Chapter I: Roman Plays in the Sixteenth Century (2)

The chorus oddly enough discovers in her maltreatment of the tale-bearer a proof of her indomitable spirit, and an indication that she will never let herself be led to Rome: (Act III.). Cleopatra now explains that her submission was only feigned to secure the lives of her children, and that she herself has no thought of following the conqueror’s car. Eras and Charmium approve, and all three depart to Antony’s tomb to offer there a last sacrifice, which the chorus describes in full detail: (Act IV.). Proculeius in consternation announces the sequel:

“J’ay veu (ô rare et miserable chose!)
Ma Cleopatre en son royal habit
Et sa couronne, au long d’un riche lict
Peint et doré, blesme et morte couchée,
Sans qu’elle fust d’aucun glaive touchée,
Avecq Eras, sa femme, à ses pieds morte,
Et Charmium vive, qu’en telle sorte
J’ay lors blasmée: ‘A a! Charmium, est-ce
Noblement faict?’ ‘Ouy, ouy, c’est de noblesse
De tant de rois Egyptiens venuë
Un tesmoignage.’ Et lors, peu soustenuë
En chancelant et s’accrochant en vain,
Tombe a l’envers, restans un tronc humain.”

The chorus celebrates the pitifulness and glory of her end, and the supremacy of Caesar: (Act _V._).

Thus, despite the promises of the prologue, the play resolves itself to a single _motif_, the determination of Cleopatra to follow Antony in defiance of Octavianus’ efforts to prevent her. Nevertheless, simple as it is, it fails in real unity. The ghost of Antony, speaking, one must suppose, the final verdict, pronounces condemnation on her as well as himself; yet in the rest of the play, even in the undignified episode with Seleucus, Jodelle bespeaks for her not only our sympathy but our admiration. It is just another aspect of this that Antony treats her death as the beginning of her punishment, but to her and her attendants and the women of Alexandria it is a desirable release. The recurrent theme of the chorus, varied to suit the complexion of the different acts, is always the same:

Joye, qui dueil enfante
Se meurdrist; puis la mort,
Par la joye plaisante,
Fait au deuil mesme tort.

Half a dozen years later, in 1558, the _Confrères de la Passion_ were acting a play which Muretus had more immediately prompted, and which did him greater credit. This was the _Cesar_ of Jacques Grévin, a young Huguenot gentlemen who, at the age of twenty, recast in French the even more juvenile effort of the famous scholar, expanding it to twice the size, introducing new personages, giving the old ones more to do, and while borrowing largely in language and construction, shaping it to his own ends and making it much more dramatic. Indeed, his tragedy strikes one as fitter for the popular stage than almost any other of its class, and this seems to have been felt at the time, for besides running through two editions in 1561 and 1562, it was reproduced by the _Confrères_ with great success in the former year. Of course its theatrical merit is only relative, and it does not escape the faults of the Senecan school. Grévin styles his _dramatis personae_ rather ominously and very correctly “entre-parleurs”; for they talk rather than act. They talk, moreover, in long, set harangues even when they are conversing, and Grévin so likes to hear them that he sometimes lets the story wait. Nor do they possess much individuality or concrete life. But the young author has passion; he has fire; and he knows the dramatic secret of contrasting different moods and points of view.

He follows his exemplar most closely, and often literally, in the first three acts, though even in them he often goes his own way. Thus, after Caesar’s opening soliloquy, which is by no means so Olympian as in Muret, he introduces Mark Antony, who encourages his master with reminders of his greatness and assurances of his devotion. In the second act, after Marcus Brutus’ monologue, not only Cassius but Decimus has something to say, and there is a quicker interchange of statement and rejoinder than is usual in such a play. In the third act, the third and fourth of Muretus are combined, and after the conversation of Calpurnia with the Nurse, there follow her attempts to dissuade her husband from visiting the senate house, the hesitation of Caesar, the counter-arguments of Decimus; and in conclusion, when Decimus has prevailed, the Nurse resumes her endeavours at consolation. The fourth act is entirely new, and gives an account of the assassination by the mouth of a Messenger, who is also a new person, to the distracted Calpurnia and her sympathetic Nurse. In the fifth Grévin begins by returning to his authority in the jubilant speeches of Brutus and Cassius, but one by Decimus is added; and rejecting the expedient of the ghostly intervention, he substitutes, much more effectively, that of Mark Antony, who addresses the chorus of soldiers, rouses them to vengeance, and having made sure of them, departs to stir up the people.

Altogether a creditable performance, and a distinct improvement on the more famous play that supplied the groundwork. One must not be misled by the almost literal discipleship of Grévin in particular passages, to suppose that even in language he is a mere imitator. The discipleship is of course undeniable. Take Brutus’ outburst:

Rome effroy de ce monde, exemple des provinces,
Laisse la tyrannie entre les mains des Princes
Du Barbare estranger, qui honneur luy fera,
Non pas Rome, pendant que Brute vivera.

And compare:

Reges adorent barbarae gentes suos,
Non Roma mundi terror, et mundi stupor.
Vivente Bruto, Roma reges nesciet.

So, too, after the murder Brutus denounces his victim:

Ce Tyran, ce Cesar, ennemi du Senat....
Ce bourreau d’innocens, ruine de nos loix,
La terreur des Romains, et le poison des droicts.

The lines whence this extract is taken merely enlarge Muretus’ conciser statement:

Ille, ille, Caesar, patriae terror suae,
Hostis senatus, innocentium carnifex,
Legum ruina, publici jures lues.

But generally Grévin is more abundant and more fervid even when he reproduces most obviously, and among the best of his purple patches are some that are quite his own. He indeed thought differently. He modestly confesses:

Je ne veux pourtant nier que s’il se trouve quelque traict
digne estre loué, qu’il ne soit de Muret, lequel a esté mon
precepteur quelque temps es lettres humaines, et auquel je
donne le meilleur comme l’ayant appris de luy.

