Chapter 7

_AFTER SHAKESPEARE_ 347

I. Heroical romances--Their origin mainly French--The new heroism _à panache_ on the stage, in epics, in the novel, in real life--The heroic ideal--The Hôtel de Rambouillet 347

II. Heroes and heroism _à panache_ migrate to England--Their welcome in spite of the Puritans--Translations of French romances--Use of French engravings--Imitation and appreciation of French manners--Orinda, the Duchess of Newcastle, Dorothy Osborne, Mrs. Pepys 362

III. Original English novels in the heroical style--Roger Boyle, J. Crowne--Heroism on the stage 383

IV. Reaction in France--Sorel, Scarron, Furetière, &c.--Reaction in England--"Adventures of Covent Garden," "Zelinda," &c. 397

V. Conclusion--The end of the period--Ingelo, Harrington, Mrs. Behn; how she anticipates Rousseau.

Connection between the master-novelists of the eighteenth century and the prentice-novelists of the sixteenth 411

INDEX 419

EXPLANATORY LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE 1.--Queen Elizabeth in State costume, with the royal insignia, after the engraving by William Rogers (born in London, about 1545) _Frontispiece_

2 to 13.--The signs of the Zodiac, after Robert Greene's "Francesco's Fortunes," 1590. Towards the end of this novel a palmer is asked by his host to leave a remembrance of his visit in his entertainer's house; the palmer engraves on an ivory arch verses and drawings illustrating at the same time, and in the same way as the signs of the Zodiac, both the course of the year and the course of human life _p. 9 et passim_ [_tail-pieces to all the chapters_]

14.--An Elizabethan Shepherdess, from a wood-block illustrating a ballad (the inscription added) 23

15.--Beginning of the unique MS. of "Beowulf," preserved in the British Museum 31

16.--Chaucer's pilgrims seated round the table of the "Tabard" at Southwark, a reproduction of Caxton's engraving in his second edition of the "Canterbury Tales," 1484 45

17.--Robert the devil on horseback (_alias_ Romulus), being the frontispiece of several romances in verse published by Wynkyn de Worde, London, 1510 (?), 8vo. The history of Robert is illustrated throughout 57

18.--The knight of the swan, from the frontispiece of the metrical romance: "The Knight of the Swanne. Here beginneth the history of ye noble Helyas knyght of the swanne, newly translated out of frensshe," London, Copland, 1550 (?), 4to 61

19.--"Then went Guy to fayre Phelis." From the metrical romance "Guy of Warwick," London, 1550 (?), 4to, Sig. Cc. iij 65

20.--Drawing by Isaac Oliver (b. 1556) after an Italian model, from the original preserved in the British Museum; illustrative of the cultivation of Italian art by Englishmen in Tudor times 69

21.--Frontispiece to Harington's translation of Ariosto, London, 1591, fol. This engraving and the numerous copper-plates adorning this very fine book are usually said to be English. But these plates were in fact a product of Italian art, being the work of Girolamo Porro, of Padua; they are to be found in the Italian edition of Ariosto published at Venice in 1588, and in various other editions. The English engraver, Thomas Coxon (or Cockson), whose signature is to be seen at the bottom of the frontispiece, only drew the portrait of Harington in the space filled in the original by a figure of Peace. Coxon, according to the "Dictionary of National Biography" and other authorities, is supposed to have flourished from about 1609 to 1630 or 1636. The date on this plate (1st August, 1591), shows that he began to work nearly twenty years earlier.

