Chapter IV: Lyly's Legatees (2)

But with regard to mere facts, Shakespeare was in no way more careful than Greene, and he seems to have known, and it was in fact visible enough, the greediness of his public to be such that, ostrich like, they would swallow anything. He, therefore, changed very little. In Greene, ships "sail into Bohemia," a feat that cannot be repeated to-day; the Queen is tried by a jury "panelled" for that purpose; the nobles go "to the isle of Delphos, there to enquire of the oracle of Apollo whether she had committed adultery." Very much the same things happen in Shakespeare. The survival of Hermione is his own invention; in Greene she dies for good at the beginning of the novel, when she hears of the death of her son. With the same aptitude to die for no other cause than to improve a story, Pandosto dies also in Greene's tale: he remembered his faults and "fell in a melancholie fit, and to close up the comedie with a tragicall stratageme he slewe himselfe." Merry and tragical! But otherwise Dorastus and Fawnia would have had to wait before becoming king and queen, and such a waiting was against the taste of the time and the rules of novel writing.

Such as it is, Greene's tale had an extraordinary success. While Shakespeare's drama was not printed, either in authentic or pirated shape, before the appearance of the 1623 folio, the prose story had a number of editions throughout the seventeenth century and even, under one shape or another, throughout the eighteenth. It was printed as a chap-book during this last period, and in this costume began a new life. It was turned into verse in 1672, under the title, "Fortune's tennis ball: or the most excellent history of Dorastus and Fawnia, rendred into delightful english verse";[138] it begins with this "delightful" invocation:

"Inspire me gentle love and jealousie,
Give me thy passion and thy extasie,
While to a pleasant ayr I strik the strings
Singing the fates of lovers and of kings."

But the highest and most extraordinary compliment to Greene's performance was its translation into French, not only once, as has been said, but twice. The first time was at a moment when the English language and literature were practically unknown and as good as non-extant to French readers. It appeared in 1615, and was dedicated to "tres haute and tres illustre princesse, Madame Christine Soeur du Roy."[139] The second translation, that has never yet been noticed, was made at a time when France had a novel literature of its own well worth reading, and when Boileau had utterly routed and discomfited the writers of romantic and improbable tales. Nevertheless, it was thought that a public would be found in Paris for Greene's novel, and it was printed accordingly in French in 1722, this time adorned with engravings.[140] They show "Doraste" dressed as a marquis of Louis XV.'s time; while "Pandolphe" wears a flowing wig under his cocked hat, and sits on a throne in rococo style. A copy of the book was purchased for the royal library, and is still to be seen at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, with the crown and cipher of his Most Christian Majesty on the cover.

Greene's story of "Menaphon"[141] is hardly more probable, but it takes place in the country of Arcadia, a fact that predisposes us to treat with indulgence any lack of reality; moreover, it contains touches of true poetry, and is perhaps, all considered, the best of Greene's romantic novels. In common with most of this author's tales it abounds in monologues and dialogues; heroes think aloud and let us into their secret thoughts, a device adapted from the classic drama and very common in all the English novels of the period. There is also, according to Greene's custom, a great abundance of songs and verses, the best piece being the lullaby quoted above. Propriety and the truth of characters are not much better observed here than in Greene's other stories. Everybody in this romance speaks with infinite grace and politeness. The shepherd Menaphon, introducing himself to the Princess Sephestia and her child, who have been cast ashore through a shipwreck, says to them: "Strangers, your degree I know not, therefore pardon if I give lesse title than your estates merit." And, falling desperately in love with the beautiful young woman, who gives as her name Samela of the island of Cyprus, he describes to her with ardour and not without grace the pastoral life that he would like to lead with her: "I tell thee, faire nymph, these plaines that thou seest stretching southward, are pastures belonging to Menaphon: ther growes the cintfoyle, and the hyacinth, the cowsloppe, the primrose and the violet, which my flockes shall spare for flowers to make thee garlands, the milke of my ewes shall be meate for thy pretie wanton, the wool of the fat weathers that seemes as fine as the fleece that Jason fet from Colchos, shall serve to make Samela webbes withall; the mountaine tops shall be thy mornings walke, and the shadie valleies thy evenings arbour: as much as Menaphon owes shall be at Samelas command if she like to live with Menaphon."