All the same there is nothing in Muretus like the passage in which Brutus promises himself an immortality of fame:

Et quand on parlera de Cesar et de Romme,
Qu’on se souvienne aussi qu’il a esté un homme,
Un Brute, le vangeur de toute cruauté,
Qui aura d’un seul coup gaigné la liberté.
Quand on dira, Cesar fut maistre de l’empire,
Qu’on die quant-et-quant, Brute le sceut occire.
Quand on dira, Cesar fut premier Empereur,
Qu’on die quant-et-quant, Brute en fut le vangeur.
Ainsi puisse a jamais sa gloire estre suyvie
De celle qui sera sa mortelle ennemie.

Grévin’s tragedy had great vogue, was preferred even to those of Jodelle, and was praised by Ronsard, though Ronsard afterwards retracted his praises when Grévin broke with him on religious grounds. His protestantism, however, would be a recommendation rather than otherwise in England, and one would like to know whether some of the lost English pieces on the same subject owed anything to the French drama. The suggestion has even been made that Shakespeare was acquainted with it. There are some vague resemblances in particular thoughts and phrases,[54] the closest of which occurs in Caesar’s pronouncement on death:

Il vault bien mieux mourir
Asseuré de tout poinct, qu’incessament perir
Faulsement par la peur.

[54] Enumerated by Collischonn in his excellent edition, see above. He has, however, overlooked the one I give.

This suggests:

Cowards die many times before their deaths:
The valiant never taste of death but once.
(II. ii. 32.)

Herr Collischonn also draws attention to a coincidence in situation that is not derived from Plutarch. When the conspirators are discussing the chances of Caesar’s attending the senate meeting, Cassius says:

Encore qu’il demeure
Plus long temps à venir, si fault il bien qu’il meure:

and Decimus answers:

Je m’en vay au devant, sans plus me tormenter,
Et trouveray moyen de le faire haster.

It is at least curious to find the same sort of addition, in the same circumstances and with the same speakers in Shakespeare.

_Cassius._ But it is doubtful yet,
Whether Caesar will come forth to-day, or no....
_Dec. Brut._ Never fear that: if he be so resolved,
I can o’ersway him....
For I can give his humour the true bent
And I will bring him to the Capitol.
(II. i. 194, 202, 210.)

Such _minutiae_, however, are far from conclusive, especially since, as in the two instances quoted, which are the most significant, Plutarch, though he did not authorise, may at any rate have suggested them. The first looks like an expansion of Caesar’s remark when his friends were discussing which death was the best: “Death unlooked for.” The second follows as a natural dramatic anticipation of the part that Decimus actually played in inducing Caesar to keep tryst. They may very well have occurred independently to both poets; or, if there be a connection, may have been transmitted from the older to the younger through the medium of some forgotten English piece. There is more presumptive evidence that Grévin influenced the _Julius Caesar_ of Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling; but Stirling’s paraphrase of his authorities is so diffuse that they are not always easy to trace. His apparent debts to Grévin may really be due to the later and much more famous French Senecan Garnier, two of whose works have an undoubted though not very conspicuous place in the history of the English Drama generally, and especially of the Roman Play in England.

_Cornélie_, the earlier and less successful of the pair, written in Garnier’s twenty-eighth year, was performed at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1573, and was published in 1574. The young author was not altogether unpractised in his art, for already in 1568 he had written a drama on the subject of Portia, but he has not yet advanced beyond his predecessors, and like them, or perhaps more obviously than they, is at the stage of regarding the tragedy “only as an elegy mixed with rhetorical expositions.” The episode that he selected lent itself to such treatment.

Cornelia, the daughter of Metellus Scipio, had after the loss of her first husband, the younger Cassius, become the wife of Pompey the Great, of whose murder she was an eye-witness. Meanwhile her father still made head against Caesar in Africa, and the play deals with her regrets and suspense at Rome till she learns the issue of this final struggle. In the first act Cicero soliloquises on the woes of the country, which he traces to her lust of conquest; and the chorus takes up the burden at the close. In the second Cornelia bewails her own miseries, which she attributes to her infidelity in marrying again: Cicero tries to comfort her and she refuses his comfort, both in very long harangues; and the chorus describes the mutability of mortal things. In the third act she narrates an ominous dream in which the shade of Pompey has visited her. Scarcely has she left the stage when Cicero enters to announce the triumph of Caesar and the death of Scipio. Cornelia re-enters to receive the urn with Pompey’s ashes, the sight of which stirs her to new laments for herself and imprecations against Caesar. The chorus dwells on the capriciousness of fortune. In the fourth act the resentment against Caesar is emphasised by Cassius in discourse with Decimus Brutus, and the chorus sings of Harmodios and Aristogeiton; but after that Caesar and Antony come in and discuss the means to be taken for Caesar’s safety, Antony advocating severity and caution, Caesar leniency and confidence. This act is closed by a chorus of Caesar’s friends, who celebrate his services and virtues. The fifth act is chiefly occupied with the messenger’s account of Scipio’s last battle and death, at the end of which Cornelia at some length declares that when she has paid due funeral rites to husband and father, she will surrender her own life.

