I was once in Italie my selfe; but I thanke God my abode there
was but ix dayes. And yet I sawe in that little tyme in one citie more
libertie to sinne than ever I heard tell of in our noble citie of London
in ix yeare ... The lord maior of London, being but a civill officer,
is commonlie for his tyme more diligent in punishing sinne ... than all
the bloodie inquisitors in Italie be in seaven yeare."
When Englishmen come back from Italy they are full of smiles; they have
a ready wit, and delight in vain talk. They give up all idea of getting
married; love and no marriage is their only wish; they arrange
assignations; they behave most improperly. "They be the greatest makers
of love, the daylie daliers, with such pleasant wordes, with such
smilyng & secret countenances, with such signes, tokens, wagers,
purposed to be lost before they were purposed to be made, with bargaines
of wearing colours, floures & herbes, to breede occasion of often
meeting of him & her & bolder talking of this & that, &c."[31]
According to some, travelling increased, in a certain number of
Englishmen, the tendency we have already noticed, to feel contempt
towards their mother tongue. There are persons, wrote George Pettie in
1581, "who will set light by my labours, because I write in English: and
those are some nice travailours who retourne home with such queasie
stomachs that nothing will downe with them but French, Italian or
Spanish ... They count [our tongue] barren: they count it barbarous:
they count it unworthy to be accounted of." The more reason, thinks
Pettie, to try to polish it; if it is barren it can be enriched by
borrowing from other languages, especially the Latin: "It is indeed the
readie waie to inrich our tongue and make it copious; and it is the
waie which all tongues have taken to inrich themselves."[32] Pettie, as
we see, wished Du Bellay's advice to be followed, and Rome to be
"plundered."
But Ascham's pleading, though many others spoke to the same effect,[33]
had very little result. Learned and well informed as he was, his
"conservatism" in all things was so intense that much might be laid to
the account of this tendency of his mind. Had he not written that "his
soul had such an horror of English or Latin books containing new
doctrines that, except the psalter and the New Testament, this last,
too, in the Greek text, he had never taken any book, 'either small or
big,' to use Plato's words, concerning Christian religion"?[34] Had he
not recommended the bow as, even in those gunpowder times, the best
weapon in war? "If I were of authority, I would counsel all the
gentlemen and yeomen of England not to change it with any other thing,
how good soever it seems to be; but that still, according to the old
wont of England, youths should use it for the most honest pastime in
peace, that men might handle it as a most sure weapon in war."[35] The
other "strong weapons" must not lead men to forget this one: a thing
they have nevertheless done.
Nothing dismayed by the threat of the dire consequences of Circe's
wiles, travellers eager to see her crowded to the south. They continued
not to "exchewe the way to Circes court, but go & ryde & runne & flie
thether."[36] No education was complete without a sojourn on the
continent. Surrey, Wyatt, Sidney, penniless Robert Greene, and hundreds
if not thousands of others went there. There was an eagerness to see and
to learn that no sight and no knowledge could satisfy, that no threat
nor sermon could stop. Paris, Venice, Rome, Vienna, the Low Countries,
received an ever-increasing flood of English visitors.
II.
England in her turn, not to mention the classics of antiquity that were
being speedily translated, was flooded with French, Spanish, and Italian
books, again to the great dismay of good Ascham. If "Morte d'Arthur" was
bad, nothing worse could well be imagined than Italian books in general.
"Ten 'Morte d'Arthures' do not the tenth part so much harme as one of
these bookes made in Italie and translated in England." They are to be
found "in every shop in London," and each of them can do more mischief
than ten sermons at St. Paul's Cross can do good. They introduce into
the land such refinements in vice "as the single head of an Englishman
is not hable to invent."[37]
[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE TO HARINGTON'S TRANSLATION OF ARIOSTO, 1591,
BY COXON AND GIROLAMO PORRO.]
But, if unable to invent, the English seemed at least determined to
enjoy and imitate, for translating and adapting went on at a marvellous
pace. Boccaccio's "Filocopo,"[38] for instance, to speak only of the
better known of these works, was translated in 1567, his "Amorous
Fiametta, wherein is sette downe a catalogue of all and singular
passions of love," in 1587; his "Decameron" in 1620. Guazzo's "Civile
Conversation" was translated in 1586; Tasso's "Amynta" in 1587, and his
"Recoverie of Hierusalem" in 1594. Castiglione's "Courtier ... very
necessary and profitable for young gentlemen abiding in court, palace or
place" was published in English in 1588. It was "profitable" in a rather
different sense from the one Ascham would have given the word, for it
contains lengthy precepts concerning assignations and love-making: "In
my minde, the way which the courtier ought to take, to make his love
knowne to the woman, me think should be to declare them in figures and
tokens more than in wordes. For assuredly there is otherwhile a greater
affection of love perceived in a sigh, in a respect, in a feare, than in
a thousand wordes. Afterwarde, to make the eyes the trustie messengers
that may carrie the Ambassades of the hart."[39] Many heroes in the
English novels we shall have to study were apparently well read in
Castiglione's "Courtier." Montemayor's Spanish "Diana," a tale of
princes and shepherds, well known to Sidney, was published in 1598.