The romance goes on its way, strewn with songs whose refrains of varied and tuneful metres afford charming melody. In the end two knights, Melicertus and Pleusidippus, both enamoured of Sephestia, fight a duel; they are separated. The king of the country interferes, and comprehending nothing of these intricate love affairs, he is on the point of cutting off all their heads, when it is discovered that Melicertus is the long lost husband of Sephestia; the other duellist is the child of the shipwrecked woman, who, in the course of the tale, has been stolen from her on the shore and has grown up in hiding. They embrace one another; and, as for Menaphon, whose sweetheart finds herself thus provided with a sufficiently fond husband and son, he returns to his old love, Pesana, who had had patience to wait for him, doubtless without growing old: for, in these romances, people do not grow old. Pleusidippus has become a man, without the least change in his mother's face; she has remained as beautiful as in the first page of the book, and is, according to appearances, still "sweet-and-twenty."

In his tales of this sort Greene was mostly describing delights with which he was not personally acquainted, lands of which he had no practical knowledge, princely adventures for which no historian could vouch. He was perfectly free and unimpeded. The taste of the public was similar to his; no Boileau was there to stop him, and he wrote accordingly, following his fancy, not caring in the least for nature and possibility, letting his pen go as fast as it would, and turning out "in a night and a day" a tale like his "Menaphon." But if he did not choose to paint from life and to describe realities in his "love pamphlets," he did so on purpose, not because he was unable to do it. In several of his other writings his subject was such that the work would have been nothing if not true; and there we find a clear view of human passions, foibles and peculiarities, which show that if the taste of the romance readers of the time had been such as to encourage him in this line, he would have proved no mean realistic novelist. His Repentances abound in portraits and scenes, showing the keen eye he had for realities. His conny-catching literature is full of exact descriptions of the sordid life of the sharpers and low courtesans of Elizabethan London. In more than one of these pamphlets he foreshadows, though I need not say with a much lesser genius, the "Moll Flanders" and the "Colonel Jack" of a later period. The resemblance is especially great in the "Life and death of Ned Browne,"[142] in which the hero, according to the custom in picaresque novels, of which more hereafter, himself tells his own story in the first person. Greene is particularly bitter in his denunciations of the professional courtesans of London, about whom he knew probably more than any of his contemporaries. But with all the hatred he felt towards them so long as he had pen in hand, he cannot help repeating that, however objectionable they are in many ways, they have for themselves this advantage, that they are extremely beautiful, so that if their morals are exactly the same as in other countries they excel at least in something which in itself is not contemptible. They are "a kinde of women bearing the faces of Angels, but the hearts of devils, able to intrap the elect if it were possible."[143] Greene had no pretension to be one of the elect, and was only too often "intraped"; but for all his miseries his words show a scarcely less intense admiration for his diabolical angels than Des Grieux's famous rapturous phrase when he meets Manon on her way to the ship that is to convey her to America: "Son linge etait sale et derange; ses mains delicates exposees a l'injure de l'air; enfin tout ce compose charmant, _cette figure capable de ramener l'univers a l'idolatrie_, paraissait dans un desordre et un abattement inexprimables." "Again," writes Greene: "let me say this much, that our curtizans ... are far superiour in artificiall allurement to them of all the world, for, although they have not the painting of Italie, nor the charms of France, nor the jewelles of Spaine, yet they have in their eyes adamants that wil drawe youth as the jet the strawe.... Their lookes ... containe modesty, mirth, chastity, wantonness and what not."[144]