From this analysis it will be seen that _Cornélie_ as a play is about as defective as it could be. The subject is essentially undramatic, for the heroine—and there is no hero—has nothing to do but spend her time in lamentations and forebodings, in eulogies and vituperations. Yet the subject is more suitable than the treatment. There is no trace of conflict, internal or external; for the persons maintain their own point of view throughout, and the issue is a matter of course from the first. There is no entanglement or plot; but all the speakers, as they enter in turn, are affected with a craving to deliver their minds either in solitude or to some congenial listener: and their prolations lead to nothing. Even the unity of interest, which the classicists so prized, and over-prized, is lacking here, despite the bareness of the theme. Cicero has hardly less to say than Cornelia, and in two acts she does not so much as appear, while in one of them attention is diverted from her sorrows to the dangers of Caesar. The heroine no doubt retains a certain kind of primacy, but save for that, M. Faguet’s description would be literally correct: “The piece in the author’s conception might be entitled _Thoughts of various persons concerning Rome at the Date of Thapsus_.”[55] The _Cornélie_ is by no means devoid of merit, but that merit is almost entirely rhetorical, literary, and poetical. The language is never undignified, the metres are carefully manipulated; the descriptions and reflections, many of them taken from Lucan, though sometimes stilted, are often elevated and picturesque. But the most dramatic passages are the conversations in the fourth act, where the _inter-locuteurs_, as Garnier calls the characters with even more reason than Grévin calls those of his play _entre-parleurs_, are respectively Decimus Brutus and Cassius, Caesar and Mark Antony: and this is typical for two reasons. In the first place, these scenes have least to do with the titular subject, and are, as it were, mere excrescences on the main theme. In the second place, they are borrowed, so far as their general idea is concerned, from Grévin, as Grévin in turn had borrowed them from Muretus; and even details have been transmitted to the cadet in the trinity from each and both of his predecessors. Thus in the _Cornélie_ Decimus not very suitably replaces or absorbs Marcus Brutus, but the whole tone and movement of the interview with Cassius are the same in all the three plays, and particular expressions reappear in Garnier that are peculiar to one or other of his elder colleagues or that the later has adapted from the earlier. For example, Garnier’s Cassius describes Caesar as

[55] _Tragédie Française au XVIͤ Siècle._

un homme effeminé
Qui le Roy Nicomede a jeune butiné.[56]

[56] _Garnier’s Tragédies_, ed. Foerster.

There is no express reference to this scandal in Muretus, but it furnishes Grévin’s Decimus with a vigorous couplet which obviously has inspired the above quotation:

N’endurons plus sur nous regner un Ganimede
Et la moitié du lict de son Roy Nicomede.

Here, on the other hand, is an instance of Garnier getting a phrase from Muretus that Grévin passed over. Decimus says in excuse of his former patron:

Encor’ n’est il pas Roy portant le diadême:

to which Cassius replies:

Non, il est Dictateur: et n’est-ce pas de mesme?

In the Latin both objection and answer are put in the lips of Marcus Brutus, but that does not affect the resemblance.

At vero non rex iste, sed dictator est.
Dum res sit una, quid aliud nomen juvat?

In other cases the parallelism is threefold. Thus Garnier’s Cassius exclaims:

Les chevaux courageux ne maschent point le mors
Sujets au Chevalier qu’avecque grands efforts;
Et les toreaux cornus ne se rendent domtables
Qu’à force, pour paistrir les plaines labourables.
Nous hommes, nous Romains, ayant le coeur plus mol,
Sous un joug volontaire irons ployer le col.

Grévin’s Marcus Brutus said:

Le taureau, le cheval ne prestent le col bas
A l’appetit d’un joug, si ce n’est pas contraincte:
Fauldra il donc que Rome abbaisse sous la craincte
De ce nouveau tyran le chef de sa grandeur?

In Muretus the same personage puts it more shortly:

Generosiores frena detrectant equi:
Nec nisi coacti perferunt tauri jugum:
Roma patietur, quod recusant belluae.

In the scene between Caesar and Antony the resemblances are less marked in detail, partly owing to the somewhat different role assigned to the second speaker, but they are there; and the general tendency, from the self-conscious monologue of Caesar with which it opens, to the dialogue in which he gives expression to his doubts, is practically the same in both plays.

And these episodes are of some importance in view of their subsequent as well as their previous history. Though neither entirely original nor entirely relevant, they seem, perhaps because of their comparative fitness for the stage, to have made a great impression at the time. It has been suggested that they were not without their influence on Shakespeare when he came to write his _Julius Caesar_: a point the discussion of which may be reserved. It is certain that they supplied Alexander, though he may also have used Grévin and even Muretus, with the chief models and materials for certain scenes in his tragedy on the same subject. Thus, he too presents Caesar and Antony in consultation, and the former prefaces this interchange of views with a high-flown declaration of his greatness. Thus, too, the substance of their talk is to a great extent adapted from Garnier and diluted in the process. Compare the similar versions of the apology that Caesar makes for his action. In Alexander he exclaims:

The highest in the heaven who knows all hearts,
Do know my thoughts as pure as are their starres,
And that (constrain’d) I came from forraine parts
To seeme uncivill in the civill warres.
I mov’d that warre which all the world bemoanes,
Whil’st urged by force to free my selfe from feares;
Still when my hand gave wounds, my heart gave groanes;
No Romans bloud was shed, but I shed teares.[57]

[57] Works of Sir William Alexander, Glasgow, 1872. _Julius Caesar_, II. i.

It is very like what Garnier’s Caesar says:

J’atteste Jupiter qui sonne sur la terre,
Que contraint malgré moy j’ay mené ceste guerre:
Et que victoire aucune où j’apperçoy gesir
Le corps d’un citoyen, ne me donne plaisir:
Mais de mes ennemis l’envie opiniatre,
Et le malheur Romain m’a contraint de combattre.

So, too, when Antony asserts that some are contriving Caesar’s death, the speakers engage in a dialectical skirmish:

_Caesar._ The best are bound to me by gifts in store.
_Antony._ But to their countrey they are bound farre more.
_Caesar._ Then loathe they me as th’ enemy of the state?
_Antony._ Who freedom love, you (as usurper) hate.
_Caesar._ I by great battells have enlarg’d their bounds.
_Antony._ By that they think your pow’r too much abounds.

The filiation with Garnier is surely unmistakable, though it cannot be shown in every line or phrase.