Ariosto's "Orlando furioso" appeared in 1591, in a magnificently
illustrated edition, and was dedicated to the Queen. The engravings,
though sometimes said to be English, were in fact printed from the
Italian plates of Girolamo Porro, of Padua, and had been used before in
Italy.[40] Their circulation in England is none the less remarkable,
and the influence such a publication may have had in the diffusing of
Italian tastes in this country cannot be exaggerated. For those who had
not been able to leave their native land, it was the best revelation yet
placed before the public of the art of the Renaissance. That it was an
important undertaking and a rather risky one, the translator, John
Harington, was well aware; for he prefaced his book not only with his
dedication to the Queen, a sort of thing to which Ascham had had great
objection,[41] but by a "briefe apologie of poetrie," especially of that
of Ariosto. It must be confessed that his arguments are far from
convincing, and it would have been much better to have left the thing
alone than to have defended the moral purposes of his author by such
observations as these: "It may be and is by some objected that, although
he writes christianly in some places, yet in some other, he is too
lascivious.... Alas if this be a fault pardon him this one fault; though
I doubt too many of you, gentle readers, wil be to exorable in this
point, yea me thinks I see some of you searching already for those
places of the booke and you are halfe offended that I have not made some
directions that you might finde out and reade them immediately. But I
beseech you ... to read them as my author ment them, to breed
detestation and not delectation," &c. And he then appends to his book a
table, by means of which the gentle readers will have no trouble in
finding the objectionable passages enumerated in the "Apologie" itself.
At the same time as translations proper, many imitations were published,
especially imitations of those shorter prose stories which were so
numerous on the continent, and which had never been properly
acclimatized in England during the Middle Ages. Their introduction into
this country had a great influence on the further development of the
novel; their success showed that there was a public for such literature;
hence the writing of original tales of this sort in English. Among
collections of foreign tales translated or imitated may be quoted
Paynter's "Palace of Pleasure," 1566,[42] containing histories from
Boccaccio, Bandello, Ser Giovanni Fiorentino, Straparole, the Spaniard
Guevara, the Queen of Navarre, "and other italian and french authours."
One of them is the history of "Rhomeo and Iulietta," from which
Shakespeare derived his immortal drama; another tale in the same
collection supplied the plot of "All's Well," and another the main
events of "Measure for Measure." Then came G. Fenton's "Tragicall
Discourses," 1567, finished at Paris and published by the author as the
first-fruits of his travels; T. Fortescue's "Foreste or collection of
histories ... done out of French," 1571; George Pettie's "Pettie Pallace
of Pettie his pleasure," 1576; Robert Smyth's "Straunge and tragicall
histories translated out of french," 1577; Barnabe Rich's "Farewell to
militarie profession," 1584, where Shakespeare found the plot of
"Twelfth Night"; G. Whetstone's "Heptameron of civill discourses," 1582;
Ed. Grimeston's translation of the "Admirable and memorable histories"
of Goulart, 1607, and several others.
Besides such collections many stories were separately translated and
widely circulated. A number have been lost, but some remain, such, for
instance, as "The adventures passed by Master F. I.," adapted by
Gascoigne from the Italian,[43] or a certain "Hystorie of Hamblet,"
1608,[44] which was destined to have great importance in English
literature, or the "Goodli history of the ... Ladye Lucres of Scene in
Tuskane and of her lover Eurialus," a translation from the Latin of
AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini, and one of the most popular novels of the
time. It went through twenty-three editions in the fifteenth century,
and was eight times translated, one of the French translations being
made "a la priere et requeste des dames." A German translation by
Nicolaus von Wyle is embellished with coloured woodcuts of the most
naive and amusing description. Three English translations were
published, one before 1550, another in 1669, and a third in 1741.[45]
[Illustration: THE KNIGHT EURIALUS GETTING SECRETLY INTO HIS LADY-LOVE'S
CHAMBER, 1477.]
It is a tale of unlawful love, and tells how Lucrece a married lady of
Sienna, fell in love with Eurialus, a knight of the court of the Emperor
Sigismond. It is, we are told, a story of real life under fictitious
names. The dialogue is easy, vigorous, and passionate, and the
translator has well succeeded in transmuting these qualities into his
yet unbroken mother tongue. Here, for instance, Lucrece is discussing
with the faithful Zosias the subject of her love.
"Houlde thy peace quod Lucrece, there is no feare at all. Nothynge he
feareth that feareth not death ...
"Oh! unhappie quod Zosias, thou shalt shame thy house, and onlye of all
thy kynne thou shalte be adulteresse. Thinkest thou the deede can be
secreate? A thousand eyne are about thee. Thy mother, if shee do
accordinge, shall not suffer thy outrage to be prevye, not thy husbande,
not thy cousyns, not thy maidens, ye, and thoughe thy servauntes woulde
holde theyr peace, the bestes would speake it, y^e dogges, the poostes
and the marble stones, and thoughe thou hyde all, thou canste not hyde
it from God that seeth all ...