Besides the personal reminiscences with which he made up his repentance tales and stories, Greene as an observer of human nature is seen at his best in his curious, and at the time famous, dialogue "between velvet breeches and cloth breeches."[145] It is in fact a disputation between old England and new England; the England that built the strong houses praised by Harrison, and the England that adorned itself with the Burghley House paper work; traditional England and italianate England. Velvet breeches is "richly daubde with gold, and poudred with pearle," and is "sprung from the auncient Romans, borne in Italy, the mistresse of the worlde for chivalry." Cloth breeches is of English manufacture and descent, and deplores the vices that have crept into "this glorious Iland" in the wake of Italian fashions. Both plead before Greene, each giving very graphic accounts of the behaviour of the other. Here, for example, is a scene, assuredly from the life, at a barber's shop:

"Velvet breeches he sittes downe in the chaire wrapt in fine cloathes ... then comes [the barber] out with his fustian eloquence, and making a low conge, saith:

"Sir, will you have your wor[ship's] haire cut after the Italian maner, shorte and round, and then frounst with the curling yrons, to make it looke like a halfe moone in a miste? or like a Spanyard, long at the eares and curled like the two endes of an old cast periwig? or will you be Frenchified, with a love locke downe to your shoulders, wherein you may weare your mistresse favour? The English cut is base and gentlemen scorne it, novelty is daintye; speake the woord sir, and my sissars are ready to execute your worships wil.

"His head being once drest, which requires in combing and rubbing some two howers, hee comes to the bason: then being curiously washt with no woorse then a camphire bal, he descends as low as his berd, and asketh whether he please to be shaven or no, whether he will have his peak cut short and sharpe, amiable like an _inamorato_, or broad pendant like a spade, to be terrible like a warrior and a Soldado ... if it be his pleasure to have his appendices primed or his mustachios fostered to turn about his eares like ye branches of a vine...."

The question pending between cloth and velvet is submitted to a jury; men of the various professions are called and accepted, or rejected, according to their merit; each is described, often in a very lively manner. Here is, for example, the portrait of a poet or rather of _the_ poet of the Elizabethan period; for the specimen here represented stands as a type for all his class; and it is worth notice, for if Shakespeare himself was different, many of his associates at the "Mermaid," we may be sure, well answered the description. "I espied far off a certain kind of an overworne gentleman, attired in velvet and satin; but it was somewhat dropped and greasie, and bootes on his legges, whose soles wexed thin and seemed to complaine of their maister, which treading thrift under his feet, had brought them unto that consumption. He walked not as other men in the common beaten way, but came compassing _circumcirca_, as if we had beene divells and he would draw a circle about us, and at every third step he looked back as if he were afraid of a baily or a sarjant." Cloth Breeches, who seems to be describing here Greene himself, is not too severe in his appreciation of the character of the poor troubled fellow: "If he have forty pound in his purse together, he puts it not to usury, neither buies land nor merchandise with it, but a moneths commodity of wenches and capons. Ten pound a supper, why tis nothing if his plough goes and his ink horne be cleere ... But to speak plainely I think him an honest man if he would but live within his compasse, and generally no mans foe but his own. Therefore I hold him a man fit to be of my jury."

Judgment is passed in favour of cloth England against velvet England; and in this ultra-conservative sentence the views of the Bohemian novelist are summed up in this premature essay on the "philosophy of clothes."

IV.

The fame and success of Greene encouraged writers to follow his example. He had shown that there was a public for novels, and that it was a sort of literature that would pay, both in reputation and money. He had, therefore, many rivals and imitators who were thus only second-hand disciples of Lyly. Among these Nicholas Breton and Emmanuel Ford may be taken as examples. Both were his contemporaries, but survived him many years. In both traces of euphuism survive, but they are faint; at the time they wrote euphuism was on the wane, and it is only on rare occasions that Ford reminds us that "the most mightie monarch Alexander, aswel beheld the crooked counterfeit of Vulcan as the sweet picture of Venus. Philip of Macedon accepted...."[146]