_Antoine._ Aux ennemis domtez il n’y a point de foy.
_Cesar._ En ceux qui vie et biens de ma bonté reçoivent?
_Antoine._ Voire mais beaucoup plus à la Patrie ils doivent.
_Cesar._ Pensent-ils que je sois ennemy du païs?
_Antoine._ Mais cruel ravisseur de ses droits envahis.
_Cesar._ J’ay à Rome soumis tant de riches provinces.
_Antoine._ Rome ne peut souffrir commandement de Princes.

The scene with the conspirators Stirling treats very differently and much more freely. It had had, as we have seen, a peculiar history. In Muretus it was confined to Marcus Brutus and Cassius, in Grévin Decimus Brutus is added, in Garnier Decimus is retained and Marcus drops out. Alexander discriminates. He keeps one discussion for Marcus and Cassius, in so far restoring it to the original and more fitting form it had obtained from Muretus, though he transfers to Marcus some of the sentiments that Garnier had assigned to Decimus. But the half-apologetic rôle that Decimus plays in Garnier had impressed him, and he did not choose to forego the spice of variety which this contributed. So he invents a new scene for him in which Cicero takes the place of Cassius and solicits his support. But though the one episode is thus cut in two, and each of the halves enlarged far beyond the dimensions of the original whole, it is unquestionable that they owe their main suggestion and much of their matter to the _Cornélie_.

Since then Garnier, when his powers were still immature, could so effectively adapt these incidental passages, it is not surprising that he should by and by be able to stand alone, and produce plays in which the central interest was more dramatic.

Of these we are concerned only with _Marc Antoine_, which was acted with success at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1578, and was printed in the same year. In it Garnier has not altogether freed himself from his former faults. There are otiose personages who are introduced merely to supply general reflections: Diomedes, the secretary, on the pathos of Cleopatra’s fall; Philostratus, the philosopher, on the overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy. There is no interaction of character on character, all the protagonists being so carefully excluded from each other that Octavianus does not meet Antony, Antony does not meet Cleopatra, Cleopatra does not meet Octavianus. The speeches are still over long, and the “sentences” over abundant. Nevertheless there is a real story, there are real characters; and the story and characters admit, or rather demand, an effective alternation of passion.

The time comprises the interval between Antony’s final reverse and the suicide of Cleopatra: it is short, but a good deal longer than what Jodelle allowed himself in the companion play. Further, the situation is much more complex and less confined, so that Garnier, while borrowing many _motifs_ from Jodelle, or from their common authority, Plutarch, is able to avoid the monotony of _Cléopatre Captive_. Nor does the coherence suffer. It is true that the account of Antony’s death, announced by Dercetas, occurs as with Shakespeare in the fourth act; but the play is rightly named after him and not after the Queen. He is the principal and by far the most interesting figure, and it is his tragic fate to which all that precedes leads up, and which determines all that follows.

The first act, as so often in these Senecan plays, is entirely occupied with a soliloquy, which Antony declaims; but even this has a certain share of dramatic life, though rather after the fashion of a dramatic lyric than of a dramatic scene. He rages against what he supposes to be the crowning perfidy of his mistress, he recalls all that his infatuation has cost him; the worst of his woes is that they are caused by her; but he must love her still. The second act has at the opening and the close respectively the unnecessary monologues of Philostratus and Diomedes, but they serve as setting for the animated and significant conversation between Cleopatra and her women. From it we learn that of the final treason at least she is innocent, but she is full of remorse for the mischief that her love and her caprices have done, and determines, despite the claims of her children, to expiate it in death. Then, entering the monument she despatches Diomedes with her excuses to Antony. To him we return in the third act, which is central in interest as in position, and we hear him disburden his soul to his friend Lucilius. His fluctuations of feeling, shame at his undoing, passion for the fair undoer, jealousy lest his conqueror should supplant him in love as in empire, are delineated with sympathetic power:

Ait Cesar la victoire, ait mes biens, ait l’honneur
D’estre sans compagnon de la terre seigneur,
Ait mes enfans, ma vie au mal opiniâtre,
Ce m’est tout un, pourveu qu’il n’ait ma Cleopatre:
Je ne puis l’oublier, tant j’affole, combien
Que de n’y penser point servoit non plus grand bien.

He remembers his past glory and past prowess, and it stings him that he should now be overcome by an inferior foe:

un homme effeminé de corps et de courage
Qui du mestier de Mars n’apprist oncque l’usage.

But he has only himself to blame, for he has debased his life:

N’ayant soing de vertu, ny d’aucune louange;
Ains comme un porc ventru touille dedans la fange,
A coeur saoul me voitray en maints salles plaisirs,
Mettant dessous le pied tous honnestes desirs.

Now it only remains for him to die. In the fourth act Octavianus dwells on the arduousness of his triumphs and the enormity of Antony’s offences, in order to justify a ruthless policy; and a discussion follows between him and Agrippa, like the one between Julius and Antony in the _Cornélie_, except that here the emperor and his adviser have their parts reversed. When his resolution seems fixed Dercetas enters in dismay with tidings that Antony has sought to take his own life, and that mortally wounded he has been drawn up into the monument to breathe his last in Cleopatra’s arms. For a moment his conqueror’s heart is touched. But only for a moment. He speedily gives ear to the warning of Agrippa, that to secure her treasures and preserve her life, Cleopatra must be seized. In the fifth act she has all her preparations made to follow her lord. In vain Euphron tries to stay her by gathering her children round and predicting their probable fate:

_Eufron._ Desja me semble voir
Cette petite enfance en servitude cheoir,
Et portez en trionfe, ...
Et au doigt les monstrer la tourbe citoyenne.
_Cleopatre._ Hé! plutost mille morts.

But she persists in her resolve and dismisses them. Her only regret is that she has delayed so long,

Et ja fugitive Ombre avec toy je serois,
Errant sous les cyprès des rives escartees.