"I knowe quod she it is accordinge as thou sayest, but the rage maketh
me folow the worse. My mynde knoweth howe I fall hedling, but furour
hath overcom and reygneth, and over all my thought ruleth love. I am
determined to folow the commandement of love. Overmuche alas have I
wrestled in vaine; if thou have pytie on me, carye my mesage."[46]
If the German translation was adorned with woodcuts, the English text
had an embellishment of a greater value; it consisted in the conclusion
of the tale as altered by the English writer. In the Latin original of
the future pope, Pius II., Lucrece dies, and Eurialus, having followed
the Emperor back to Germany, mourns for her "till the time when Caesar
married him to a virgin of a ducal house not less beautiful than chaste
and wise," a very commonplace way of mourning for a dead mistress. This
seemed insufferable to the English translator. Faithful as he is
throughout, he would not take upon himself to alter actual facts, yet he
thought right to give a different account of his hero's feelings: "But
lyke as he folowed the Emperoure so dyd Lucres folow hym in hys sleep
and suffred hym no nygtes rest, whom when he knew hys true lover to be
deed, meaved by extreme dolour, clothed him in mournynge apparell, and
utterly excluded all comforte, and yet though the Emperoure gave hym in
mariage a ryghte noble and excellente Ladye, yet he never enjoyed after,
but in conclusyon pitifully wasted his painful lyfe."[47]
The greater the display of feeling in such tales of Italian origin, the
bitterer were the denunciations of moral censors, and the greater at the
same time their popularity with the public. The quarrel did not abate
for one minute during the whole of the century; the period is filled
with condemnations of novels, dramas and poems, answered by no less
numerous apologies for the same. The quarrel went on even beyond the
century, the adverse parties meeting with various success as Cromwell
ruled or Charles reigned; it can scarcely be said to have ever been
entirely dropped, and the very same arguments used by Ascham against the
Italian books of his time are daily resorted to against the French books
of our own age.
Be this as it may, the Italian novels had the better of it in
Elizabethan times; they were found not only "in every shop," but in
every house; translations of them were the daily reading of Shakespeare,
and as they had an immense influence not only in emancipating the genius
of the dramatists of the period, but, what was of equal importance, in
preparing an audience for them, we may be permitted to look at them with
a more indulgent eye than the pre-Shakespearean moralists.
A curious list of books, belonging during this same period (1575) to a
man of the lower middle class, an average member of a Shakespearean
audience, has been preserved for us. It is to be found in a very quaint
account of the Kenilworth festivities, sent by Robert Laneham, a London
mercer, to a brother mercer of the same city. Laneham states how an
acquaintance of his, Captain Cox, a mason by trade, had in his
possession, not only "Kyng Arthurz book, Huon of Burdeaus, The foour
suns of Aymon, Bevis of Hampton," and many of those popular romances,
illustrated with woodcuts of which a few specimens are to be seen above,
but also, mason as he was, the very same Italian book, the "Lucres and
Eurialus," of which we have just given an account.[48]
With the diffusion of these small handy volumes of tales of all kinds,
from all countries, a quite modern sort of literature, a literature for
travellers, was being set on foot. Manuscript books did not easily lend
themselves to be carried about; but it was otherwise with the printed
pamphlets. Authors began to recommend their productions as convenient
travelling companions, very much in the same manner as the publishers
recommend them now as suitable to be taken to the Alps or to the
seaside. Paynter, for example, who circulated in England from the year
1566 his collection of tales translated or imitated from Boccaccio and
Bandello, Apuleius and Xenophon, the Queen of Navarre, and Bonaventure
Desperriers, Belleforest and Froissart, Guevara and many others, assures
his reader that: "Pleasaunt they be for that they recreate, and refreshe
weried mindes defatigated either with painefull travaile or with
continuall care, occasioning them to shunne and to avoid heavinesse of
minde, vaine fantasies and idle cogitations. Pleasaunt so well abroad as
at home, to avoide the griefe of winters night and length of sommers
day, which the travailers on foote may use for a staye to ease their
weried bodye, and the journeours on horsback, for a chariot or lesse
painful meane of travaile in steade of a merie companion to shorten the
tedious toyle of wearie wayes."[49]
It is pleasant to think of Shakespeare in some journey from Stratford to
London, sitting under a tree, and in order to forget "the tedious toyle
of wearie wayes," taking out of his pocket Paynter's book to dream of
future Romeos and possible Helenas.
III.
