Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) Part 1

Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624).

by Dunstan Gale and Richard Lynche and William Barksted and Samuel Page and H. A.

INTRODUCTION

Professor Elizabeth Story Donno, in her recent =Elizabethan Minor Epics= (New York, 1963), has made an important contribution to both scholars.h.i.+p and teaching. Not only has she brought together for the first time in one volume most of the extant Elizabethan minor epics, but in so doing, she has hastened the recognition that the minor epic, or "epyllion" as it has often been called in modern times,[1] is a distinctive literary genre as deserving of study as the sonnet, the pastoral, or the verse satire.

The purpose of the present volume is to supplement and complement Professor Donno's collection by making available in facsimile seven minor epics of the English Renaissance omitted from it. With the publication of these poems all the known, surviving minor epics of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods will for the first time be made available for study in faithful reproductions of the earliest extant editions.

Of the seven minor epics included here, three--=A Pleasant and Delightfull Poeme of Two Lovers, Philos and Licia=, =STC= 19886 (1624); Dunstan Gale's =Pyramus and Thisbe=, =STC= 11527 (1617); and S[amuel]

P[age's] =The Love of Amos and Laura= (1613)[2]--have not previously been reprinted in modern times. And of these three, one, =Philos and Licia=, though listed in the =Short-t.i.tle Catalogue=, seems not to have been noticed by Renaissance scholars, nor even by any of the princ.i.p.al bibliographers except William C. Hazlitt, who gives this unique copy bare mention as a book from Robert Burton's collection.[3]

The remaining four books--R[ichard] L[ynche's][4] =The Amorous Poeme of Dom Diego and Ginevra= published with Lynche's =Diella, Certaine Sonnets=, =STC= 17091 (1596); William Barksted's =Mirrha The Mother of Adonis: Or, l.u.s.tes Prodegies=, =STC= 1429 (1607), published with =Three Eglogs= by Lewes Machin; Barksted's =Hiren: or The Faire Greeke=, =STC= 1428 (1611); and H. A's =The Scourge of Venus, or, The Wanton Lady.

With the Rare Birth of Adonis=, =STC= 968 (1613)--have been edited by the "indefatigable" Alexander B. Grosart in =Occasional Issues of Very Rare Books= (Manchester, 1876-77), limited to 50 copies each and hence extremely scarce today.[5] =Dom Diego and Ginevra= was also reprinted by Edward Arber in =An English Garner=, VII (Birmingham, 1883), 209-240.

With the exception of =Philos and Licia=, these poems are printed in their approximate order of composition from 1596 to 1613.[6]

AUTHORs.h.i.+P

As befits the paucity of their known literary productions, the authors of these poems have in common chiefly their anonymity, or a degree of obscurity approaching it. The authors of =Philos and Licia= and of H.

A's =The Scourge= are unknown. Though the authors of the other poems are known, little is known about them. The mystery of the authors.h.i.+p of =The Scourge= was compounded in the nineteenth century by its incorrect attribution to one Henry Austin. Grosart, for example, argued that the H. A. on the t.i.tle page and on the address "To the Reader" of the 1614 impression, and the A. H. on the corresponding pages of the 1620 impression, =STC= 970, was the Austin denounced by Thomas Heywood for stealing his translations of Ovid's =Ars Amatoria= and =De Remedio Amoris=. Arthur Melville Clark, in correcting this error, pointed out that these stolen translations of Ovid should not be confused with =The Scourge=, an original poetic composition based on Book X of a quite different work by Ovid, =The Metamorphoses=. Clark concluded that "H. A.

or A. H. was probably the editor, not the author, although he may have made certain corrections and additions, as the t.i.tle-page of the second edition states."[7]

However, H. A.--not A. H.--was almost certainly the author of =The Scourge=, as evidenced, among other details, by the t.i.tle page of the 1613 =Scourge=,[8] unknown to Clark, which unequivocally states: "Written by =H. A.=" As to the initials H. A. appended to the address "To the Reader" of the 1614 impression and the A. H. on the t.i.tle and address pages of the 1620 impression, they were probably printer's errors, arising in the 1614 impression from the printer's careless a.s.sumption that the address "To the Reader" was the work of the author rather than the bookseller, and in the impression of 1620 from a simple typographical metathesis of the letters H and A.[9]

The authors.h.i.+p of the remaining five poems, together with such relevant facts of the authors' lives as are known, is as follows.