She has waited only to pay the due rites, but now she is free to breathe her last on her lover’s corpse:

Que de mille baisers, et mille et mille encore
Pour office dernier ma bouche vous honore.
Et qu’en un tel devoir mon corps affoiblissant
Defaille dessur vous, mon ame vomissant.

3. ENGLISH FOLLOWERS OF THE FRENCH SCHOOL. “THE WOUNDS OF CIVIL WAR”

The _Marc Antoine_ is the best tragedy on a Roman theme, and one of the best imitations of Seneca that France in the sixteenth century has to show. It deserved to find admirers on the other side of the Channel, and it did. Among the courtly and cultured circles in whose eyes the Latin drama was the ideal and criterion to which all poets should aspire and by which their achievements should be tested, it was bound to call forth no little enthusiasm. In England ere this similar attempts had been made and welcomed, but none had been quite so moving and interesting, above all none had conformed so strictly to the formal requirements of the humanist code. In _Gorboduc_, the first of these experiments, Sidney, lawgiver of the elect, was pleased to admit the “honest civility” and “skilful poetry,” but his praises were not without qualification:

As it is full of stately speeches and well sounding Phrases,
clyming to the height of Seneca his stile, and as full of
notable moralitie, which it doth most delightfully teach,
and so obtayne the very end of Poesie: yet in troth it
is very defectious in the circumstaunces: which greeveth
mee, because it might not remaine as an exact model of all
Tragedies. For it is faulty both in place, and time, the
two necessary companions of all corporall actions. For
where the stage should alwaies represent but one place, and
the uttermost time presupposed in it, should be, both by
Aristotles precept, and common reason, but one day: there is
both many dayes, and many places, inartificially imagined.[58]

[58] _Apologie for Poetrie_, Arber’s reprint.

Nor in such respects were things much better in the _Misfortunes of Arthur_, by Thomas Hughes, which was composed in 1587, the year after Sidney’s death. But meanwhile France had been blessed with a play at least the equal of these native products in poetry and pathos, and much more observant of the unities that scholars were proclaiming. If the scene was not absolutely unchanged, at least the changes were confined within the area of a single town. If the time was not precisely marked, and in Plutarch’s narrative slightly exceeded the orthodox limits, still Garnier had so managed it that the occurrences set forth might easily be conceived to take place in a single day. It seems just the modern play that would have fulfilled the desire of Sidney’s heart; and since it was composed in a foreign tongue, what could be more fitting than that Sidney’s sister, the famous Countess of Pembroke, who shared so largely in Sidney’s literary tastes and literary gifts, should undertake to give it an English form? It may have been on her part a pious offering to his _manes_, and in 1590, four years after her brother’s death, her version was complete.[59] She was well fitted for her task, and she has discharged it well. Sometimes she may take her liberties, but generally she is wonderfully faithful, and yet neither in diction nor versification is she stiffer than many contemporary writers of original English verse. Here, for instance, is Diomed’s eulogy of Cleopatra’s charm:

Nought liues so faire. Nature by such a worke
Hir selfe, should seeme, in workmanship hath past.
She is all heau’nlie: neuer any man
But seing hir, was rauish’d with hir sight.
The Allablaster couering of hir face,
The corall colour hir two lipps engraines,
Hir beamie eies, two sunnes of this our world,
Of hir faire haire the fine and flaming golde,
Hir braue streight stature and her winning partes
Are nothing else but fiers, fetters, dartes.
Yet this is nothing to th’ enchaunting skilles,
Of her coelestiall Sp’rite, hir training speache,
Hir grace, hir Maiestie, and forcing voice,
Whether she it with fingers speache consorte,
Or hearing sceptred kings ambassadors
Answer to eache in his owne language make.

[59] There is an edition of this by Miss Alice Luce, _Literarhistorische Forschungen_, 1897, but I am told it is out of print, and at any rate I have been unable to procure it. The extracts I give are transcripts from the British Museum copy, which is indexed thus: _Discourse of Life and Death written in French by P. Mornay. Antonius a tragedie, written also in French by R. Garnier. Both done in English by the Countesse of Pembroke, 1592_. This edition has generally been overlooked by historians of the drama, from Professor Ward to Professor Schelling (probably because it is associated with Mornay’s tract), and, as a rule, the translation of Garnier is said to have been first published in 1595. That and the subsequent editions bear a different title from the neglected first; the _Tragedie of Antonie_, instead of _Antonius_.

This excellently preserves many details as well as the pervading tone of the original:

Rien ne vit de si beau, Nature semble avoir
Par un ouvrage tel surpassé son pouvoir:
Elle est toute celeste, et ne se voit personne
La voulant contempler, qu’elle ne passionne.
L’albastre qui blanchist sur son visage saint,
Et le vermeil coral qui ses deux lévres peint,
La clairté de ses yeux, deux soleils de ce monde,
Le fin or rayonnant dessur sa tresse blonde,
Sa belle taille droitte, et ses frians attraits,
Ne sont que feux ardents, que cordes, et que traits.
Mais encor ce n’est rien aupres des artifices
De son esprit divin, ses mignardes blandices,
Sa maiestie, sa grace, et sa forçante voix,
Soit qu’ell’ la vueille joindre au parler de ses doigts,
Ou que des Rois sceptrez recevant les harangues,
Elle vueille respondre à chacun en leurs langues.

The most notable privilege of which the translation makes use is to soften or refine certain expressions that may have seemed too vigorous to the high-bred English lady. This, for example, is her rendering of the lines already quoted in which Antony denounces his voluptuous life:

Careless of uertue, careless of all praise,
Nay, as the fatted swine in filthy mire,
With glutted heart I wallow’d in delights,
All thoughts of honor troden under foote.

Similarly, in Cleopatra’s closing speech, the original expression, “mon ame vomissant,” yields to a gentler and not less poetical equivalent:

A thousand kisses, thousand thousand more
Let you my mouth for honor’s farewell give:
That, in this office, weake my limmes may growe
Fainting on you, and fourth _my soule may flowe_.

