Part 32

[685] Ed. 1575 'is'; the reading adopted seems better than _is burste_.

[686] Ed. 1575 _will_.

[687] I hope.

[688] room.

[689] first-rate.

[690] spurrier's, harness-maker's.

[691] dear.

[692] Read 'lese,' for the rime.

[693] slip, neglect. Perhaps we should read 'yon' for 'you[r].'

[694] by nature.

[695] Ed. 1575 has _thynge_.

[696] awl.

[697] Apparently a proverbial phrase, meaning 'to expedite matters.'

[698] abominable.

[699] 'Friar Rush,' the chief personage in a popular story translated from the German, which relates the adventures of a devil in the disguise of a friar.

[700] Ed. 1575 _no_.

[701] Ed. 1575 _on_.

[702] leave, permission.

[703] aught.

[704] Ed. 1575 _pray_.

[705] Probably a misprint for 'chware,' I would be.

[706] we shall.

[707] _Chave_ is either a blunder of the author's in the use of dialect, or a misprint for 'thave' = thou have.

[708] quickly.

[709] tail, backside.

[710] sulking (compare _glum_, and _R. R. D._, I. i. 66).

[711] Ed. 1575 _Tyb._

[712] Ed. 1575 _bauet not i_.

[713] Ed. 1575 _moned_.

[714] (I) make.

[715] t'other, the other.

[716] Ed. 1575 _The ii Acte. The iiii Sceane._

[717] anxiety.

[718] In Colwell's edition this scene extends to the end of the act. There should probably be a division after line 63, and again after line 105 (as in Professor Manly's edition), but we have retained the original arrangement.

[719] went.

[720] Ed. 1575, _worthe_.

[721] ere, before.

[722] M. begins a new scene here; H. says it should begin at line 68.

[723] Brewing trough.

[724] M. begins a new scene here.

[725] H. inserts '_with_' before 'them.' But 'beares' means 'support, uphold.'

[726] Printed _of_, ed. 1575.

[727] This is said to Scapethryft, who is nowhere mentioned in the text. 'Fellow' (equivalent to 'comrade') was originally a courteous mode of addressing a servant, like the French _mon ami_.

[728] Ill may he thrive; the phrase is common in the fourteenth century. Cf. also "y-the," _Hickscorner_, l .187.

[729] Ed. 1575 _you_.

[730] roost.

[731] poultry.

[732] God yield you, God reward you. Compare _Good den_, _God deven_ = good e'en.

[733] moved, disturbed.

[734] behave.

[735] neck.

[736] Perhaps we should read 'recetter,' for the sake of the rime.

[737] saving your reverence.

[738] as thou.

[739] Toad; the same phrase occurs in Gosson, _Ephimerides of Phialo_ (Arber) 63, "I have neither replyed to the writer of this libel ... nor let him go scot free ... but poynted to the strawe where the padd lurkes."

[740] Ed. 1575 gives this line to Chat.

[741] cloaks or smothers.

[742] what shall I call (it). Compare "_nicebecetur_," _R. D._ I. iv. 12.

[743] 'cut' is often used in the sixteenth century as a term of abuse, especially for women.

[744] Printed _mery_.

[745] spit.

[746] 'stoure,' uproar. Printed _scoure_.

[747] served out, done for.

[748] to 'leap at a daisy,' to be hanged. The allusion is to a story of a man who, when the noose was adjusted round his neck, leapt off with the words, "Have at yon daisy yonder" (_Pasquil's Jests_, 1604).

[749] Ed. 1575 _where_.

[750] Ed. 1575 _on_.

APPENDIX

The song at the beginning of the second act exists in an older and better version, which was printed by Dyce (from a Ms. in his own possession) in his edition of Skelton's _Works_, Vol. I, p. vii. It is not likely that the date of the composition is much older than the middle of the sixteenth century, and it may possibly be later. The following copy is taken from Dyce, but the punctuation and the capitals have been adjusted in accordance with the rules elsewhere adopted in the present work.

Backe and syde goo bare, goo bare; Bothe hande and fote goo colde; But, belly, God sende the good ale inoughe, Whether hyt be newe or olde.

But yf that I maye have, trwly, Goode ale my belly full, I shall looke lyke one (by swete sainte Johnn) Were shoron agaynste the woole. Thowthe I goo bare, take ye no care, I am nothynge colde. I stuffe my skynne so full within Of joly good ale and olde.