What Ford especially imitated from Greene was the art of writing romantic tales with plenty of adventures, unexpected meetings and discoveries, much love, and improbabilities enough to enchant Elizabethan readers and sell the book up to any number of editions. In this he rivalled his model very successfully, and his romances were among the most popular of the time of Shakespeare. The number of their editions was extraordinary, and they were renewed at almost regular intervals up to the eighteenth century; there was a far greater demand for them than for any play of Shakespeare.[147] Besides imitating Greene, who obviously revealed to him the success to be won by writing romantic tales, he imitated at the same time the Italians and the Spaniards, introducing into his romances a licentiousness quite unknown to Greene, but well known to Boccaccio, and heroic adventures similar to those his friend Anthony Munday was just then putting into English. These last were to be the chief delight of novel-readers in the seventeenth century, and did more than anything for the great popularity of Ford's novels during that period.

Ford's earliest and most characteristic work was called "Parismus, the renowned prince of Bohemia ... conteining his noble battailes fought against the Persians ... his love to Laurana ... and his straunge adventures in the desolate Iland," &c., &c.[148] As the title informs us there are loves and wars in this romance, deeds of valour and of sorcery, there are pageants and enchanters. The adventures take place in purely imaginary lands, which the author is pleased to call Bohemia, Persia, &c., but which might have been as well baptized Tartary or Mongolia. The manners and costumes, however, when there is an attempt at describing them, are purely Elizabethan. There are masques such as were shown at court in Shakespeare's time, and during one such fete, as in "Romeo and Juliet," Parismus for the first time declares his love to Laurana: "The maskers entred in this sort: first entred two torch bearers, apparelled in white satten, beset with spangles of gold, after whom followed two Eunuches, apparelled all in greene, playing on two instruments, then came Parismus attired all in carnation satten ... next followed ... when came two knights ... next followed ..."[149] and so on; in the same style as in Shakespeare's play, "enter Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, with five or six maskers, torch-bearers and others."[150] But, alas, this is the only place where there is any resemblance between the two styles; though the situation developes under Ford's pen in a manner to suggest that he must have read "Romeo" not without a purpose. Had his purpose been to show his contemporaries the height of Shakespeare's genius by giving, side by side with it, the measure of an ordinary mind, he could not have tried better nor succeeded less. For contemporaries and successors consumed innumerable editions of "Parismus," and only too easily numbered editions of "Romeo."

Parismus and Laurana talk, in the midst of the ball, of their new-born love, and after an exchange of highly polite phrases she thus confesses her feelings: "My noble lord ... I heartily thanke you for taking so much paines for my sake, being unwoorthie thereof, and also unable to bee sufficiently thankfull unto you for the same, and for that you say your happinesse resteth in my power, if I can any way work your content to the uttermost of my endeavour I will do it." Parismus, of course, has nothing to answer except that no one could require more.

It had been, however, with her also, love at first sight; but Laurana does not say:

"Go, ask his name: if he be married,
My grave is like to be my wedding bed."

She is far too well bred and courtly, and she explains as follows what she has felt: "My Lord, I assure you, that at such time as I sawe you comming first into this court, my heart was then surprised, procured, as I think by the destinies, that ever since I have vowed to rest yours." This speech is made at a nightly garden meeting, similar to the one where Romeo went "with love's light wings," and where was heard the sweetest and gravest lovers' music that ever enchanted human ears:

"At lovers' perjuries,
They say Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo,
If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully:
Or if thou think'st I am too quickly won,
I will frown and be perverse....
Well, do not swear: although I joy in thee,
I have no joy of this contract to-night.
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say, It lightens." ...

He of Bohemia had not come with "love's light wings," but "somewhat before the hour, was gone forth in his night gowne, with his sworde under his arme, and comming to the gate he was wont to goe in at into the gardeine, found it shut, and having no other meanes, he gott over the wall." We picture him clambering over the wall, his night-gown flowing about him to do duty for love's wings. The lovers meet, and "thus they spent the night in kinde salutations and curteous imbracings to the unspeakable joy and comfort of them both."