As the deviations are confined to details, it is not necessary to repeat the account of the tragedy as a whole. These extracts will show that Garnier’s _Marc Antoine_ was presented to the English public in a worthy dress; and the adequacy of the workmanship, the appeal to cultivated taste, the prestige of the great Countess as “Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother,” her personal reputation among literary men, procured it immediate welcome and lasting acceptance. Fifteen years after its first publication it had passed through five editions, and must have been a familiar book to Elizabethan readers who cared for such wares. Moreover, it directly evoked an original English play that followed in part the same pattern and treated in part the same theme.

In 1594 appeared the _Cleopatra_ of Samuel Daniel, dedicated to Lady Pembroke with very handsome acknowledgments of the stimulus he had received from her example and with much modest deprecation of the supplement he offered. His muse, he asserts, would not have digressed from the humble task of praising Delia,

had not thy well graced Antony
(Who all alone, having remained long)
Requir’d his Cleopatra’s company.

These words suggest that it was not written at once after the Countess’s translation: on the other hand there can have been no very long delay, as it was entered for publication in October, 1593. The first complete and authorised edition of _Delia_ along with the _Complaint of Rosamond_, which Daniel does not mention, had been given to the world in 1592; and we may assume from his own words that the _Cleopatra_ was the next venture of the young author just entering his thirties, and ambitious of a graver kind of fame than he had won by these amatorious exercises. He had no reason to be dissatisfied with the result, and perhaps from the outset his self-disparagement was not very genuine. His play was reprinted seven times before his death, and these editions show one complete revision and one thorough recast of the text. Poets are not wont to spend such pains on works that they do not value. The truth is that Daniel’s _Cleopatra_ may take its place beside his subsequent _Philotas_ among the best original Senecan tragedies that Elizabethan England produced. Its claims, of course, are almost exclusively literary and hardly at all theatrical, though some of the changes in the final version of 1607 seem meant to give a little mobility to the slow-paced scenes. But from first to last it depends on the elegiac and rhetorical qualities that characterise the whole school, and in its undivided attention to them recalls rather Jodelle’s _Cléopatre Captive_ than Garnier’s _Marc Antoine_. The resemblance to the earlier drama is perhaps not accidental. The situation is precisely the same, for the story begins after the death of Antony, and concludes with the account of Cleopatra’s suicide. Thus, despite Daniel’s statement, his play is not in any true sense a sequel to the one which the Countess had rendered, nor is it the case, as his words insinuate, that in the _Antonius_ Cleopatra still delayed to join her beloved: on the contrary we take leave of her as she is about to expire upon his corpse. So though his patroness’s translation may very well have suggested to him his heroine, it could not possibly prescribe to him his argument. And surely after Garnier had shown the more excellent way of treating the subject so as to include both the lovers, this truncated section of the history would not spontaneously occur to any dramatist as the material most proper for his needs. It seems more than likely that Daniel was acquainted with Jodelle’s play, and that the precedent it furnished, determined him in his not very happy selection of the final episode to the exclusion of all that went before. A careful comparison of the two _Cleopatras_ supports this view. No doubt in general treatment they differ widely, and most of the coincidences in detail are due to both authors having exploited Plutarch’s narrative. But this is not true of all. There are some traits that are not to be accounted for by their common pedigree, but by direct transmission from the one to the other. Thus, to mention the most striking, in Jodelle Seleucus is made to express penitence for exposing the Queen’s misstatement about her treasure. There is no authority for this: yet in Daniel the new _motif_ reappears. Of course it is not merely repeated without modification. In Jodelle it is to the chorus that the culprit unbosoms himself; in Daniel it is to Rodon, the false governor who has betrayed Caesarion, and who similarly and no less fictitiously is represented as full of remorse for his more heinous treason. But imitators frequently try in this fashion to vary or heighten the effect by duplicating the rôles they borrow; and Daniel has done so in a second instance, when he happened to get his suggestion from Garnier. In the _Marc Antoine_, as we saw, there is the sententious but quite superfluous figure of the philosopher Philostratus; Daniel retains him without giving him more to do, but places by his side the figure of the equally sententious and superfluous philosopher Arius. In Rodon we have just such another example of gemination. It is safe to say that the contrite Seleucus comes straight from the pages of Jodelle; and his presence, if there were any doubt, serves to establish Daniel’s connection with the first French Senecan in the vernacular.

But the Countess’s protégé differs from her not only in reverting to an elder model: he distinctly improves on her practice by substituting for her blank verse his own quatrains. The author of the _Defence of Ryme_ showed a right instinct in this. Blank verse is doubtless the better dramatic measure, but these pseudo-Senecan pieces were lyric rather than dramatic, and it was not the most suitable for them. The justice of Daniel’s method is proved by its success. He not only carried the experiment successfully through for himself, which might have been a _tour de force_ on the part of the “well-languaged” poet, but he imposed his metre on successors who were less skilled in managing it, like Sir William Alexander.

Such, then, is the _Cleopatra_ of Daniel, a play that, compared even with the contemporary classical dramas of France, belongs to a bygone phase of the art; a play that is no play at all, but a series of harangues interspersed with odds and ends of dialogue and the due choric songs; but that nevertheless, because it fulfils its own ideal so thoroughly, is admirable in its kind, and still has charms for the lover of poetry.

The first act is occupied with a soliloquy of Cleopatra,[60] in which she laments her past pleasure and glory, and proclaims her purpose of death.

Thinke, Caesar, I that liu’d and raign’d a Queene,
Do scorne to buy my life at such a rate,
That I should underneath my selfe be seene,
Basely induring to suruiue my state:
That Rome should see my scepter-bearing hands
Behind me bound, and glory in my teares;
That I should passe whereas Octauia stands,
To view my misery, that purchas’d hers.[61]

[60] That is, in the original version. Subsequently Daniel threw a later narrative passage describing Cleopatra’s parting from Caesarion and Rodon into scenic form, introduced it here, and followed it up with a discussion between Caesar and his advisers. This seems to be one of his attempts to impart more dramatic animation to his play, and it does so. But as dramatic animation is not what we are looking for, the improvement is doubtful.