=Pyramus and Thisbe= is by one Dunstan Gale (fl. 1596), about whom nothing else is known. =Dom Diego and Ginevra= has long been attributed to Richard Lynche (fl. 1601), otherwise chiefly known for his =Diella=, a conventional sonnet sequence accompanying =Dom Diego=, and for his translation of Cartari's =Le Imagini=, Englished as =The Fountaine of Ancient Fiction= (1599). =Mirrha= and =Hiren= are by William Barksted (fl.

1611), "one of the servants of his Majesties Revels," as the t.i.tle page of =Hiren= proclaims. Barksted is believed to have completed =The Insatiate Countess= after Marston's withdrawal from the stage in 1608 or 1609. This play, bearing Barksted's name in one issue of the 1631 edition, contains a number of lines and phrases identical with lines and phrases in =Mirrha= and =Hiren=.[10]

=Amos and Laura= has been attributed, probably correctly, to Samuel Page (1574-1630),[11] who is mentioned by Meres as "most pa.s.sionate among us to bewaile and bemoane the perplexities of Love,"[12] and by his fellow-Oxonian Anthony a Wood as long-time Vicar of Deptford.[13]

Although a few additional facts are known about these authors, none seems to contribute to an understanding of the poems reprinted, and all may be found under the appropriate authors' names in the =DNB=.

SOURCES

Traditionally the storyhouse of minor epic source materials has been cla.s.sical mythology, but inevitably, as suitable cla.s.sical myths were exhausted, Renaissance poets turned to such sources as the Italian novella, or even--romantic heresy--to comparatively free invention. As if to compensate for these departures from orthodoxy, the later epyllionists leaned ever more heavily on allusions to cla.s.sical mythology. Of the seven poems included here only three (=Pyramus and Thisbe, Mirrha, and The Scourge=) are based on a cla.s.sical source (Ovid's =Metamorphoses=). Of the remaining four tales, two are drawn from Bandello apparently by way of Painter, and the last two (=Philos and Licia, Amos and Laura=), though greatly indebted to =Hero and Leander= overall, seem not to have drawn their characters or actions directly from either a cla.s.sical or more contemporary source. These last two poems, then, from a Renaissance point of view, are comparatively free inventions. But both, and especially =Philos and Licia=, are a tissue of allusions to cla.s.sical mythology.

Gale in =Pyramus and Thisbe= expands Golding's translation of Ovid's =Metamorphoses=, IV, from some 130 to 480 lines, Barksted expands less than 300 lines of Golding's =Ovid=, X, to nearly 900, and H. A. enlarges the same tale to about 950 lines.[14] It should be emphasized, however, that these are not mere amplified translations, but reworkings of the cla.s.sics, with significant departures from them.

Gale, for example, prefaces the romance of Pyramus and Thisbe with their innocent meeting out-of-doors in an arbor, amid violets and damask roses. He has Venus, enraged at seeing these youngsters engaging in child-like rather than erotic play, command Cupid to shoot his arrows at them "As nought but death, their love-dart may remove"

(Stanza 8). There is no counterpart to this opening scene in Golding's Ovid.

Similarly Barksted departs at length from Ovid in the beginning of his tale, where the Renaissance poet undertakes to explain why Mirrha is cursed with love for her father. While she listens to the sweet, sad songs of Orpheus, Cupid,[15] falling in love with her, courts her and is rejected; his parting kiss "did inspire/her brest with an infernall and unnam'd desire" (p. 123). Golding's Ovid, specifically denying that Cupid had anything to do with Mirrha's unnatural love, suggests that Cinyras' daughter must have been blasted by one of the Furies.[16] Other inventions of Barksted include a picture of her father with which Mirrha converses (pp. 126-127), pictures of her suitors (p. 128), a picture of her mother, over which she throws a veil (p. 128) and a description of Mirrha herself (pp. 131-132). Later in the story Mirrha meets a satyr named Poplar (unknown to Ovid), who makes free with her (pp. 148-155). As punishment for such goings on in Diana's sacred grove, he is to be metamorphosed into the tree that now bears his name (even as Mirrha is subsequently transformed into the tree that produces myrrh).