To complete the external resemblance of the two situations, there is in Ford's novel a young lord to play the part of "County Paris." He is called Sicanus, and Laurana's family greatly favours his suit: "Laurana, my cheefest care is to see thee married, according to thy state, which hath made me send for thee, to know whether thou hast alreadie placed thy affection or no: otherwise there is come into this country, a knight of great estate," &c., &c. "Laurana departed with a heavie heart."

Then again, as in "Romeo," there is another meeting of the lovers, this time in Laurana's chamber; and they spend the hours "in sweete greetings, but farre from anie thought of unchastnesse, their imbracings being grounded upon the most vertuous conditions that might bee: and sitting together upon the beds side, Laurana told him...." As in Romeo, they are parted by morn:

"Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:
It was the nightingale, and not the lark....
--It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east....
--Yond light is not daylight...."

A very different morn shines in at Laurana's windows: "Nowe the dismall houre of their parting being approached, by reason of the light that the sunne began to give into the chamber, Parismus taking Laurana in his armes, drawing sweete breath from her lippes, told her that now, to his greefe, he must leave her to be courted by his enemie."

Without any very great grief on our side we shall leave them to follow from this point a series of adventures very different from Romeo's. Parismus becomes a chief of outlaws, and acquires great fame under the name of the Black Knight; he wages war against Sicanus, he encounters young Violetta, and their meetings read like a tale from Boccaccio rather than like a play of Shakespeare; at last he marries Laurana "with admirable pompe" in the "temple of Diana." We shall leave them in this holy place, though many more adventures are in store for them. We shall only state that Ford, encouraged by the great success of this first attempt, wrote several other novels exactly in the same style, containing the same improbable monsters and wonders, and the same licentious adventures. In spite, however, of the condemnation he suffered at the hands of wise people on account of the undeniable immorality of several of his episodes, his reputation went on increasing for years and long survived him.[151]

Another follower of Greene was Nicholas Breton,[152] eighteen years his senior; but he did not begin novel-writing until after the death of his model, when this kind of literature had taken a firm hold of the public. Very little euphuism remains in Breton; we do not find in him those clusters of similes with which Lyly and Greene were fond of adorning their novels, and alliteration is there only to remind us that through Greene, Breton may be considered a secondary legatee of Lyly. The subjects and the form of his writings, much better than his style, prove him a pupil of Greene. He imitated his dialogues, publishing in succession his conference "betwixt a scholler and an angler," his discussion between "wit and will"; his disputation of a scholar and a soldier, "the one defending learning, the other martiall discipline," and several others on travels, on court and country, &c. He imitated Greene's tales of low life, anticipating in his turn Defoe's novels, with his "Miseries of Mavillia;" he remained, however, far below the level not only of Defoe, but of Greene, whose personal knowledge of the misfortunes he was describing enabled him to give in his writings of this kind pictures of reality that contrasted strangely with the fanciful incidents of his romantic novels. The only things worth remembering in these "miseries," besides their subject, are a few thoughtful observations such as the one (in alliterative style) which opens the story: "Sorrow sokes long ere it slayes; care consumes before it killes; and destinie drives the body into much miserie, before the heart be strooken dead;" a far juster observation than Greene's fancies, according to which heroes of novels may be got rid of as quickly by sorrow as by poison or apoplexy.