The Italian and French languages were held in great honour; both were
taught at Oxford and Cambridge; the latter especially was of common use
in England, and this peculiarity attracted the notice of foreigners. "As
regards their manners and mode of living, ornaments, garments and
vestments," writes the Greek Nicander Nucius, in 1545, "they resemble
the French more than others, and, for the most part, they use their
language."[50] But besides these elegant languages, Greek and Latin were
becoming courtly. They were taught in the schools and out of the
schools; the nobles, following the example of King Henry VIII. and his
children, made a parade of their knowledge. Ignorance was no longer the
fashion, no more than the old towers without windows. The grave Erasmus
went to hear Colet, the Dean of St. Paul's, and "he thought he was
hearing Plato"; Sir T. More, according to Erasmus, is the "sweetest,
softest, happiest genius nature has ever shaped." In a word, "literature
is triumphant among the English. The king himself, the two cardinals,
almost all the bishops, favour with all their soul and adorn
Letters."[51] To learn Greek and Latin was to move with the times and to
follow the fashion. "All men," says Ascham, less displeased with this
novelty than with the travelling propensities of his compatriots,
"covet to have their children speake latin"; and "Sophocles and
Euripides are more familiar now here than Plautus was formerly."[52]
Dazzled by what he saw and heard, Erasmus was announcing to the world in
enthusiastic letters that "the golden age" was to be born again in this
fortunate island.[53] His only regret was that he would perhaps not live
long enough to see it. Well might he regret it, even though it were not
to follow exactly as he had foreseen; for the golden apple of the golden
age was not to be plucked in the Greek Hesperides' garden, but in a
plain Warwickshire orchard: nor was it the less golden.
This fermentation of mind lasted for more than a century; lives were
often shortened by it, but they had been doubly well filled. From this
restless curiosity, bent towards past ages and foreign countries,
towards everything that was remote, unknown and different, came that
striking appearance of omniscience and universality, and that prodigious
wealth of imagery, allusions and ideas of every kind that are to be
found in all the authors of that time, small as well as great, and which
unites in one common bond Rabelais and Shakespeare, Cervantes and Sidney
and the "master of the enchanters of the ear," Ronsard.
When the armour, worn less often, began to grow rusty in the great
halls, and the nobles, coming forth from their coats-of-mail like the
butterfly from the chrysalis, showed themselves all glistening in silk,
pearls in their ears, their heads full of Italian madrigals and
mythological similes, a new society was formed, salons of a kind were
organized, and the role of the women was enlarged. English mediaeval
times had been by no means sparing of compliments to them. But there is
a great difference between celebrating in verse fair, slim-necked
ladies, and writing books expressly for them: and it is one of the
points in which, during the Middle Ages and even until the middle of the
sixteenth century, England differed from the nations of the south. In
England no Lady Oisille had gathered round her in the depth of green
valleys tellers of amorous stories; no thickly-shaded parks had seen
Fiammettas or Philomenas listening to all kinds of narratives, forgetful
of the actual world and its sorrows. The only group of story-tellers,
bound together by a true artist's fancy, Chaucer's pilgrims, had ridden
in broad daylight on the high road to Canterbury, led by Harry Bailly,
the jovial innkeeper of Southwark, a blustering, red-faced dictator, who
had regulated the pace of the nags, and silenced the tedious babblers:
very different in all things from Fiammetta and the Lady Oisille.
Under the influence of Italy, France and mythology, the England of the
Tudors, changed all that. Women appeared in the foreground: a movement
of general curiosity animated the age, and they participated in it quite
naturally. They will become learned, if necessary, rather than remain in
the shade; they will no longer rest contented with permission to read
books written for their fathers, brothers, lovers, or husbands; some
must be written especially on their account, consulting their
preferences and personal caprices; and they had good reason to command:
one of them sat on the throne.
They, too, began to read Greek, Latin, Italian and French; knowledge was
so much the fashion that it extended to women. Here Ascham bears
testimony in their favour; the Queen herself gives the example: "She
readeth now at Windsore more Greeke every day than some prebendarie of
this chirch doth read Latin in a wole weeke."[54] In this she has
innumerable imitators, so much so that Harrison sums up as follows his
judgment concerning English ladies: "To saie how many gentlewomen and
ladies there are, that beside sound knowledge of the Greeke and Latin
toongs are thereto no lesse skilfull in the Spanish, Italian and French
or in some one of them, it resteth not in me."[55]
It must not be believed, however, that so much Greek and Latin in any
way imperilled the grace and ease of their manners, or that when you met
them you would be welcomed with a quotation from Plato and dismissed
with a verse from Virgil. Far from it. It was the custom at that time
with English ladies to greet their friends and relations, and even
strangers, with kisses, and strange as it may appear to our modern
ideas, accustomed as we are to stare in amazement at such practices when
by any chance we observe them in southern countries, the custom was so
strikingly prevalent in England that travellers noticed it as one of
the strange sights of the land; grave Erasmus cynically calls it one of
its attractions. "This custom," says he, "will never be praised
enough."[56] The above-named Nicander Nucius, of Corcyra, who came to
England some fifty years later, notices the same habit as a great local
curiosity. According to him, the English "display great simplicity and
absence of jealousy in their usages towards females. For not only do
those who are of the same family and household kiss them ... with
salutations and embraces, but even those, too, who have never seen them.
