Chapter I: Roman Plays in the Sixteenth Century (3)

Noteworthy, too, in the same passage, is her reluctance to pass before the injured Octavia, for there is no mention of this point in Plutarch, but Shakespeare touches on it twice. Further, her very noticeable references to her waning charms, her wrinkles, her declining years have their analogies in Shakespeare and in Shakespeare alone; for Plutarch expressly says that she was “at the age when a woman’s beawtie is at the prime.” The tenderness in tone of her address to the asp is common and peculiar to both English poets; and her adornment in preparation for death suggests to each of them, but not to Plutarch, her magnificence when she met Antony on the Cydnus.[63]

[63] The last point is mentioned by Mr. Furness (Variorum Edition), who cites others, of which one occurs in Plutarch and the rest seem to me untenable or unimportant.

These coincidences are interesting, but they are not conclusive. They are none of them such as could not occur independently to two writers who vividly realised the meaning of Plutarch’s _data_; for he, as it were, gives the premises though he does not draw the inference. Thus he says nothing of Cleopatra’s disdain for the Roman populace, but he does make the knowledge that she must go to Rome determine her to die. He says nothing of her recoil from the thought of Octavia seeing her in her humiliation, but he does tell us of her jealousy of Octavia’s superior claims. He never hints that Cleopatra was past her bloom, but his praise of her as at her prime belongs to 41 B.C., and the closing incident to 30 B.C., when she was in her thirty-ninth year. He does not attribute to her any kindly greeting of the asp, but he does report that she chose it as providing the easiest and gentlest means of death. And though in describing her suicide he makes no reference to the meeting on the Cydnus, he dwells on the glorious array on both occasions, and the fancy naturally flies from one to the other. Each of these particulars separately might well suggest itself to more than one sympathetic reader. The most that can be said is that in their mass they have a certain cogency. In any case, however, characteristic and far-reaching as some of them are, they bear only on details of the conception.

The possible connection of _Julius Caesar_ with the _Cornélie_ is of a somewhat different kind. It is restricted almost entirely to the conversations between Cassius and Decimus Brutus on the one hand, and between Cassius and Marcus Brutus on the other. It is thought to show itself partly in particular expressions, partly in the general situation. So far as the former are concerned, it is neither precise nor distinctive; and it is rather remarkable that, as in the case of the _Marc Antoine_, more is to be said for it when Shakespeare’s phraseology is compared with that of the original than when it is compared with that of the translation.[64] In regard to the latter M. Bernage, the chief advocate of the theory, writes:

In the English play (_Julius Caesar_), as in our own, Brutus
and Cassius have an interview before the arrival of the
Dictator; the subject of their conversation is the same; it
is Cassius too who “strikes so much show of fire” (_fait
jaillir l’etincelle_) from the soul of Brutus.... These
characters are painted by Garnier in colours quite similar
(to Shakespeare’s), and he is momentarily as vigorous and
great. In like manner ... Caesar crosses the stage after
the interview of the two conspirators; he is moreover
accompanied by Antony.[65]

[64] See Appendix A.

[65] _Étude sur Garnier_, 1880.

In the whole tone and direction of the dialogue, too, Shakespeare resembles Garnier and does not resemble Plutarch. The _Life_ records one short sentence as Brutus’ part of the colloquy, while Cassius does nothing more than explain the importance of the anonymous letters and set forth the expectations that Rome has formed of his friend. There is no denunciation in Plutarch of Caesar either for his overgrown power or for his “feeble temper”; there is no lament for the degeneracy of the Romans; there is no reference to the expulsion of the kings or appeal to Brutus’ ancestry; all of these matters on which both the dramatists insist. And at the end the two friends are agreed on their policy and depart to prosecute their plans, while in Garnier as in Shakespeare Brutus comes to no final decision.

It would be curious if this conjecture were correct, and if this famous scene had influenced Shakespeare as it was to influence Alexander. There would be few more interesting cases of literary filiation, for, as we have seen, there is no doubt that here Garnier bases and improves on Grévin, and that Grévin bases and improves on Muretus; so the genealogy would run Muretus, Grévin, Garnier, Kyd, Shakespeare.