There are also in Breton imitations of the romantic novel of Italian origin such as Greene understood it and such as the Elizabethan public loved it. Breton published in 1600 his "Strange fortunes of two excellent princes," which his modern editor does not hesitate to declare "a bright and characteristic little book." This little masterpiece begins thus, in very characteristic fashion indeed: "In the Ilandes of Balino, neere unto the city of Dulno, there lived a great duke named Firente.... This lord had to wife a sweete ladie called Merilla, a creature of much worth.... This blessed lord and ladie had issue male, onlie one sonne named Penillo and female one onlie daughter named Merilla." These two children were famous for their wit and beauty. "But I will ... entreat of another Duke, who dwelt in the Ilands of Cotasie.... This duke had to name Ordillo, a man famous for much worth as well in wit as valour.... This duke had to wife a gratious ladie.... She had by her lord the duke two blessed children, a sonne and a daughter; her sonne named Fantiro and her daughter Sinilla." These two children begat wonder for their wit and their beauty.

Such is the introduction. What do you think will follow? That the two perfect young men will marry the two unique young women? This is exactly what happens; and the only perceptible interest in the tale is to see from what improbable incidents such likely consequences are derived. We can safely, it seems, class this novel in the same category as "Arbasto," "Mamillia," and other products of Greene's pen; not, however, without remarking that Breton's stories, as well as those of his model, were not meant to delight nurseries, but were destined to give pleasure to grown-up people, to people in society; they were offered them as _jucunda oblivia vitae_, exactly in the same fashion as the three-volume novels of to-day. Breton himself is positive on this point, and he has been careful to inform us that his intention was to write things "which being read or heard in a winters evening by a good fire, or a summers morning in the greene fields may serve both to purge melancholy from the minde and grosse humours from the body."[153]

Again, he was connected with the Greene and Lyly group by the pleasure he felt in composing imaginary letters. A number of such letters had been inserted by Lyly in his "Euphues," and had proved one of the attractions of the book; Greene and the other novelists of the period never missed an opportunity of making their heroes write to each other, and they always transcribed their letters in full, a process inherited from the romance writers of the Middle Ages. Breton, following the example already given by some of his contemporaries, went beyond that, and published a volume of imaginary letters from everybody to anybody on any subject, many of them rather coarse, some good, some rather slow in their gait and heavy in their wit.[154] The public taste was so decidedly in favour of these compositions that this was the most successful of Breton's enterprises. It was often reprinted; a number of similar collections were circulated in the seventeenth century, and their popularity had not abated when Richardson was asked, by the publishers Osborne and Rivington, to compose one for country people. He did so, and the only difference, and a sufficiently important one, was that in his series the letters were connected by the thread of a story.

Greene had a rival of much higher stature in his friend Thomas Lodge. Lodge was a little older than Greene, and survived him long, so that he happened to be a contemporary both of Greene and of his imitators. He rivalled Greene, but did not imitate him, being himself a direct legatee of Lyly. The sort of life he led differed greatly from that of his friend, but it was scarcely less characteristic of the period. Lodge was the son of a rich London grocer who had been Lord Mayor. Born in 1557, he had known Lyly at Oxford; had studied law; then, yielding to those desires of seeing the dangers and beauties of the world which drove the English youths of the period to seek preferment abroad, he closed his books for a while, and became a corsair, visiting the Canary Isles, Brazil, and Patagonia. He brought back, as booty from his expeditions, romances written at sea to beguile the tedium of the passage and the anxieties of the tempest. One was called "The Margarite of America"; another "Rosalynde." The latter fell into Shakespeare's hands and pleased him; he drew from it the plot of "As you like it."[155] Coming before the literary public, Lodge does not altogether forget his profession of corsair, and in order to deprive the critics of the temptation to sneer, he is careful to brandish his rapier from time to time, and to write prefaces that make one's hair stand on end. "Roome for a souldier and a sailer, that gives you the fruits of his labors that he wrote in the Ocean!" he cries to the reader at the beginning of his "Rosalynde," and let fault-finders keep silence; otherwise he will throw them overboard "to feed cods."

After such a warning there would be nothing it seems but to hold our tongue; but perhaps, taking the practical side of the question, we may consider that by this time Lodge's rapier must have grown very rusty, and would not offer more danger than any critic is bound to incur in the performance of his duty. Besides that admiration may in all sincerity be blended with criticism when it is a question of Lodge's masterpiece, "Rosalynde."