And to themselves this appears by no means indecent."[57] The very Queen
herself, even in the middle of the most imposing ceremonies, could not
help indulging in familiarities contrary to our ideas of decorum, but
quite in accordance with the freedom of manners then prevalent. Sir
James Melville relates in his memoirs how he was present when Robert
Dudley was made "Earl of Leicester and baron of Denbigh; which was done
at Westminster with great solemnity, the Queen herself helping to put on
his ceremonial, he sitting upon his knees before her with a great
gravity. But she could not refrain from putting her hand in his neck,
smilingly tickling him, the French Ambassadour and I standing by. Then
she turned, asking at me, 'how I liked him?'"[58]
The earliest attempts at the novel in the modern style bore a
resemblance to these social and intellectual manners. Let us not be
surprised if these works are too heavily bedizened for our liking: the
toilettes and fashions of that time were less sober than those of
to-day; it was the same with literature. Queen Elizabeth, who was wholly
representative of her age, and shared even its follies, liked and
encouraged finery in everything. All that was ornament and pageantry
held her favour; in spite of public affairs, she remained all her life
the most feminine of women; on her gowns, in her palaces, with her
poets, she liked to find ornaments and embellishments in profusion. The
learned queen who read Plutarch in Greek, a thing Shakespeare could
never do, and translated Boetius into English,[59] found, in spite of
her philosophy, an immense delight in having herself painted in
fantastic costumes, her thin person hidden in a silken sheath, covered
by a light gauze, over which birds ran. Around her was a perpetual field
of cloth of gold, and the nobles sold their lands in order to appear at
Court sufficiently embroidered. She liked nothing better than to hear
and take part in conversations on dresses and fashions. This was so well
known, that when Mary, Queen of Scots, sent the same Sir James Melville
on his mission to the English Court, in 1564, she was careful to advise
him not to forget such means to propitiate her "dear sister." The
account left by Melville of the way in which he carried into effect this
part of his instructions is highly characteristic of the times, and
gives an idea of the way in which a courtly conversation was then
conducted:
"The Queen my mistress," says Melville, in his "Memoires," "had
instructed me to leave matters of gravity sometimes, and cast in merry
purposes, lest otherwise I should be wearied [wearying], she being well
informed of that queens natural temper. Therefore in declaring my
observations of the customs of Dutchland, Poland and Italy, the buskins
of the women was not forgot, and what countrey weed I thought best
becoming gentlewomen. The Queen said she had cloths of every sort, which
every day thereafter, so long as I was there, she changed. One day she
had the English weed, another the French, and another the Italian and so
forth.
"She asked me which of them became her best?
"I answered, in my judgment the Italian dress, which answer I found
pleased her well, for she delighted to shew her golden coloured hair,
wearing a caul and bonnet as they do in Italy. Her hair was more reddish
than yellow, curled in appearance naturally.
"She desired to know of me what colour of hair was reputed best, and
which of them two was fairest.
"I answered the fairness of them both was not their worst faults.
"But she was earnest with me to declare which of them I judged fairest?
"I said she was the fairest Queen of England, and mine the fairest Queen
of Scotland.
"Yet she appeared earnest.
"I answered they were both the fairest Ladies in their countries; that
Her Majesty was whiter, but my Queen was very lovely.
"She inquired which of them was of highest stature?
"I said my Queen.
"Then saith she, she is too high, for I, my self, am neither too high
nor too low. Then she asked what kind of exercise she used?
"I answered that when I received my dispatch, the Queen was lately come
from the High-land hunting. That when her more serious affairs
permitted, she was taken up with reading of histories; that sometimes
she recreated her self in playing upon the lute and virginals.
"She asked if she played well? I said reasonably, for a Queen.
"That same day after dinner my Lord of Hunsdean drew me up to a quiet
gallery, that I might hear some musick, but he said that he durst not
avow it, where I might hear the Queen play upon the virginals. After I
had hearkned a while, I took up the tapistry that hung before the door
of the chamber, and seeing her back was toward the door, I entered
within the chamber, and stood a pretty space hearing her play
excellently well, but she left off immediately, so soon as she turned
her about and saw me. She appeared to be surprized to see me, and came
forward, seeming to strike me with her hand, alledging she used not to
play before men, but when she was solitary to shun melancholly."
Fortunately she does not strike the ambassador, and is easily pacified.
She wants to dazzle him also with her knowledge of languages:
"She said my French was good, and asked if I could speak Italian which
she spoke reasonably well.... Then she spake to me in Dutch [_i.e._,
German], which was not good; and would know what kind of books I most
delighted in, whether theology, history, or love matters." She manages
to keep Melville two days longer than he had intended to stay "till I
might see her dance, as I was afterward informed. Which being over, she
inquired of me whether she or my Queen danced best? I answered the Queen
danced not so high and disposedly as she did."
This woman, nevertheless, with so many frailties and ultra-feminine
vanities, was a sovereign with a will and a purpose. Even in the midst
of this talk about buskins, love-books and virginals, it shone out. So
much so, that hearing she is resolved not to marry, the Scottish
ambassador immediately retorts in somewhat blunt fashion: "I know the
truth of that, madam, said I, and you need not tell it me. Your Majesty
thinks if you were married, you would be but Queen of England, and now
you are both King and Queen. I know your spirit cannot endure a
commander."[60]
The same singular combination may be observed in the literary works of
her time: flowers of speech and vanities abound, but they are not
without an aim. Rarely was any sovereign so completely emblematic of his
or her period. She may almost be said to be the key to it; and it may be
very well asserted that whatever the branch of art or literature of this
epoch you wish to understand, you must first study Elizabeth.