I cannot eate but lytyll meate; My stomacke ys not goode; But sure I thyncke that I cowde dryncke With hym that werythe an hoode. Dryncke ys my lyfe; although my wyfe Some tyme do chyde and scolde, Yete spare I not to plye the potte Of joly goode ale and olde. Backe and syde, etc.

I love no roste but a browne toste, Or a crabbe in the fyer; A lytyll breade shall do me steade, Mooche breade I never desyer. Nor froste, nor snowe, nor wynde, I trow, Canne hurte me yf hyt wolde; I am so wrapped within, and lapped With joly goode ale and olde. Backe and syde, etc.

I care ryte noughte, I take no thowte For clothes to kepe me warme; Have I goode dryncke, I surely thyncke Nothyng can do me harme. For trwly than I feare no man, Be he never so bolde, When I am armed, and throwly warmed With joly good ale and olde. Backe and syde, etc.

But nowe and than I curse and banne; They make ther ale so small! God geve them care, and evill to fare! They strye the malte and all. Soche pevisshe pewe, I tell yowe trwe, Not for a crowne of golde There commethe one syppe within my lyppe, Whether hyt be newe or olde. Backe and syde, etc.

Good ale and stronge makethe me amonge Full joconde and full lyte, That ofte I slepe, and take no kepe From mornynge untyll nyte. Then starte I uppe, and fle to the cuppe; The ryte waye on I holde. My thurste to staunche I fyll my paunche With joly goode ale and olde. Backe and syde, etc.

And Kytte, my wyfe, that as her lyfe Lovethe well good ale to seke, Full ofte drynkythe she that ye maye se The teares ronne downe her cheke. Then dothe she troule to me the bolle As a goode malte-worme sholde, And say, "Swete harte, I have take my parte Of joly goode ale and olde." Backe and syde, etc.

They that do dryncke tylle they nodde and wyncke, Even as good fellowes shulde do, They shall notte mysse to have the blysse That good ale hathe browghte them to. And all poore soules that skoure blacke bolles, And them hath lustely trowlde, God save the lyves of them and ther wyves, Wether they be yonge or olde! Backe and syde, etc.

_John Lyly_

ALEXANDER AND CAMPASPE

_Edited with Critical Essay and Notes by George P. Baker, A.B., Asst. Professor in Harvard University_

CRITICAL ESSAY

=Life.=--John Lyly was born in Kent between October 8, 1553, and January, 1554. He entered Magdalen College, Oxford, 1569, but was almost immediately rusticated. Returning in October, 1571, he was graduated B.A. April 27, 1573. In May, 1574, he wrote unsuccessfully to Lord Burleigh, begging for a fellowship at Magdalen. He proceeded M.A. June 1, 1575, and lived mainly at the Universities till 1579. _Euphues, the Anatomie of Wit_, appeared between December, 1578, and spring, 1579. Another edition was printed in 1579; twelve others before 1637. In _An Address to the Gentlemen Scholars of Oxford_, prefixed to the second, the 1579, edition, he answered a charge of having unfairly criticised Oxford in the _Anatomie of Wit_. A sequel, _Euphues and his England_, was licensed July 24, 1579, but did not appear for months. Probably Lyly shared in the disfavour which, from late July, 1579, to July, 1580, the Queen showed the party of Robert Dudley because of his secret marriage with the Countess of Essex. _Endimion_, probably the first of Lyly's extant comedies, was presented between late July and early November, 1579, as an allegorical treatment of this quarrel. In or near July, 1580, Lyly was "entertained as servant" by the Queen, and was advised to aim at the Mastership of the Revels. By July, 1582, he is to be found in the household of Lord Burleigh. A letter of his was prefixed to Watson's _Passionate Centurie of Love_, published 1582. By 1589, possibly earlier, he had become vice-master of St. Paul's choir school. Before 1584 the Chapel Children and the Paul's Boys, for whom he had written, ceased to act. During 1584 his _Sapho and Phao_, written not long after February 6, 1582, and his _Alexander and Campaspe_ were printed. _Tityrus and Gallathea_, licensed in 1584, was not printed till 1592. Probably the main plot was written before 1584, and the sub-plot for a revision of the play in or near 1588. From 1585 Lyly wrote for the Paul's Boys till in or near 1591, when the company was again silent. The Chapel Children were not acting publicly between November, 1584, and 1597. His _Mydas_ was acted between August, 1588, and November, 1589, and printed in 1592. In August or September, 1589, a pamphlet entitled _Pappe-with-an-Hatchet_, written by him for the High Church party in the Marprelate controversy, made its appearance. His _Mother Bombie_ was acted in 1589 or 1590, and printed in 1594. _Alexander and Campaspe_ and _Sapho and Phao_ were reprinted in 1591, and in the same year _Endimion_ was printed. _Gallathea_ appeared in 1592. Lyly wrote, in 1590 or 1591, an apparently unsuccessful begging letter to the Queen, and another in 1593 or 1594. He was married by 1589, and he had two sons and one daughter. He was member of Parliament for Hindon in 1589; for Aylesbury in 1593 and 1601; and for Appleby in 1597. _The Woman in the Moone_ was licensed in 1595, printed in 1597. The quality of the blank verse in this play and the absence of marked Euphuism favour a date of composition in or near 1590. _Lillie's Light_ was licensed June 3, 1596. If printed, it is non-extant. He wrote prefatory Latin lines for Henry Lock's _Ecclesiastes_, otherwise called _The Preacher_, in 1597. In 1597-1600 the Chapel Children revived his plays. The _Maid's Metamorphosis_, incorrectly attributed to Lyly, was printed in 1600. His _Love's Metamorphosis_ was printed in 1601: it had been written about the time of the _Gallathea_,--before 1584, or between 1588 and 1591. The Protea-Petulius part is probably from a different play, or is a survival in a revision. Lyly died November 30, 1606, and was buried at St. Bartholomew's.[751]