=The Scourge of Venus=, though following Ovid's story more closely than =Mirrha=, expands Golding by more than 600 lines, to a little more than the average length of the Elizabethan minor epic. In the process, Mirrha is a.s.signed l.u.s.tful dreams not found in Ovid (p. 246), and is impelled to write a long letter to her father (pp. 247-250). Shortly thereafter, the author introduces an emphatically Christian digression on the horror of Mirrha's "fowle incestious l.u.s.t" and on the importance of reading ="G.o.ds holy Bible"= as a salve for sin (p. 253), and invents the Nurse's prolix arguments against such "filthy" love as Mirrha desires (pp. 258-261).[17] The fact that the author follows Ovid's story as closely as he does should be taken as a commentary on his limited powers of invention rather than on his devotion to the art of translation.

Bandello, I, 27, Belleforest, 18, Whetstone's =Rocke of Regard=, 2, Fenton's =Tragicall Discourses=, 13, and Painter's =Palace of Pleasure=, II, 29[18] have all been listed as possible sources for =Dom Diego and Ginevra=.[19] Grosart regarded Fenton's work, 1579, as the source from which Lynche got the bare bones of his story, and Arber agreed.[20]

But though Jeannette Fellheimer could find no evidence that Lynche knew Belleforest's or Fenton's version of the tale, she demonstrated, on the basis of two very close parallels, that he knew Painter's.[21]

In support of Fellheimer's view, one notes that Lynche follows Painter in employing the form "Cathelo[y]gne"[22] (p. 63) rather than Fenton's "Catalonia."[23]

Barksted may have known ballads on the subject of Hiren, alluded to in stanza 34 of his poem, as well as Peele's lost play =The Turkish Mahomet and Hyren the fair Greek=. But like Lynche, he seems heavily indebted to a tale by Painter, in this case "Hyerenee the Faire Greeke."[24] Among other equally striking but less sustained correspondences between Painter's prose narrative and Barksted's minor epic verse, one notes the following, in which Mahomet's confidant Mustapha attempts to reanimate his leader's martial spirit, drowned in uxoriousness: "But nowe I cannot revive the memorie of your father Amurate, but to my great sorow and griefe, who by the s.p.a.ce of XL.

yeres made the sea and earth to tremble and quake ... [and so cruelly treated the Greeks] that the memorie of the woundes do remaine at this present, even to the mountaines of Thomao and Pindus: he subjugated ... all the barbarous nations, from Morea to the straits of Corinthe.

What neede I here to bring in the cruel battell that he fought with the Emperour Sigismunde and Philip duke of Burgundia wherein he overthrew the whole force of the Christians, toke the emperour prisoner, and the duke of Burgundie also ... or to remember other fierce armies which he sent into Hungarie."[25]

Barksted versifies this speech in stanzas 1 and 2, putting it at the beginning instead of toward the end, where it comes in Painter's novella. By a poetic license, Barksted credits all these achievements to the son, none to the father. Barksted follows Painter's story quite closely, but he cuts, amplifies and invents in order to develop its minor epic potentialities. Thus, in addition to turning Painter's prose into the sixains of Shakespeare's =Venus and Adonis=, he cuts the length of Painter's tale by about two-thirds. In the process, much of Painter's attention to historical detail, his complication of plot, and his tedious moralizing are mercifully lost. By way of amplification in the minor epic mode, Barksted expands as follows Mahomet's brief command in Painter that Hiren should "adorne herselfe with her most precious jewels, and decke her with the costliest apparell shee had" (see stanza 100).[26] Also, in order to bring out Mahomet's realization of the enormity of his crime of slaying Hiren, the consummation of all his amorous dreams, Barksted invents a second killing--Mahomet's killing of Mustapha, who had driven his lord to perform the first execution.