Her taste for finery and jewels remained to the last. Hentzner, a
German, who saw her many years after Melville, describes her coming out
of her chapel at Greenwich Palace, in 1598. She has greatly altered; she
is no longer the young princess that would publicly forget etiquette at
Westminster for the sake of Robert Dudley; but she still glitters with
jewels and ornaments. "Next came the Queen, in the sixty-fifth year of
her age, as we were told, very majestic; her face oblong, fair, but
wrinkled, her eyes small, yet black and pleasant; her nose a little
hooked, her lips narrow, and her teeth black.... She had in her ears two
pearls, with very rich drops; she wore false hair and that red; upon her
head she had a small crown.... Her bosom was uncovered as all the
English ladies have till they marry, and she had on a necklace of
exceeding fine jewels; her hands were small, her fingers long, and her
stature neither tall nor low; her air was stately, her manner of
speaking kind and obliging. That day she was dressed in white silk,
bordered with pearls of the size of beans, and over it a mantle of black
silk, shot with silver threads ... Instead of a chain, she had an oblong
collar of gold and jewels."[61]
[Illustration: QUEEN CLEOPATRA, AS REPRESENTED ON THE ENGLISH STAGE IN
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.]
These descriptions of her by Melville and Hentzner are supplemented, in
highly characteristic fashion, not only by such fancy portraits as the
one alluded to before, where she is represented as a shepherdess, a
nymph, an imaginary being from Arcady, from mythology, or from nowhere,
but by such grave, dignified, official portraitures as the very fine
engraving left by Rogers. Round the sharp-featured face, with closed,
wilful lips, weary eyes, open, intelligent forehead, lace ruffs of
various shapes, some very bushy, some quite flat and round-shaped like
butterfly wings, are displayed in most imposing array. No imaginable
kind of gum or starch could keep them straight; they were spread on iron
wires. The gown itself, of cylindric shape, expanded by means of a
farthingale, is covered with knobs, knots, pearls, ribbons, fringes, and
ornaments of all sorts. Well does this figure deserve the attention of
the student of Shakespeare, for in this and no other fashion was
Cleopatra, the Egyptian queen, dressed, when she appeared on the boards
of the Globe Theatre. Never did the author of "Antony" dream of
Denderah's temple, and of the soft, voluptuous face, peacock-covered,
representing there Isis-Cleopatra; but he dressed his Egyptian queen as
the queen he had known had been dressed, and it was in the costumes of
Rogers' engraving, and most appropriately too, that the Cleopatra of the
Globe was heard to make the remarkable proposal, "Let's to
billiards."[62]
Does this seem very strange or in any way incredible? But we must
remember that many years, nay, several centuries, were to elapse before
anything like historical accuracy was to affect dresses on the stage.
Another Cleopatra trod the boards of the English theatre in the
eighteenth century; she was very different from her Elizabethan elder
sister; she wore _paniers_ and a Louis XV. wig, and, as may be seen in
our engraving, came in no way nearer the model at Denderah.
[Illustration: SKETCHES MADE BY INIGO JONES IN ITALY.]
[Illustration: INIGO JONES'S PERSIANS STANDING AS CARYATIDES.]
The architecture of this period corresponded with the richness and pomp
of the costumes. A new style, partly from Italy, partly from dreamland,
was introduced into England during the Tudor and early Jacobean times.
There was lace, and knots and knobs and curious holes, pillars, and
pilasters. The sincerest admirers of antiquity, such as Inigo Jones, who
went to Italy with such good purpose, and there filled his albums with
many exquisite sketches of antique and Renaissance masterpieces,[63]
could not refrain from sometimes introducing Arcady and dreamland into
their architecture. Inigo Jones died before finishing his Whitehall
palace, and we know from his drawings that he intended to embellish the
central circular court with a row of gigantic caryatides representing
Persians, six or seven yards high.[64] A contriver of masks for the
Court, Inigo Jones, was in this way tempted to build palaces, if one may
say so, in _mask-style_. Such houses as Audley End, Hatfield, and
especially Burghley, this last being mostly Elizabethan,[65] are
excellent representations of the architectural tastes of the time; the
thick windowless towers of a former age are replaced by palatial
facades, where countless enormous windows occupy more space in the wall
than the bricks and stones themselves. Not a few people of a
conservative turn of mind were heard to grumble at these novelties: "And
albeit," said Harrison, in 1577, at the very time when Lord Burghley was
busy building his house in Northamptonshire, "that in these daies there
be manie goodlie houses erected in the sundrie quarters of this Iland;
yet they are rather curious to the eie, _like paper worke_ than
substantiall for continuance; whereas such as he [Henry VIII.] did set
up, excel in both and therefore may justlie be preferred farre above all
the rest." But notwithstanding such a threatening prophecy neither at
Burghley nor at Hatfield has the "paper worke" put there been yet blown
away by storm or time, and these houses continue to afford a safe
residence to the descendants of the Cecils. According to Harrison's
judgment the interior of the new houses, no less than the exterior,
testified to a decadence: "Now have we manie chimnies; and yet our
tenderlings complaine of rheumes, catarhs and poses. Then had we none
but reredosses; and our heads did never ake. For as the smoke in those
daies was supposed to be a sufficient hardening of the timber of the
house, so it was reputed a far better medicine to keepe the goodman and
his familie from the quacke or pose, wherewith, as then verie few were
acquainted."[66]
But Harrison's blame does not seem to have greatly affected the taste
for chimneys, any more than his sinister prophecies concerning
Elizabethan houses have been fulfilled; chimneys have continued, and
paper-work houses remain still to help us if need be to understand the
poetry, the drama, and the novel of the period.