The tale itself bears a somewhat curious history. Twice at two hundred years' distance it took the fancy of the greatest genius of the period. In the Middle Ages it was called the "Tale of Gamelyn,"[156] and Chaucer apparently intended to work it into his "Canterbury Tales," but he died before he had completed his wish, and some copy of the rough old poem having, as it seems, been found among his papers, it was in after time inserted in the manuscripts of his works as the "Cooke's Tale." As it stood in the fourteenth century this story recited mere deeds of valour, of strong, sinewy fighters; love and women played no part in it; and it is a great loss for us not to know whether old Chaucer would have made this very necessary addition, and what sort of mediaeval Rosalind he would have depicted.

As things went, we are indebted to our gentleman adventurer for the invention of Rosalind. Lodge took up the tale and remodelled it entirely; he gave place in it to the fair she-page and to her friend Alinda and to Phoebe, the hard-hearted shepherdess, in such a way that when Shakespeare in his turn bethought himself of this story, he had nothing to add to fit it for his own stage, nothing except genius.

But if Lodge cannot be considered a man of genius, he is certainly a writer of very remarkable gifts. His novel is a pastoral tale that takes place somewhere in France, near Bordeaux, and reads as pleasantly as any story in "Astree," no mean compliment. Probability, geography and chronology, are not Lodge's strong points; we are in fact again in the country of nowhere, in an imaginary kingdom of France over which the usurper Torismond reigns. The true king has been deposed and leads a forester's life, untroubled, unknown, in the thick woods of Arden. Rosalind, a daughter of the deposed king, has been kept as a sort of hostage at the court of the tyrant in Bordeaux, presumably his capital. All of a sudden she is exiled in her turn, without more explanation than "I have heard of thy aspiring speaches and intended treasons."[157] Alinda, her friend, the daughter of the tyrant, refuses to leave her, and both fly the court, Rosalind being dressed as a page, a rapier at her side, her wit full of repartees, her mind full of shifts, and equal, in fact, as in Shakespeare, to any emergency. "Tush, quoth Rosalynd, art thou a woman and hast not a sodaine shift to prevent a misfortune? I, thou seest, am of a tall stature, and would very well become the person and apparell of a page; thou shalt bee my mistris, and I will play the man so properly, that, trust me, in what company so ever I come, I will not bee discovered. I will buy mee a suite, and have my rapier very handsomely at my side, and if any knave offer wrong, your page will shew him the point of his weapon. At this Alinda smiled, and upon this they agreed, and presentlie gathered up all their jewels which they trussed up in a casket.... They travailed along the vineyards, and by many by-waies, at last got to the forrest side," the forest of Arden, which at that time happened to be near the vineyards of Gascony.

But this geographical situation is the least of the wonders offered by the forest. In it live not only Gerismond, the lawful king, very happy and contented, free and without care, wanting nothing; but, in the valleys, the most lovable shepherdesses and the most loving shepherds; they feed their flocks while piping their ditties; they inscribe their sonnets on the bark of trees; they are very learned, though mere shepherds; they quote Latin and write French; they know how to ask the god of love that the heart of their mistress may not be "de glace."

"Bien qu'elle ait de neige le sein."