FORMAL CHARACTERISTICS

Like the poems reprinted by Professor Donno, these establish their ident.i.ty as minor epics by the erotic subject matter of their narration, however symbolized or moralized, and by their use of certain rhetorical devices that came to be a.s.sociated with the genre.

These include the set description of people and places; the =suasoria=, or invitation to love; and the formal digression, sometimes in the form of an inset tale, such as the tale of Poplar in =Mirrha= (pp.

148-155). Other rhetorical devices cultivated in the epyllion are the long apostrophe, and the sentence or wise saying. Also, these poems employ numerous compound epithets and far-fetched conceits. (Dom Diego goes hunting with a "beast-dismembring blade" [p. 64], and Cinyras incestuous bed in =The Scourge= "doth shake and quaver as they lie,/As if it groan'd to beare the weight of sinne." [p. 271].)

The average length of these, like other Renaissance minor epics, is about 900 lines. Although the length of Renaissance minor epics is not rigidly prescribed, it is noteworthy that several of these poems have almost the same number of lines. =Philos and Licia=, =Mirrha=, and =Hiren=, for example, running to about 900 lines, vary in length by no more than 16 lines. (=Amos and Laura=, however, the shortest with about 300 lines, is some 650 lines shorter than =The Scourge=, the longest, with about 950.)

As well as echoing Marlowe's =Hero and Leander= and Shakespeare's =Venus and Adonis= in particular words and phrases, these poems reveal a much more general indebtedness to what Professor Bush has aptly called "the twin peaks of the Ovidian tradition in England."[27] The majority employ one of two prosodic patterns--the Marlovian couplet popularized in =Hero and Leander=, or the six-line stanza used by Lodge but soon after taken over by Shakespeare in =Venus and Adonis= and thereafter a.s.sociated with his poem.[28]

In addition to the couplet, a common mark of Marlovian influence in the poems is the etiological myth, sometimes expanded into a tale.

Thus, in =Mirrha=, for instance, the growth of rare spices and perfumes in Panchaia is explained by the story of how Hebe once spilled nectar there (p. 147).

Comparable marks of Shakespearean influence are the aggressive female like Mirrha, reminiscent of Shakespeare's Venus; the hunting motif in =Dom Diego= and =Amos and Laura=, recalling Adonis' obsession with the hunt; and the catalog of the senses in =Philos and Licia=, pp. 15-16, and =Hiren=, stanzas 75-79, which imitates Shakespeare's =Venus and Adonis=, ll. 427-450. Only =Mirrha= among these poems, however, makes specific acknowledgment of a debt to Shakespeare (see p. 177).

Finally, Dom Diego's plangent laments at Ginevra's cruelty recall Glaucus' unrestrained weeping at Scylla's cruelty in Lodge's =Scillaes Metamorphosis=. But whereas the "piteous Nimphes" surrounding Glaucus weep till a "pretie brooke" forms,[29] "the fayre =Oreades= pitty-moved gerles" that comfort Dom Diego are loath to lose the "liquid pearles"

he weeps. Consequently they gather (and presumably preserve) them with "Spunge-like Mosse" (p. 95). Lynche extends his debt to Lodge by establis.h.i.+ng at the end of his poem a link between Ginevra and the Maiden he professes to love. But, whereas Lodge in the Envoy to his poem uses Scylla on the rocks as a horrible example of what may happen to unyielding maids, Lynche holds up Ginevra, who finally marries her lover, as an example to be followed by the poet's disdainful Diella of the accompanying sonnets (see p. 101).

It would probably be impossible, even if it were desirable, for any given minor epic to follow all the conventions of the genre, or even all its alternative conventions. Yet all the poems included here adhere so closely to most of the important minor epic conventions that there should be no question as to the minor epic ident.i.ty of any.[30]

THE HISTORY OF THE EARLY EDITIONS

=Philos and Licia=, though entered on October 2, 1606 and presumably printed soon thereafter, survives only in the unique copy of the 1624 edition printed by W. S. [William Stansby?] for John Smethwick. (No record of transfer of this poem from William Aspley, who entered it, exists, though Aspley and Smethwick were a.s.sociated, along with William Jaggard, in the publication of Shakespeare's First Folio of 1623.)