It must be added that this portrait of Harington has an Italian softness and elegance, and differs greatly in its style from the other portraits signed by Coxon (portrait of Samuel Daniel on the title-page of his Works, 1609; of John Taylor, "Workes," 1630, etc.). It is possible that Harington's portrait was merely drawn by Coxon, and engraved by an Italian 77

22.--How the knight Eurialus got secretly into his lady-love's chamber. From the German version of the history of the Lady Lucrece of Sienna, 1477, fol. (a copy in the British Museum) 82

23.--Queen Cleopatra as represented on the English stage in the eighteenth century: Mrs. Hartley in "All for Love"; Page's engraving, dated 1776, for Bell's "Theatre" 97

24.--Sketches made by Inigo Jones in Italy, 1614; from his sketch-book reproduced in fac-simile by the care of the Duke of Devonshire, London, 1832 100

25.--Persians standing as caryatides, from a drawing by Inigo Jones for the circular court projected at Whitehall, and reproduced by W. Kent: "The Drawings of Inigo Jones," London, 1835, 2 vols., fol. 101

26.--A dragon according to Topsell, "The historie of Serpents," London, 1608, fol., p. 153 103

27.--The "Ægyptian or land crocodile," according to Topsell's "Historie of Serpents," London, 1608, fol., p. 140 109

28.--A Hippopotamus taking its food, according to Topsell's "Historie of foure footed beastes," London, 1607, fol., p. 328 113

29.--"The true picture of the Lamia," _ibid._, p. 453 117

30.--"The boas," from Topsell's "Serpents," 1608, frontispiece 121

31.--The Great Sea-serpent, _ibid._, p. 236 125

32.--Knightly pastimes; Hawking; illustrative of Gerismond's life in the forest of Arden as described in Lodge's "Rosalynd"; from Turberville's "Booke of Faulconerie," London, 1575, 4to, frontispiece 144

33.--Another dragon from Topsail's "Serpents," 1608, p. 153 145

33A.--Robert Greene in his shroud, from Dickenson's "Greene in conceipt," 1598 161

34.--Yet another dragon, from Topsell's "Serpents," p. 153 171

35.--Velvet breeches and cloth breeches, from Greene's "Quip," 1592, frontispiece 190

36.--Preparing for the Hunt, from Turberville's "Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting," London, 1575, 4to, frontispiece 205

37.--Penshurst, Sidney's birthplace, from a drawing by M. G. du Thuit.

"Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show Of touch or marble ... Thou hast thy walks for health as well as sport ... That taller tree which of a nut was set At his great birth, where all the Muses met."

(Ben Jonson, "The Forest") 217

38.--A shepherd of Arcady, as seen on the title-page of various editions of Sidney's "Arcadia," _e.g._, the third, 1598 242

39.--A Princess of Arcady, _ibid._ 243

40.--Argalus and Parthenia reading a book in their garden; from Quarles' poem of "Argalus and Parthenia," London, 1656, 4to, p. 135 265

41.--"The renowned Argalus and Parthenia":

"See the fond youth! he burns, he loves, he dies; He wishes as he pines and feeds his famish'd eyes."

From "The unfortunate Lovers, the History of Argalus and Parthenia, in four books," London, 12mo, a chap-book of the eighteenth century. Frontispiece 273

42.--"How the two princesses, Pamela and her sister Philoclea, went to bath themselves in the river Ladon, accompanied with Zelmane and Niso: And how Zelmane combated with Amphialus for the paper and glove of the princess Philoclea, and what after hapned." From "The famous history of heroick acts ... being an abstract of Pembroke's Arcadia," London, 1701, 12mo, p. 31. Not without truth does the publisher state that the book is illustrated with "curious cuts, the like as yet not extant" 275

43.--"How the two illustrious princesses, Philoclea and Pamela, being Basilius's only daughters, were married to the two invincible princes, Pyrocles of Macedon and Musidorus of Thessalia: and of the glorious entertainments that graced the happy nuptials," from the same chap-book, p. 139 277