[Illustration: VIRGO.]
FOOTNOTES:
[30] "La doncques, Francoys, marchez couraigeusement vers ceste superbe
cite romaine; & des serves depouilles d'elle, comme vous avez fait plus
d'une fois, ornez vos temples & autelz.... Pillez moi sans conscience
les sacrez thesors de ce temple Delphique ... Vous souvienne de vostre
ancienne Marseille, secondes Athenes!" ("La Deffense et illustration de
la langue Francoyse," 1549).
[31] "The Scholemaster," London, 1570, 4to, p. 26; Arber's reprint,
1870, 4to, pp. 83, _et seq._ Ascham had died in 1568; this work was
published by his widow.
[32] Preface dated 1581 to "Civile Conversation," London, 1586, 4to.
[33] The novelist Greene, for example, and the novelist Lyly. The latter
writes in his "Euphues," 1579: "Let not your mindes be caryed away with
vaine delights, as with travailing into farre & straunge countries, wher
you shal see more wickednesse then learn vertue & wit" (Arber's reprint,
1868, p. 152). As for Greene, see _infra_, chap. iv. One of the most
curious of these denunciations of travel was the "Quo vadis? a juste
censure of travel," by Bishop Joseph Hall, 1617, 12mo. The author
demonstrates that most of the vices of the English are of foreign
importation, chiefly from France and Italy; good qualities alone are
native and national. The best thing to do, then, is to keep at home.
[34] Letter (in Latin) to the Archbishop of York, 1544. "Works," ed.
Giles, London, 1865, 4 vol. 16mo, vol. i. p. 35.
[35] "Toxophilus," 1545, in "Works," ed. Giles, vol. ii. p. 5.
[36] "Scholemaster," 1570, Arber's reprint, p. 77.
[37] "The Scholemaster," Arber's reprint, pp. 79, 80.
[38] "A pleasant disport of divers noble personages ... intituled
Philocopo ... englished by H. G[ifford?]," London, 1567, 4to; "Amorous
Fiametta, wherein is sette downe a catalogue of all & singular passions
of love and jealosie incident to an enamoured yong gentlewoman ... done
into English by B. Giovano [_i.e._, B. Young]," London, 1587; "The
Decameron, containing an hundred pleasant novels," London, 1620, fol.
(with woodcuts); "The Civile Conversation ... translated ... by G.
Pettie ... and B. Yong," London, 1586, 4to; "The lamentations of Amyntas
... translated out of latine into english hexameters," by Abraham
Fraunce, London, 1587, 4to; "Godfray of Bulloigne, or the recoverie of
Hierusalem ... translated by R. C[arew] ... imprinted in both
languages," London, 1594; "The courtier of Count Baldesar Castillo ...
done into English by Th. Hobby," London, 1588, 8vo (contains an Italian,
English and French text); "Diana of George of Montemayor, translated by
B. Yong," London, 1598, fol. Among other translations three of the most
important were Lord Berners' "Froysshart," "translated out of Frenche
into our maternall Englysshe tonge," 1522, North's translation of
Plutarch after the French of Amyot (1579), and Florio's translation of
Montaigne, 1603, fol., which were well known to the dramatists, and went
through several editions. The British Museum possesses a copy of
Florio's Montaigne, which was the property of Ben Jonson. A far more
satisfactory translation of the same author was made by Cotton, 1685-6,
3 vol. 8vo.
[39] Sig. F. f. 1.
[40] "Orlando Furioso, in English heroical verse," by John Harington,
London, 1591, fol. The plates were used in the Italian edition: "Orlando
Furioso ... novamente adornato di Figure di Rame da Girolamo Porro
Padouano," Venice, 1588, 4to. There is, however, a difference in the
frontispiece, where the allegorical figure of Peace is replaced in the
English edition by a portrait of Harington, engraved by Thomas Coxon,
who signed as if the whole frontispiece was by his hand. We give a
reduced fac-simile of this frontispiece.