=The Place of Euphues in English Literature.=--John Lyly was poet, pamphleteer, novelist, and dramatist. As a pamphleteer he is unimportant. As a poet he can best be studied in his plays. It is, then, as novelist and dramatist that he is important. The material of the two parts of the _Euphues_ makes it decidedly significant in its own time. It is not, like most of the stories of Greene and Lodge, mere romance, nor, like Nash's _Jack Wilton_, a tale of adventure phrased with reportorial recklessness. It is a love story in which romance is subordinated to the inculcation of ideas of high living and thinking, and the demands of an involved style. It dimly foreshadows two literary products which reach a development only long after the days of Elizabeth--the novel with a purpose, and the stylistic novel. The appearance of the book was epochal. Young writers of the day--Munday, Greene, Nash, and Lodge--copied its style. Courtiers patterned their speech upon it. Yet Gabriel Harvey was probably right when he ill-naturedly wrote: "Young Euphues but hatched the egges that his elder freendes laide." The _Anatomie_, at least, is such a book as a recent university graduate of the present day, well read in some of the classics, and especially susceptible to new literary influences and cults, might compile. In the division _Euphues and His Ephœbus_ Lyly uses, with a few omissions and additions, Plutarch on _Education_; in the letter to Botonio he translates Plutarch on _Exile_. In the part _Euphues and Atheos_ he is indebted to chapters 9, 10, 11, and 12 of the _Dial of Princes_ (1529) by Antonio de Guevara, Bishop of Guadix and Mendoza. Euphues and Lucilla debate "dubii," or artificial discussions of set questions, such as one finds in Hortensio Lando or Castiglione. There is, too, almost constant use of the unnatural natural history of Pliny. All this material is bound together by a style which, though it may ultimately be traced to the rounded periods of Cicero, had developed slowly in writers of the Renaissance and the years just before _Euphues_ appeared. George Pettie, for instance, in his _Pettie Palace of Pettie His Pleasure_, published in 1576, has all the stylistic characteristics of the _Euphues_ except the fabulous natural history. It is, however, to Guevara in the _Dial of Princes_ that Lyly is thought to be particularly indebted for his style. This man used "lavishly the well-known figures of pointed antithesis and parisonic balanced clauses, in connection with a general climactic structure of the sentence or period, the emphatic or antithetic words being marked by rhyme or assonance." Lyly substitutes for rhyme alliteration, and adds persistent play on words. The book is genuinely Renaissance, then, for, looking to classic literature for much of its substance, it expresses itself in a style that typifies an intellectual mood of the hour.