44.--An interior view of the Swan Theatre in the time of Shakespeare, from a drawing by John de Witt, 1596, recently discovered in the Utrecht library by M. K. T. Gaedertz, of Berlin. Reproduced as illustrative of Dekker's "Horne-booke," 1609 (_infra_, ch. vi. § 3). Spectators have not been represented. They must be supposed to fill the pit, "planities sive arena," where they remained standing in the open air, and the covered galleries. The more important people were seated on the stage. Actors, to perform their parts, came out of the two doors inscribed "mimorum ædes." The boxes above these doors, concerning which some doubts have been expressed, seem to be what was called "the Lords' room." "Let our gallant," says Dekker, "advance himself up to the throne of the stage. I meane not the Lords roome (which is now but stages suburbs): no, those boxes, by the iniquity of custome, conspiracy of waiting women and gentlemen ushers, that there sweat together, and the covetousness of sharers are contemptibly thrust into the reare, and much new satten is there dambd by being smothrd to death in darknesse. But on the very rushes, where the comedy is to daunce, yea and under the state of Cambises himselfe must our fethered Estridge be planted valiantly, because impudently, beating downe the mewes and hisses of opposed rascality" ("Works," ed. Grosart, vol. ii. p. 247) 286

45.--Elizabethan gaieties. The actor Kemp's dance to Norwich, from the frontispiece of "Kemps nine daies wonder performed in a from London to Norwich, containing the pleasure, paines and kind entertainment of William Kemp betweene London and that city ... written by himselfe to satisfie his friends," London, 1600, reprinted by Dyce, Camden Society, 1840, 4to 287

46.--Portrait of Nash, from "Tom Nash his ghost ... written by Thomas Nash his ghost" (no date). A copy in the British Museum 326

47.--Portrait of Dekker, from "Dekker his dreame," a poem by the same, London, 1620, frontispiece 333

48.--Heroical deeds in an heroical novel. "Pandion slayes Clausus," from "Pandion and Amphigenia," by J. Crowne, London, 1665, 8vo 347

49.--Sir Guy of Warwick addressing a skull, in a churchyard, from "The history of Guy, earl of Warwick," 1750? (a chap-book), p. 18 350

50.--Burial of Sir Guy of Warwick, from the same chap-book 351

51.--A map of the "tendre" country. The original map was inserted by Mdlle. de Scudéry in her novel of "Clélie," Paris, 1654, _et seq._, 10 vols., 8vo, vol. i. p. 399. It was a map drawn by Clelia and sent by her to Herminius, and which "showed how to go from New Friendship to Tender." It was reproduced in the English translations of "Clélie"; the plate we give is taken from the edition of 1678 359

52.--Endymion plunged into the river in the presence of Diana, after an engraving by C. de Pas, in "L'Endimion de Gombauld," Paris, 1624, 8vo, p. 223. The French plates were sent to England and used for the English version of this novel: "Endimion, an excellent fancy ... interpreted by Richard Hurst," London, 1639, 8vo 367

53.--Frontispiece to Part IV. of the translation of La Calprenède's "Cléopatre," by Robert Loveday: "Hymen's præludia or Loves master-piece," London, 1652, _et seq._, 12mo. This frontispiece was drawn according to the instructions of Loveday himself, "Loveday's Letters," Letter lxxxiii. 371

54.--A fashionable conversation, from the frontispiece of "La fausse Clélie," by P. de Subligny, Amsterdam, 1671, 12mo. An enlarged plate was made after this one, to serve as frontispiece to the English version of the same work: "The mock Clelia, being a comical history of French gallantries ... in imitation of Don Quixote," London, 1678, 8vo 375

55.--Conversations and telling of stories at the house of the Duchess of Newcastle, from a drawing by Abr. a Diepenbeck, engraved for her book: "Natures pictures drawn by Fancies pencil to the life," London, 1656, fol. 379

56.--Moorish heroes, from an engraving in Settle's drama: "The Empress of Morocco," London, 1673, 4to 393

57.--A poet's dream realized, from the English version of Sorel's "Berger Extravagant," "The extravagant Shepherd," London, 1653, fol., translated by John Davies. The usual description of the heroine of a novel has been taken to the letter by the engraver, who represents Love sitting on her forehead, and lilies and roses on her cheeks. Two suns have taken the place of her eyes, her teeth are actual pearls, &c. 401

The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare.