Robert Burton bequeathed this copy of =Philos and Licia=, along with many of his other books, to the Bodleian Library in 1639. Under the terms of his will the Bodleian was to have first choice of his books, unless it already had duplicates, and Christ Church, Burton's college, second choice. Along with =Philos and Licia=, the Bodleian received the following other minor epics from Burton's collection: =Pigmalion's Image= (1598), =Venus and Adonis= (1602), =Samacis and Hermaphroditus= (1602), and =Hero and Leander= (1606).[31] Burton regularly wrote his name in full, some abbreviation thereof, or at least his initials, on the t.i.tle page of his books, usually across the middle. In =Philos and Licia=, Burton's heavily and distinctively written initials RB are written a bit below the middle of the t.i.tle page, on either side of the printer's device.[32] Also in its typical location at the bottom of the t.i.tle page is found "a curious mark, a sort of hieroglyphic or cypher," which Burton almost always affixed to his books. The significance of this device remains obscure; it "has usually been supposed to represent the three 'R's' in his name joined together."[33]

Although the dedication of Dunstan Gale's =Pyramus and Thisbe= is dated November 25, 1596, no copy of an earlier edition than that printed in 1617 for Roger Jackson is extant. The unsophisticated, highly imitative style of the piece, the date of the dedication, and the fact that the printer's device in the 1617 edition is an old one, used previously in 1586-87 by Ralph Newbery,[34] to whom Jackson was apprenticed from 1591-99,[35] suggests that the poem was originally published by Newbery about 1596. Probably this first edition had the same device as the edition of 1617, and a similar t.i.tle page.

According to Newbery's will, Roger Jackson and John Norcott were to receive his stock of books on Fleet Street, but McKerrow, citing the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 30, Hudlestone as his authority, says the offer seems not to have been taken up.[36] Gale's poem would seem to const.i.tute an exception to this generalization.

=Pyramus and Thisbe= was also issued with Greene's =Arbasto= in 1617. On Jan. 16, 1625/26 Gale's poem was transferred from Roger Jackson's widow to Francis Williams,[37] who had it printed for the last time in 1626.

Nothing of note has been turned up with regard to the first and only early edition of Lynche's =Dom Diego and Ginevra= (1596).

According to their first modern editor, A. B. Grosart, the first and only early editions of =Mirrha= and =Hiren= are notorious for their wretched typography and printing errors of various kinds.[38] He writes, "In all my experience of our elder literature I have not met with more carelessly printed books. Typographical and punctuation errors not only obscure the meaning but again and again make places absolutely unintelligible."[39] Their author Barksted must share the blame, Grosart opines, for some of the poem's errors would seem to show that he was "ill-educated and unpractised in composition."[40]

Henry Plomer agrees with Grosart that Edward Allde, the printer of =Mirrha=, was guilty of poor type and workmans.h.i.+p.[41] Perhaps the grossest example in =Mirrha= of the kind of thing Plomer may have had in mind is the tipping of the type on the t.i.tle page of the two copies of this poem which have come to my attention.[42] Another example would be the awkward separation of the "A" in "Adonis" on one line of the t.i.tle page from the rest of the word on the next.

But although =Mirrha= is indeed a printer's nightmare, it strikes me that Grosart is far too severe in his strictures against =Hiren=, which was quite attractively and reasonably accurately printed, probably by Nicholas Okes,[43] who also printed =The Scourge=. Indeed Grosart has "corrected" a number of details of punctuation in the poem which might better have been left standing, in view of the generally light punctuation of Barksted's day. In two instances Grosart has even "corrected" details which, as "corrected," follow the unique copy of =Hiren=, the Bodleian copy which he consulted.[44]

Page's =Amos and Laura= was first published in 1613,[45] a second time in 1619. Finally, in 1628, a second impression of the edition of 1613, with slight variants from it, was printed.