Here the matter may rest. The grounds for believing that Shakespeare was influenced by Garnier’s _Marc Antoine_ are very slight; for believing that he was influenced by Daniel’s _Cleopatra_ are somewhat stronger; that he was influenced by Garnier’s _Cornélie_ are stronger still; but they are even at the best precarious. In all three instances the evidence brought forward rather suggests the obligation as possible than establishes it as certain. But it seems extremely likely that Shakespeare would be acquainted with dramas that were widely read and were written by persons none of whom can have been strange to him; and in that case their stateliness and propriety may have affected him in other ways than we can trace or than he himself knew.

Meanwhile the popular play had been going its own way, and among other subjects had selected a few from Roman history. We may be certain that slowly and surely it was absorbing some of the qualities that characterised the imitations of the classics; and this process was accelerated when university men, with Marlowe at their head, took a leading share in purveying for the London playhouse. The development is clearly marked in the general history of the drama. Of the Roman play in this transition phase, as treated by a scholar for the delectation of the vulgar, we have only one specimen, but it is a specimen that despite its scanty merit is important no less for the name of the author than for the mode of the treatment. That author was Thomas Lodge, so well known for his songs, novels, pamphlets, and translations. As dramatist he is less conspicuous, and we possess only two plays from his hand. In one of them, _A Looking Glass for London and England_, which gives a description of the corruption and repentance of Nineveh, and was acted in 1591, he co-operated with Robert Greene. Of the other,[66] _The Wounds of Civill War: Lively set forth in the true Tragedies of Marius and Scilla: As it hath beene publicquely plaide in London, by the Right Honourable the Lord High Admirall his Servants_, he was sole author, and it is with it that we are concerned. It was printed in 1594, but was probably composed some years earlier.[67] In any case it comes after the decisive appearance of Marlowe; but Lodge was far from rivalling that master or profiting fully by his example, and indeed is inferior to such minor performers as Peele or Greene. Moreover, in the present case he adds to his general dramatic disabilities, the incapacity to treat classical history aright. In this respect, indeed, he improves on the Senecan school by borrowing graphic minutiae from Plutarch, such as the prefiguration of Marius’ future glory in his infancy by the seven eagles, the account of the Gaul’s panic in Minturnae, or the unwilling betrayal of Antonius by the slave. But on the other hand he astonishes us by his failure to make use of picturesque incidents which he must have known; like Sulla’s flight for shelter to his rival’s house, the relief of Marius by the woman whom he had sentenced, the response of the exile from the ruins of Carthage. And even when he utilises Plutarch’s touches, Lodge is apt to weaken or travesty them in his adaptation. The incident of the eagles, though it furnishes two of the best passages in the play, illustrates the enfeeblement. Plutarch had said:

[66] I quote from Dodsley’s _Old English Plays_, ed. Hazlitt.

[67] Professor Ward calls attention to the stage direction (Act III.): “Enter Sylla in triumph in his chair triumphant of gold, drawn by four Moors; before the chariot, his colours, his crest, his captains, his prisoners; ... bearing crowns of gold and manacled.” This, he points out, seems a reminiscence of the similar situation in _Tamburlaine II._, Act iv. sc. 3.: “Enter Tamberlaine drawn in his chariot by the Kings of Trebizon and Soria, with bits in their mouths, reins in his left hand, and in his right hand a whip with which he scourgeth them.” From this Professor Ward infers that Lodge’s play belongs approximately to the same date as Marlowe’s, possibly to 1587. It may be so, but there are some reasons for placing it later. The mixture of rhyme and prose instead of the exclusive use of blank verse would suggest that the influence of _Tamburlaine_ was not very immediate. It has some points of contact with the _Looking Glass_ which Lodge wrote along with Greene. It has the same didactic bent, though the purpose is political rather than moral, for the _Wounds of Civill War_ enforces on its very title page the lesson that Elizabethans had so much at heart, the need of harmony in the State. Like the _Looking Glass_ it deals rather with an historic transaction than with individual adventures, for it summarises the whole disastrous period of the conflict between Marius and Sulla. And like the _Looking Glass_ it visualises this by scenes taken alike from dignified and low life, the latter even more out of place than the episodes of the Nineveh citizens and peasants in the joint work. In so far one is tempted to put the two together about 1591. And there is one detail that perhaps favours this view—the introduction of the Gaul with his bad English and worse French. In Greene’s _James IV._ (c. 1590) the assassin hired to murder Queen Dorothea is also a Frenchman who speaks broken English, and in that play such a personage is quite in keeping, violating the probabilities neither of time nor of place. It is, therefore, much more probable that, if he proved popular, Lodge would reproduce the same character inappropriately to catch the applause of the groundlings, than that Lodge should light on the first invention when that invention was quite unsuitable, and that Greene should afterwards borrow it and give it a fit setting. In the latter case we can only account for the absurdity by supposing that Lodge carried much further the anachronism in _Cornelia_ of “the fierce and fiery-humour’d French.”