INTRODUCTION.

The London publishers annually issue statistics of the works that have appeared in England during the year. Sometimes sermons and books on theology reach the highest figures; England is still the England of the Bible, the country that at the time of the Reformation produced three hundred and twenty-six editions of the Scriptures in less than a century, and whose religious literature is so abundant that to-day twenty-eight volumes of the British Museum catalogue treat of the single word Bible. When theology does not obtain the first rank, it holds the second. The only writings that can compete with it, in the country of Shakespeare, of Bacon and of Newton, are neither dramas, nor books of philosophy nor scientific treatises; they are novels. Theology had the supremacy in 1885; novels obtained it in 1887, 1888, and 1889. Omitting stories written for children, nine hundred and twenty-nine novels were published in England in 1888, and one thousand and forty in 1889. Thus the conscientious critic who wished to acquaint himself with all of them would have to read more than two novels and a half, often in three volumes, every day all the year round, without stopping even on Sundays.

This passion for the novel which does not exist in the same degree in any other nation, only acquired its full strength in England in the eighteenth century. At that time English novels produced in Europe the effect of a revelation; they were praised extravagantly, they were copied, they were imitated, and the popularity hitherto enjoyed by the "Princesse de Clèves," "Marianne," and "Gil Blas," was obscured for a while. "I say that Anglicism is gaining on us," wrote d'Argenson; "after 'Gulliver' and 'Pamela,' here comes 'Tom Jones,' and they are mad for him; who could have imagined eighty years ago that the English would write novels and better ones than ours? This nation pushes ahead by force of unrestricted freedom."[1]

Modern society had at length found the kind of literature which could be most suitably employed to depict it. Society had been presented on the English stage by the authors of domestic comedies; Steele and Addison had painted it in their essays. But in both forms the portrait was incomplete. The exigencies of the stage, the necessary brevity of the essay, made it impossible to give adequate expression to the infinite complexity of the subject. The novel created anew by Defoe, Fielding, and Richardson, made it an easy thing to introduce into the arena of literature those men and women of intelligence and feeling who, for long ages, had been pleased to see other people the chief subjects of books and inwardly desired that authors should at last deal more especially with themselves. The age of chivalry was gone; the time of the Arthurs and the Tristans had passed away; such a society as the new one could not so well be sung in verse; but it could extremely well be described in prose.

As Fielding remarked, the novel takes the place of the old epic. We think of the Harlowes when in the olden time we should have dreamed of the Atridæ. While man's attachment to science and demonstrated truth is growing year by year, so, simultaneously, the art of the historian and the art of the novelist, both essentially empirical, become more highly valued and more widely cultivated. As for the lengthy tales devoted to Tristan and to "l'Empereur magne," we know that their day is done, and we think of them with all the pensive tenderness we cannot help feeling for the dead, for the dim past, for a race without posterity, for childhood's cherished and fast-fading dreams. Thus in the same age when Clarissa Harlowe and Tom Jones came to their kingdom, the poets Chatterton, Percy, Beattie, and others, turned back lovingly to the Middle Ages; and thus too the new taste for history, archæology, and the painting of real life, all put together and combined, ended by producing a particular school of novel, the _romantic_ school, at whose head stands Sir Walter Scott.

Perhaps, however, something besides poetry is to be sought for in these bygone epochs. Movements of human thought have seldom that suddenness with which they are sometimes credited; if those literary innovations, apparently so spasmodic, are carefully and closely studied, it will be nearly always found that the way had been imperceptibly prepared for them through the ages. We are in the habit of beginning the history of the English novel with Defoe or Richardson; but was there no work of the kind in England before their time? had they to invent it all, matter and method? It is not enough to say that the gift of observation and analysis was inborn in the race, as shown already, long before the eighteenth century, in the work of the dramatists, moralists and philosophers. Had not the same gift already manifested itself in the novel?