=Lyly's Plays: their Subdivision.=--Just before 1580 the acting of choir boys was in great favour with the Queen and, as a consequence, with the public. The boys of Westminster, Windsor, the Chapel Royal, and St. Paul's were often summoned to court. For the last two companies, with whom acting became a profession, Lyly wrote his plays. These divide into four classes. The allegorical comedies, in which what is alluded to is as important as what is said, are _Endimion_, _Sapho and Phao_, and _Mydas_. _Endimion_, perhaps the most complete example of Lyly's allegorical comedy, presents the apology of Leicester to the Queen for his secret marriage with Lettice, Countess of Essex. _Sapho and Phao_ is full of allusions to the coquetting of the Queen with the Duc d'Alençon and his wrathful departure from England in February, 1582. _Mydas_ allegorises--though with less detail than the others--as to the designs of Philip II. on the English throne, and the Spanish Armada. _Gallathea_, _Love's Metamorphosis_, and _The Woman in the Moone_ form a second class--pastoral comedies. They are allegorical only when some figure is given qualities which the Queen was fond of hearing praised as hers. _Mother Bombie_, standing alone as a comedy on the model of Plautus, has a much more involved plot than any of the other plays. Finally, also in a class by itself, is _Alexander and Campaspe_.

In this, as in all the comedies except _Mother Bombie_ and _Love's Metamorphosis_, Lyly used classic myth for his chief material. Yet he but followed a custom of the day, for most of the plays given at court between 1570 and 1590 by the children's companies were based on such material: for instance, _Iphigenia_, _Narcissus_, _Alcmæon_, _Quintus Fabius_, and _Scipio Africanus_. These subjects seem to have been treated as pastorals, histories, and possibly allegories. Lyly rejected in _Alexander and Campaspe_ the allegorical and the pastoral form, and told rather naïvely, except in style, the story of the love of Alexander and Apelles for Campaspe, repeating in his sub-plot many historic retorts of Diogenes. In details of method Lyly seems to have had a precursor. Richard Edwardes (born 1523, died 1566) in his _Damon and Pythias_, printed in 1582, but usually assigned to 1564, wrote in a way very suggestive of Lyly in _Alexander and Campaspe_. He disclaimed in his prologue intention of referring to any court except that of Dionysius at Syracuse; introduced lyrics; gave Aristippus the philosopher an important place; inveighed against flattery at the court; brought in the comic episode of Grim the collier without connection with the main plot, just as Lyly often introduces his comic material; and derived the fun of this scene mainly from two impudent pages. Certainly it would have been natural for Lyly, early in his career, to look to the plays of a former prominent master of the Chapel Children.

=Alexander and Campaspe: Date, Sources.=--The exact date of _Alexander and Campaspe_ it seems impossible to determine. It was written before April, 1584, for it was licensed for printing in that month. The facts that similes and references in _Euphues_ are found in it, and that the work--here of a kind which Lyly never exactly repeats--resembles the early _Damon and Pythias_ suggest that _Alexander and Campaspe_ belongs early in his dramatic career. It has been held that it should precede _Endimion_, but the allegory in that play; the fact that Blount, who places _Sapho and Phao_, _Gallathea_, _Mydas_, and _Mother Bombie_ in the order approved by the most recent criticism, puts it second; and the better characterization, more natural dialogue, and slightly closer binding together of the main and the sub-plot, argue for the second place.

The play, like the _Anatomie of Wit_, is a composite. The main plot--the story of Apelles and Campaspe--Lyly found in Book 35 of Pliny's _History of the World_. His setting he took from Plutarch's _Life of Alexander_. That, too, gave him the siege of Thebes, Timoclea, some of the philosophers' names, most of their speeches, the generals, and Hephestion, and probably suggested the possibilities of Diogenes as a comic figure. The material for the scenes of the Cynic, and the name Manes, he found in the _Lives of the Philosophers_ by Diogenes Laertius.