When Marius was but very young and dwelling in the contry,
he gathered up in the lappe of his gowne the ayrie of an
Eagle, in the which were seven young Eagles; whereat his
father and mother much wondering, asked the Sooth-sayers,
what that ment? They answered, that their sonne one day
should be one of the greatest men in the world, and that
out of doubt he should obtain seven times in his life the
chiefest office of dignity in his contry.

Plutarch is not quite sure about the trustworthiness of this story, for the characteristic reason that “the eagle never getteth but two younge ones,” and his hesitation may have led Lodge to modify the vivid and improbable detail. Favorinus the Minturnian tells the story thus:

Yonder Marius in his infancy
Was born to greater fortunes than we deem:
For, being scarce from out his cradle crept,
And sporting prettily with his compeers,
On sudden seven young eagles soar’d amain,
And kindly perch’d upon his tender lap.
His parents wondering at this strange event,
Took counsel of the soothsayers in this:
Who told them that these seven-fold eagles’ flight
Forefigurèd his seven times consulship.

And this version, with only another slight variation, is repeated rather happily in the invented narrative of the presage of Marius’ death:

Bright was the day, and on the spreading trees
The frolic citizens of forest sung
Their lays and merry notes on perching boughs;
When suddenly appeared in the east
Seven mighty eagles with their talons fierce,
Who, waving oft above our consul’s head,
At last with hideous cry did soar away:
When suddenly old Marius aghast,
With reverend smile, determin’d with a sigh
The doubtful silence of the standers-by.
“Romans,” he said, “old Marius must die:
These seven fair eagles, birds of mighty Jove,
That at my birthday on my cradle sat,
Now at my last day warn me to my death.”

But the other two passages Lodge modernises beyond recognition and beyond decency.

Of the attempt on Marius’ life at Minturnae, Plutarch narrates very impressively:

Now when they were agreed upon it, they could not finde a
man in the citie that durst take upon him to kill him; but
a man of armes of the Gaules, or one of the Cimbres (for
we finde both the one or the other in wryting) that went
thither with his sword drawen in his hande. Now that place
of the chamber where Marius lay was very darke, and, as it
is reported, the man of armes thought he sawe two burninge
flames come out of Marius eyen, and heard a voyce out of
that darke corner, saying unto him: “O, fellowe, thou,
darest thou come to kill Caius Marius?” The barbarous Gaule,
hearing these words, ranne out of the chamber presently,
castinge his sworde in the middest of the flower,[68] and
crying out these wordes onely: “I can not kill Caius Marius.”

[68] Floor.

Here is Lodge’s burlesque with the Gaul nominated Pedro, whose name is as unsuitable to his language as is his language to his supposed nationality.

_Pedro._ Marius tu es mort. Speak dy preres in dy sleepe,
for me sal cut off your head from your epaules, before you
wake. Qui es stia?[69] What kinde of a man be dis?
_Favorinus._ Why, what delays are these? Why gaze ye thus?
_Pedro._ Notre dame! Jésu! Estiene! O my siniors, der be
a great diable in ce eyes, qui dart de flame, and with de
voice d’un bear cries out, “Villain, dare you kill Marius?”
Je tremble; aida me, siniors, autrement I shall be murdered.
_Pausanins._ What sudden madness daunts this stranger thus?
_Pedro._ O, me no can kill Marius; me no dare kill Marius!
adieu, messieurs, me be dead, si je touche Marius. Marius
est un diable. Jesu Maria, sava moy!
_exit fugiens._

[69] Probably: “Qui est lá?” the misprint of _i_ for _l_ is common.

Things are scarcely better in the episode of Antonius’ betrayal. Plutarch has told very simply how the poor man with whom the orator took refuge, wishing to treat him hospitably, sent a slave for wine, and how the slave, by requiring the best quality for the distinguished guest, provoked the questions of the drawer. In Lodge the unsuspecting serving man becomes a bibulous clown who blabs the secret in a drunken catch that he sings as he passes the soldiers:

O most surpassing wine,
The marrow of the vine!
More welcome unto me
Than whips to scholars be.
Thou art, and ever was,
A means to mend an ass;
Thou makest some to sleep,
And many mo to weep,
And some be glad and merry.
With heigh down derry, derry.
Thou makest some to stumble
A many mo to fumble
And me have pinky neyne.[70]
More brave and jolly wine!
What need I praise thee mo,
For thou art good, with heigh-ho!...
(_To the Soldiers_):
You would know where Lord Antony is? I perceive you.
Shall I say he is in yond farm-house? I deceive you.
Shall I tell you this wine is for him? The gods forfend.
And so I end.