The truth is that the novel shed its first splendour during the age of Elizabeth; but the glory of Shakespeare has overshadowed the multitude of the lesser authors of his time, a multitude which included the early novelists. While they lived, however, they played no insignificant part; now they are so entirely forgotten that it will perhaps be heard with some surprise that they were prolific, numerous, and very popular. So great was the demand for this kind of literature that some succeeded in making an income out of their novels. Their books went through many editions for that age, many more than the majority of Shakespeare's plays. They were translated into French at a time when even the name of the great dramatist was entirely unknown to the French people. Lyly's "Euphues," for example, went through five editions in five years; in the same period "Hamlet" passed through only three, and "Romeo and Juliet" through two editions. Not a line of Shakespeare was put into French before the eighteenth century, while prose fictions by Nash, Greene, and Sidney were translated more than a century earlier.

As in our own day, some of these novelists busied themselves chiefly with the analysis of passion and refined emotion; others chiefly concerned themselves with minute observation of real life, and strove to place before the reader the outward features of their characters in a fashion impressive enough to enable him to realize what lay below the surface. Many of these pictures of manners and of society were considered by contemporaries good likenesses, not the less so because embellished. Thus, having served as models to the novelists, the men and women of the day in their turn took as example the copies that had been made from them. They had had their portraits painted and then tried hard to resemble their counterfeit presentments. Lyly and Sidney embellished, according to the taste of the age, the people around them, whom they chose as patterns for the heroes of their novels; and as soon as their books were spread over the country, fashionable ladies distinguished themselves from the common sort by being "Arcadian" or "Euphuizd."[2]

Thus through these very efforts, a literature, chiefly intended for women, was arising in England, and this is one characteristic more that links these authors to our modern novelists. So that, perhaps, bonds, closer than we imagine, unite those old writers lost in a far-off past with the novelists whose books reprinted a hundred times are to be found to-day on every reading-table and in everybody's hands.

We make no pretence of covering in the present volume this vast and little trodden field. To keep within reasonable bounds we shall have to leave altogether, or barely mention, the collections of tales translated by Paynter, Whetstone and others from the Italian or French, although they were well known to Shakespeare, and provided him with several of his plots. In spite of their charm, we shall in like manner pass by the simple popular prose tales, which were also very numerous, the stories of Robin Hood, of Tom-a-Lincoln, of Friar Bacon, however "merry and pleasant," they may be, "not altogether unprofitable, nor any way hurtfull, very fitte to passe away the tediousness of the long winters evenings."[3] We intend to deal here chiefly with those writers from whom our modern novelists are legitimately descended. These descendants, improving upon the early examples of their art left by the Elizabethan novelists, have won for themselves a lasting place in literature, and their works are among the undisputed pleasures of our lives. Our gratitude may rightly be extended from them to their progenitors. We must be permitted, therefore, to go far back in history, nearly as far as the Flood. The journey is long, but we shall travel rapidly. It was, moreover, the customary method of many novelists of long ago to begin with the beginning of created things. Let their example serve as our excuse.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "Mémoires et Journal inédit du Marquis d'Argenson," Paris, 1857, 5 vols.; vol. v., "Remarques en lisant."

[2] Dekker, "The Guls Horne-booke," 1609.

[3] "The Gentle Craft," 1598. "Early English Prose Romances," ed. W. J. Thoms, London, 2nd edition, 1858, 3 vols., 8vo, contents: "Robert the Devyll," "Thomas of Reading," by Thomas Deloney, "Fryer Bacon," "Frier Rush," "George a Green," "Tom-a-Lincoln," by Richard Johnson, "Doctor Faustus," &c. Nearly all the stories in this collection bear the date of Shakespeare's time.