[61] Dr. Grosart’s Edition.

She has hitherto lived only to temporise with Caesar for the sake of her children, but to her late-born love for Antony her death is due. She remembers his doting affection, and exclaims:

And yet thou cam’st but in my beauties waine,
When new appearing wrinckles of declining
Wrought with the hand of yeares, seem’d to detaine
My graces light, as now but dimly shining ...
Then, and but thus, thou didst loue most sincerely,
O Antony, that best deseru’d it better,
This autumn of my beauty bought so dearely,
For which in more then death, I stand thy debter.

In the second act Proculeius gives an account of Cleopatra’s capture, and describes her apparent submission, to Caesar, who suspects that it is pretence. In the first scene of the third act Philostratus and Arius philosophise on their own misfortunes, the misfortunes of the land, and the probable fate of Cleopatra’s children. The next scene presents the famous interview between Caesar and Cleopatra, with the disclosures of Seleucus, to which are added Dolabella’s avowal of his admiration, and Caesar’s decision to carry his prisoner to Rome. In the fourth act Seleucus, who has betrayed the confidence of his mistress, bewails his disloyalty, to Rodon, who has delivered up Caesarion to death; but they depart to avoid Cleopatra, whom Dolabella has informed of the victor’s intentions, and who enters, exclaiming:

What, hath my face yet powre to win a louer?
Can this torn remnant serue to grace me so,
That it can Caesar’s secret plots discouer,
What he intends with me and mine to do?
Why then, poore beauty, thou hast done thy last
And best good seruice thou could’st doe unto me:
For now the time of death reueal’d thou hast,
Which in my life didst serue but to undoe me.

In the first scene of the fifth act Titius tells how Cleopatra has sent a message to Caesar, and in the second scene we learn the significance of this from the Nuntius, who himself has taken her the asps.

Well, in I went, where brighter then the Sunne,
Glittering in all her pompeous rich aray,
Great Cleopatra sate, as if sh’ had wonne
Caesar, and all the world beside, this day:
Euen as she was, when on thy cristall streames,
Cleare Cydnos, she did shew what earth could shew:
When Asia all amaz’d in wonder, deemes
Venus from heauen was come on earth below.
Euen as she went at firste to meete her loue,
So goes she now againe to finde him.
But that first, did her greatnes onely proue,
This last her loue, that could not liue behind him.

Her words to the asp are not without a quaint pathetic tenderness, as she contrasts the “ugly grimness” and “hideous torments” of other deaths with this that it procures:

Therefore come thou, of wonders wonder chiefe,
That open canst with such an easie key
The doore of life: come gentle cunning thiefe
That from our selues so steal’st our selues away.

And her dallying with the accepted and inevitable end is good:

Looke how a mother at her sonnes departing,
For some farre voyage bent to get him fame,
Doth entertaine him with an ydle parting
And still doth speake, and still speakes but the same:
Now bids farewell, and now recalles him backe,
Tels what was told, and bids againe farewell,
And yet againe recalles; for still doth lacke
Something that Loue would faine and cannot tell:
Pleased he should goe, yet cannot let him goe.
So she, although she knew there was no way
But this, yet this she could not handle so
But she must shew that life desir’d delay.

But this is little more than by-play and make-believe. She does the deed, and when Caesar’s messengers arrive, it is past prevention.

For there they found stretcht on a bed of gold,
Dead Cleopatra; and that proudly dead,
In all the rich attire procure she could;
And dying Charmion trimming of her head,
And Eras at her feete, dead in like case.
“Charmion, is this well done?” sayd one of them.
“Yea, well,” sayd she, “and her that from the race
Of so great Kings descends, doth best become.”
And with that word, yields to her faithfull breath
To passe th’ assurance of her loue with death.

One more example of the influence of the French Senecans remains to be mentioned, and though, as a translation, it is less important than Daniel’s free reproduction, the name of the translator gives it a special interest. The stately rhetoric of the _Cornélie_ caught the fancy of Thomas Kyd, who from the outset had found something sympathetic in Garnier’s style, and, perhaps in revolt from the sensationalism of his original work, he wrote an English version which was published in 1594. When this was so, it need the less surprise us that the Senecan form should still for years to come be cultivated by writers who had seen the glories of the Elizabethan stage, above all for what would seem the peculiarly appropriate themes of classic history: that Alexander should employ it for his _Julius Caesar_ and the rest of his _Monarchic Tragedies_ even after Shakespeare’s _Julius Caesar_ had appeared, and that Ben Jonson himself should, as it were, cast a wistful, backward glance at it in his _Catiline_, which he supplies, not only with a chorus, but with a very Senecan exposition by Sylla’s ghost. If this style appealed to the author of _The Spanish Tragedy_, it might well appeal to the more fastidious connoisseurs in whom the spirit of the Renaissance was strong. It was to them Kyd looked for patronage in his new departure, and he dedicates his _Cornelia_ to the Countess of Suffolk, aunt of the more memorable lady who had translated the _Marc Antoine_.

In execution it hardly equals the companion piece: the language is less flexible and graphic, and the whole effect more wearisome; which, however, may be due in part to the inferior merit of the play Kyd had to render, as well as to the haste with which the rendering was made. But he aims at preserving the spirit of the French, and does preserve it in no small degree. The various metres of the chorus are managed with occasional dexterity; the rhyme that is mingled with the blank verse of the declamation relieves the tedium of its somewhat monotonous tramp, and adds point and effectiveness. A fair specimen of his average procedure may be found in his version of the metaphorical passage in Cassius’ speech, that, as has been pointed out, can be traced back to Grévin and Muretus.