=Literary Estimate.=--In the extant plays from 1550 to 1580 love has but a subordinate part. In _Alexander and Campaspe_, however, as in all the Lyly comedies, the central idea is that of nearly all the great plays of the Elizabethan drama--the love of man for woman. Doubtless the subject appealed to Lyly especially because in the self-abnegation of Alexander the Queen might choose to see a compliment to her final position toward Leicester and the Countess of Essex. Diogenes he used in order to get comic relief. That Lyly's comedies are comparatively free from vulgarity is probably because they were given by children before the Queen and her ladies. Possibly the youth of the actors is the reason for the absence of strong emotional expression, but it is more probable that the temperament of the author is responsible. It is hard to believe that a dramatist who felt keenly emotional possibilities in his material could have passed by Timoclea so rapidly, for in Plutarch she has all the requisites of the heroine in a Beaumont and Fletcher play. Nor would such a dramatist have made so little of the struggle of Alexander between infatuation and the desire to regain his accustomed self-command. Lyly's position toward his work is like that of the early writers of chronicle-history plays. He does not depend on selecting the most characteristic situations and speeches, on supplying missing motives, on unification of material which history has passed down in somewhat disordered fashion, but on repeating as many as possible of the situations and speeches associated with the names. Like those writers, too, he makes no attempt to get behind his material, to see its interrelations and its dramatic significance as a whole.

Some allowance, however, must be made for faults in this play, for the Prologue states that it was hastily written. The comedy itself shows that Lyly planned as he wrote. The opening scene of the play leaves one to suppose that Timoclea, who, rather than Campaspe, is the chief female speaker, is to play an important part. She never appears again, and is mentioned but once. Later parts of the play call for some manifestation, in this first scene, of Campaspe's intense fascination for Alexander, but there is nothing of the kind. Nor does the action in any later scene really prepare for Alexander's self-reproaches for his mad infatuation. Until late in the play, when Lyly speaks of Campaspe as Alexander's concubine, a reader is not even entirely clear as to their relations. Perhaps some of this lack of clearness and sequence may result because the Timoclea part, at least, of the first scene is a survival from an older play. In the _Accounts of the Revels at Court_, under an entry for expenditures between January and February, 1573(4), "One Playe showen at Hampton Coorte before her Maᵗⁱᵉ by Mr. Munkester's Children" (Mulcaster's of the Merchant Taylors' School) is mentioned. Interlined are the words: "Timoclia at the Sege of Thebes by Alexander."

The movement of the comedy is episodic. The clever little pages bind the scenes together; Alexander connects the incidents of the main story; but too often, especially in the sub-plot, the action is not prepared for, and does not lead to anything. Nor does Lyly care much for climax. The Diogenes sub-plot does not end; it is dropped just before the main story closes. The great dramatic possibilities of the final scene are practically thrown away. It is significant that they could be developed only by a hand which could paint vividly the contest of a soul, the gradual reascendency of old motives, and manly renunciation.

Growth in character Lyly does not understand. As a rule his figures are types rather than many-sided human beings. Nor are the types always self-consistent. All the nobility of Alexander's renunciation disappears when he says: "Go, Apelles, take with you your Campaspe; Alexander is cloyed with looking on that which thou wond'rest at." In general, Lyly is too ready to depend on the way in which his figures speak rather than on truth to life in what they speak. In the retorts of Apelles as he talks with Alexander of his work, there is, of course, something of the real artist's pride in his art and irritation at royal omniscience. There is characterization, too, in many of the speeches of Diogenes, but in both of these instances Lyly is either quoting or paraphrasing. Campaspe, it is true, is almost a character, and slightly anticipates the arch heroines of Shakespeare. Hers are coquettishness, womanly charm. In her scene with Apelles in the studio (Act IV. scene 2), the underlying passion of both almost breaks through the frigid medium of expression. The pages may doubtless be traced back to the witty, graceless slaves of Latin comedy, and more immediately to precursors in the work of Edwardes, but Lyly adds so much individuality and humour that they are a real accession in the history of the drama. Moreover, many of his figures often comment incisively on customs and follies of the time, preparing for the later comedy of manners.

No preceding play is so full of charming and lasting lyrics. In all his comedies except _The Woman in the Moone_, Lyly writes neither in the usual jingling rhymes nor the infrequently used blank verse, but in prose. He shows the men of his day new possibilities in dialogue; for though his artificial style prevents easy characterisation, it does not keep him from effective repartee and a closer representation of the give and take of real conversation than was possible with the rhyming lines, or with blank verse as it was handled in his day. Probably, however, the greatest importance of this play for the student of Elizabethan drama is the way it shows interest in a romantic story breaking through classic material and Renaissance expression, thus anticipating the romantic drama of 1587. Clearly, then, the merits of _Alexander and Campaspe_ are literary and historical, not dramatic.