[70] Pink eyes.

Lodge is not more fortunate with his additions. Thus, after Sylla’s final resignation, two burghers with the very Roman names of Curtall and Poppy are represented as tackling the quondam dictator.

_Curtall._ And are you no more master-dixcator, nor
generality of the soldiers?
_Sylla._ My powers do cease, my titles are resign’d.
_Curtall._ Have you signed your titles? O base mind, that
being in the Paul’s steeple of honour, hast cast thyself
into the sink of simplicity. Fie, beast!

Were I a king, I would day by day
Suck up white bread and milk,
And go a-jetting in a jacket of silk;
My meat should be the curds,
My drink should be the whey,
And I would have a mincing lass to love me every day.

_Poppy._ Nay, goodman Curtall, your discretions are very
simple; let me cramp him with a reason. Sirrah, whether is
better good ale or small-beer? Alas! see his simplicity that
cannot answer me; why, I say ale.
_Curtall._ And so say I, neighbour.
_Poppy._ Thou hast reason; ergo, say I, ’tis better be a
king than a clown. Faith, Master Sylla, I hope a man may now
call ye knave by authority.

Even more impertinent, because they violate the truth of character and misrepresent an historical person, are some of the liberties Lodge takes with Marius. Such is the device with the echo, which he transfers from the love scenes of poetical Arcady, where it is quite appropriate, to the mountains of Numidia, where it would hardly be in place even if we disregarded the temperament and circumstances of the exile.

_Marius._ Thus Marius lives disdain’d of all the gods,
_Echo._ Gods!
_Marius._ With deep despair late overtaken wholly.
_Echo._ O, lie!
_Marius._ And will the heavens be never well appeased?
_Echo._ Appeased.
_Marius._ What mean have they left me to cure my smart?
_Echo._ Art.
_Marius._ Nought better fits old Marius’ mind then war.
_Echo._ Then, war!
_Marius._ Then full of hope, say, Echo, shall I go?
_Echo._ Go!
_Marius._ Is any better fortune then at hand?
_Echo._ At hand.
_Marius._ Then farewell, Echo, gentle nymph, farewell.
_Echo._ Fare well.
_Marius._ (soliloquises). O pleasing folly to a pensive man!

Yet Lodge was a competent scholar who was by and by to translate _The Famous and Memourable Workes of Josephus, a Man of Much Honour and Learning among the Jewes_, and the _Works both Moral and Natural of Lucius Annaeus Seneca_. And already in this play he makes Sylla’s genius, invisible to all, summon him in Latin Elegiacs audible only to him. If then the popular scenes in Shakespeare’s Roman plays do not make a very Roman impression, it should be remembered that he is punctilious in comparison with the University gentleman who preceded him. Nor did the fashion of popularising antique themes with vulgar frippery from the present die out when Shakespeare showed a more excellent way. There is something of very much the same kind in Heywood’s _Rape of Lucrece_ which was published in 1608.

But these superficial laches are not the most objectionable things in the play. There is nothing organic in it. Of course its neglect of the unities of time and place is natural and right, but it is careless of unity in structure or even in portraiture. The canvas is crowded with subordinate figures who perplex the action without producing a vivid impression of their own characters. A few are made distinct by insistence on particular traits, like Octavius with his unbending civic virtue, or Antonius with his ‘honey-dropping’ and rather ineffectual eloquence, or Lepidus with his braggard temporising. The only one of them who has real individuality is the younger Marius, insolent, fierce, and cruel, but full of energy and filial affection, and too proud to survive his fortunes. He perhaps is the most consistent and sympathetic person in the piece; which of itself is a criticism, for he occupies a much less important place than the two principals, expressly announced as the heroes in the title-page. It is difficult even to guess the intention of the author in this delineation of them, and in any case the result is not pleasing. Marius, despite a certain amount of tough fortitude—which for the rest is not so indomitable as in Plutarch—and a rude magnanimity displayed in the imaginary scene with Sylla’s daughter and wife, is far from attractive; and it comes as a surprise that after all his violence and vindictiveness he should meet his death “with a reverend smile” in placid resignation. But with Sylla matters are worse. He would be altogether repulsive but for his courage, and Lodge seems to explain him and his career only by appealing to his own adopted epithet of Felix or Fortunate. His last words are:

Fortune, now I bless thee
That both in life and death would’st not oppress me.