The stiff-neckt horses champe not on the bit
Nor meekely beare the rider but by force:
The sturdie Oxen toyle not at the Plough
Nor yeeld unto the yoke, but by constraint.
Shall we then that are men and Romains borne,
Submit us to unurged slauerie?
Shall Rome, that hath so many ouerthrowne
Now make herselfe a subject to her owne?[62]

[62] Kyd, ed. Boas. The _Cornelia_ has also been edited by H. Gassner; but this edition, despite some considerable effort, I have been unable to procure.

Kyd was certainly capable of emphasis, both in the good and the bad sense, which stands him in good stead when he has to reproduce the passages adapted from Lucan. These he generally presents in something of their native pomp, and indeed throughout he shows a praiseworthy effort to keep on the level of his author. The result is a grave and decorous performance, which, if necessarily lacking in distinctive colour, since the original had so little, is almost equally free from modern incongruities. It can hardly be reckoned as such that Scipio grasps his “cutlass,” or that in similar cases the equivalent for a technical Latin term should have a homely sound. Perhaps the most serious anachronism occurs when Cicero, talking of “this great town” of Rome, exclaims:

Neither could the flaxen-haird high Dutch,
(A martiall people, madding after Armes),
Nor yet the fierce and fiery humord French....
Once dare t’assault it.

Garnier is not responsible: he writes quite correctly:

Ny les blons Germains, peuple enragé de guerre,
Ny le Gaulois ardent.

This, however, is a very innocent slip. It was different when another scholar of the group to which Kyd belonged treated a Roman theme in a more popular way.

But before turning to him it may be well to say a word concerning the influence which these Senecan pieces are sometimes supposed to have had on Shakespeare’s Roman plays that dealt with kindred themes.

And in the first place it may be taken as extremely probable that he had read them. They were well known to the Elizabethan public, the least famous of them, Kyd’s _Cornelia_, reaching a second edition within a year of its first issue. They were executed by persons who must have bulked large in Shakespeare’s field of vision. Apart from her general social and literary reputation, the Countess of Pembroke was mother of the two young noblemen to whom the first folio of Shakespeare’s plays was afterwards dedicated on the ground that they had “prosequutted both them and the author living with so much favour.” Some of Daniel’s works Shakespeare certainly knew, for there are convincing parallelisms between the _Complaint of Rosamond_ on the one hand, and the _Rape of Lucrece_ and _Romeo and Juliet_ on the other; nor can there be much question about the indebtedness of Shakespeare’s _Sonnets_ to Daniel’s _Delia_. Again, with Kyd’s acting dramas Shakespeare was undoubtedly acquainted. He quotes _The Spanish Tragedy_ in the _Taming of the Shrew_, _Much Ado About Nothing_, _King Lear_; and the same play, as well as _Solyman and Perseda_, if that be Kyd’s, in _King John_: nor is it to be forgotten that many see Kyd’s hand and few would deny Kyd’s influence in _Titus Andronicus_, and that some attribute to him the lost _Hamlet_. All these things considered, Shakespeare’s ignorance of the English Senecans would be much more surprising than his knowledge of them. Further, though his own method was so dissimilar, he would be quite inclined to appreciate them, as may be inferred from the approval he puts in Hamlet’s mouth of _Æneas’ tale to Dido_, which reads like a heightened version of the narratives that occur so plentifully in their pages. So there is nothing antecedently absurd in the conjecture that they gave him hints when he turned to their authorities on his own behalf.

Nevertheless satisfactory proof is lacking. The analogies with Garnier’s _Marc Antoine_ not accounted for by the obligation of both dramatists to Plutarch are very vague, and oddly enough seem vaguer in the translation than in the original. Of this there is a good example in Antony’s words when he recalls to his shame how his victor

Dealt on lieutenantry, and no practice had
In the brave squares of war.
(_A. and C._ III. x. 39.)

There is similarity of _motif_, and even the suggestion of something more, in his outburst in Garnier:

Un homme effeminé de corps et de courage
Qui du mestier de Mars n’apprist oncque l’usage.

But only the _motif_ is left in the Countess of Pembroke’s rendering:

A man, a woman both in might and minde,
In Marses schole who neuer lesson learn’d.

The alleged parallels are thus most apparent when Shakespeare is collated with the French, and of these the chief that do not come from Plutarch have already been quoted in the description of the _Marc Antoine_. They are neither numerous nor striking. Besides Antony’s disparagement of his rival’s soldiership there are only three that in any way call for remark. In Garnier, Cleopatra’s picture of her shade wandering beneath the cypress trees of the Underworld may suggest, in Shakespeare, her lover’s anticipation of Elysium, “where souls do couch on flowers” (_A. and C._ IV. xiv. 51); but there is a great difference in the tone of the context. Her dying utterance:

Que de mille baisers, et mille et mille encore
Pour office dernier ma bouche vous honore:

is in the wording not unlike the dying utterance of Antony:

Of many thousand kisses the poor last
I lay upon thy lips;
(_A. and C._ IV. xv. 20.)

but there is more contrast than agreement in the ideas. Above all, Cleopatra’s horror at the thought of her children being led in triumph through Rome and pointed at by the herd of citizens is close akin to the feeling that inspires similar passages in Shakespeare (_A. and C._ IV. xv. 23, V. ii. 55, V. ii. 207); but even here the resemblance is a little deceptive, since in Shakespeare she feels this horror for herself.

The correspondences between Shakespeare and Daniel are equally confined to detail, but they are more definite and more significant. It is Daniel who first represents Cleopatra as scorning to be made a spectacle in Rome; and her resentment at Caesar’s supposing

That I should underneath my selfe be seene,

might have expressed itself in Shakespeare’s phrase,

He words me, girls, he words me, that I should not
Be noble to myself.
(_A. and C._ V. ii. 191.)