[41] He had written in his "Scholemaster": These "fond books" are
"dedicated over boldlie to vertuous and honourable personages, the
easelier to beguile simple and innocent wittes. It is pitie that those
which have authority and charge to allow and dissallow bookes to be
printed, be no more circumspect herein than they are." (Arber's reprint,
p. 79).
[42] Old Style. The dedication is dated: "Nere the Tower of London the
first of Januarie 1566."
[43] First published in Gascoigne's "Hundreth sundrie flowres bound up
in one small poesie," London, 1572, 4to.
[44] Translated from the French of Belleforest, who had himself
translated it from Bandello. Though the date of the only known edition
of the story in English is later than the production of "Hamlet," it
seems to have been known before, and to have been used by Shakespeare.
See Furnivall's "Leopold Shakspere," p. lxix.
[45] "The historie of ... Plasidas and other rare pieces," ed. H. H.
Gibbs, Roxburghe Club, London, 1873, 4to. One of these "pieces,"
prefaced with an important introduction, is the "Goodli history" of Lady
Lucrece.
[46] _Ut supra_, p. 119.
[47] Here is Piccolomini's text: "Sed ut ipse Caesarem, sic eum Lucretia
sequebatur in somnis, nullamque noctem sibi quietam permittebat. Quam ut
obiisse verus amator cognovit, magno dolore permotus, lugubrem vestem
recepit; nec consolationem admisit, nisi postquam Caesar ex ducalo
sanguine virginem sibi cum formosam tum castissimam atque prudentem
matrimonio junxit." The French translator did not alter this end. It
will be remembered that the conclusion of Chaucer's "Troilus" compares
in the same way with Boccaccio's and with the French translator's,
Pierre de Beauveau.
[48] "Captain Cox, his ballads and books, or Robert Laneham's Letter ...
1575," ed. F. J. Furnivall, London, Ballad Society, 1871, 8vo, p. 29.
[49] Epistle to the reader, prefacing the "Palace of Pleasure."
[50] That there was also in London a public for Italian books is shown,
among many other proofs, by the early publication thereof an edition of
the "Pastor Fido" of Guarini in the original, London, 1591, 12mo.
[51] "Epistolarum ... libri xxxi.," London, 1642, fol., col. 308, 533,
364, &c. A.D. 1497 and 1519.
[52] "The Scholemaster," p. 2, and Letter to Brandesby (in Latin),
1542-3; "Works," ed. Giles, tom. i. p. 25.
[53] "Equidem aureum quoddam seculum exoriri video, quo mihi fortassis
non continget frui, quippe qui jam ad fabulae meae catastrophem accedam"
(Letter to Henry of Guildford, May, 1519, "Epistolarum ... libri xxxi.,"
London, 1642, fol., col. 368)
[54] "The Scholemaster," p. 21.
[55] "Description of Britaine," 1577, ed. Furnivall, New Shakspere
Society, part i, p. 271.
[56] "Est praeterea mos nunquam satis laudatus. Sive quo venias omnium
osculis exciperis; sive discedas aliquo, osculis dimitteris; redis,
redduntur suavia ... denique quocumque te moveas, suaviorum plena sunt
omnia" ("Epistolarum ... libri.," London, 1642, col. 315, A.D. 1499).
[57] "The second book of the travels of Nicander Nucius," ed. Cramer,
London, Camden Society, 1841, 4to, p. 10. Nucius resided in England in
1545-6.
[58] "The Memoires of Sir James Melvil, of Hal-hill," ed. G. Scott.
London, 1683, fol. p. 47.
[59] The autograph manuscript of her translations, which comprise a part
of the works of Plutarch, Horace and Boetius, was found in 1883, at the
Record Office.
[60] "Memoires," London, 1683, pp. 49 _et seq._
[61] "Travels in England," ed. H. Morley, London, 1889, p. 47.
[62] "Antony and Cleopatra," act ii. sc. 5. As for a reproduction of
Rogers' engraving, see Frontispiece of this volume.
[63] An album of sketches of this sort, made by Inigo Jones while in
Italy, 1614, was reproduced in fac-simile by the care of the Duke of
Devonshire, London, 1832. See also drawings, by the same, for scenery
and costumes in masks in the "Portfolio," May, June, and July, 1889,
three articles by Mr. R. T. Blomfield. Isaac Oliver the famous
Elizabethan miniature painter, has left also drawings, one of which is
reproduced at the head of this chapter, testifying to his careful study
of Italian models.
[64] A view of this court, with the caryatides, is to be seen in W.
Kent, "The Designs of Inigo Jones," London, 1835, two vol. fol. We give
a reproduction of the caryatides.
[65] It was built on the plans, as is supposed, of J. Thorpe, possibly
with the help of the Italian John of Padua. Above one of the doors of
the inner court is the date 1577; the clock tower is dated 1585; see the
engraving p. 69. Hatfield bears on its facade the date 1611. Audley End
was built 1603-1616.
[66] "Description of Britaine," ed. Furnivall, New Shakspere Society,
part i. pp. 268 and 338.
[Illustration: A DRAGON, ACCORDING TO TOPSELL, 1608.]