And when, “to conclude his happiness,” his sumptuous funeral is arranged, Pompey expresses the same idea in the lines that close the play:

Come, bear we hence this trophy of renown
Whose life, whose death was far from Fortune’s frown.

The problem of his strange story is not so much stated as implied, and far less is there any attempt at a solution. After all his blood-guiltiness, he too, like Marius, passes away in peace, but with him the peacefulness rises to the serenity of a saint or sage. To his friend he exclaims:

My Flaccus, worldly joys and pleasures fade;
Inconstant time, like to the fleeting tide
With endless course man’s hopes doth overbear:
Now nought remains that Sylla fain would have
But lasting fame when body lies in grave.

To his wife, who soon after asks:

How fares my lord? How doth my gentle Sylla?

he replies still more devoutly:

Free from the world, allied unto the heavens;
Not curious of incertain chances now.

There is thus no meaning in the story. The rival leaders are equally responsible for the Wounds of Civil War, but end as happily as though they had been benefactors of society. And this is by no means presented as an example of tragic irony, in which case something might be said for it, but as the natural, fitting, and satisfactory conclusion. Yet Plutarch tells of Marius’ sleeplessness, drunkenness, and perturbation, and of Sylla‘s debaucheries and disease. These were hints, one might have thought, that would have suited the temper of an Elizabethan dramatist; but Lodge passes them over.

It is the same with the public story. If Rome is left in quiet it is only because Sylla’s ruthlessness has been ‘fortunate’; it is not represented as the rational outcome of what went before, nor is there any suggestion of what was to follow after.

The merit of the play, such as it is, lies in its succession of stirring scenes—but not the most stirring that might have been selected—from the career of two famous personalities in the history of a famous State. It is almost incredible that in barely more than half a dozen years after its publication London playgoers were listening to _Julius Caesar_ with its suggestive episodes, its noble characterisation, and full realisation of what the story meant.

Yet Lodge’s play is probably as good as any of those based on Roman History till Shakespeare turned his attention to such subjects. The titles of a number of others have come down to us. Some of these are of early date and may have approximated to the type of _Apius and Virginia_. Others would attempt the style of Seneca, either after the crude fashion of _Gorboduc_ or subsequently under the better guidance of the French practitioners; and among these later Senecans were distinguished men like Lord Brooke, who destroyed a tragedy on _Antony and Cleopatra_ in 1601, and Brandon, whose _Vertuous Octavia_, written in 1598, still survives.[71] In others again there may have been an anticipation or imitation of the more popular manner of Lodge. But the fact that they were never published, or have been lost, or, in one or two cases where isolated copies are extant, have not been thought worth reprinting, affords a presumption that their claims are inferior, and that in them no very characteristic note is struck. It is pretty safe to suppose that they did not contain much instruction for Shakespeare, and that none of them would bridge the gap between Lodge’s medley and Shakespeare’s masterpiece.

[71] It is in the Dyce Collection in South Kensington and is inaccessible to me. It is described as claiming sympathy for Antony’s neglected wife.

The progress made since the middle of the century was, of course, considerable. A pioneer performance, like _Apius and Virginia_, had the merit of pushing beyond the landmarks of the old Morality, and of bringing Roman story within the ken of English playgoers, but it did nothing more. It treated this precisely as it might have treated any other subject, and looked merely to the lesson, though, no doubt, it sought to make the lesson palatable with such dramatic condiments as the art of the day supplied. The Senecans, inspired by the _Octavia_, make a disinterested effort to detach and set forth the conception of old Roman greatness, as it was given that age to understand it, and these productions show no impropriety and much literary skill, but the outlines and colours are too vague to admit of reality or life. Lodge is realistic enough in his way, but it is by sacrificing what is significant and characteristic, and submerging the majesty of ancient Rome in the banalities and trivialities of his own time. No dramatist had been able at once to rise to the grandeur of the theme and keep a foothold on solid earth, to reconcile the claims of the ideal and the real, the past and the present. That was left for Shakespeare to do.