They live in the shade of the most unaccountable woods, woods composed of pine-trees, fig-trees, and lemon-trees. "Then, comming into a faire valley, compassed with mountaines whereon grewe many pleasant shrubbs, they might descrie where two flocks of sheepe did feede. Then looking about they might perceive where an old shepheard sat, and with him a yong swaine, under a covert most pleasantlie scituated. The ground where they sat was diapred with Floras riches, as if she ment to wrap Tellus in the glorie of her vestments: round about, in the forme of an amphitheater were most curiouslie planted pine-trees, interseamed with limons and citrons, which with the thicknesse of their boughes so shadowed the place, that Phoebus could not prie into the secret of that arbour.... Fast by ... was there a fount so christalline and cleere that it seemed Diana and her Driades and Hemadriades had that spring as the secret of all their bathings. In this glorious arbour sat these two shepheards seeing their sheepe feede, playing on their pipes...." It is like a landscape by Poussin. Alinda and her page find the place very pleasant, and decide to settle there, especially when they have heard what a shepherd's life is like. "For a shepheards life, oh! mistresse, did you but live a while in their content, you would saye the court were rather a place of sorrowe than of solace ... Envie stirres not us, wee covet not to climbe, our desires mount not above our degrees, nor our thoughts above our fortunes. Care cannot harbour in our cottages, nor doo our homely couches know broken slumbers." Fine assertions, to which some hundred and fifty years later Prince Rasselas was most solemnly to give the lie. But his time had not yet come, and both princesses resolve to settle there, to purchase flocks, and "live quiet, unknowen, and contented."[158]

Many other pleasant things are to be found in the forest; in fact, the two ladies meet their lovers there; brave Rosader, the Gamelyn of Chaucerian times, the Orlando of Shakespeare, and wicked but repentant and reformed Saladin, who loves Alinda as Rosader loves Rosalind. They meet, too, the shepherdess Phoebe, "as faire as the wanton that brought Troy to ruine," but in a different dress; "she in a peticoate of scarlet, covered with a greene mantle, and to shrowde her from the sunne, a chaplet of roses;" in a different mood, too, towards shepherds, thinking nothing of her Paris, poor Montanus whom she disdains while he is dying for her.

Yet there were even more wonders in this forest of Arcadian shepherds, exiled princesses, and lemon-trees. There were "certaine rascalls that lived by prowling in the forrest, who for feare of the provost marshall had caves in the groves and thickets";[159] there were lions, too, very dangerous, hungry, man-eating lions. Such animals appear in Shakespeare also, as well as "palm trees," and Shakespeare moreover takes the liberty of doubling his lion with a serpent.

"A wretched ragged man o'ergrown with hair
Lay sleeping on his back: about his neck
A green and gilded snake had wreath'd itself
Who with her head, nimble in threats, approach'd
The opening of his mouth; but suddenly,
Seeing Orlando, it unlink'd itself,
And with indented glides did slip away
Into a bush: under which bush's shade
A lioness, with udders all drawn dry,
Lay couching."[160]

Let us not be too much troubled; here will be good opportunities for lovers to show the sort of men they are, to be wounded, but not disfigured, and finally to be loved.

So many rare encounters of men and animals, and shepherds and lovers, give excellent occasions for Rosalind to display the special turn of her mind, and if, in Lodge, she has not all the ready wit that Shakespeare has given her, she is by no means slow of speech; she possesses besides much more of that human kindness in which we sometimes find the brilliant page of the play a little deficient. The conversations between her and Alinda are very pleasant to read, and show how at last, not only on the stage, but even in novels, the tongues of the speakers had been loosened.

"No doubt, quoth Aliena,[161] this poesie is the passion of some perplexed shepheard, that being enamoured of some fair and beautifull shepheardesse suffered some sharpe repulse, and therefore complained of the cruelty of his mistris.

"You may see, quoth Ganimede [Rosalind's page-name], what mad cattell you women be, whose hearts sometimes are made of adamant that will touch with no impression, and sometimes of waxe that is fit for everie forme; they delight to be courted and then they glorie to seeme coy, and when they are most desired, then they freeze with disdaine....

"And I pray you, quoth Aliena, if your roabes were off, what mettall are you made of that you are so satyricall against women?... Beware, Ganimede, that Rosader heare you not....

"Thus, quoth Ganimede, I keepe decorum, I speake now as I am Alienas page, not as I am Gerismonds daughter; for put me but into a peticoate, and I will stand in defiance to the uttermost, that women are courteous, constant, virtuous, and what not."

Thus there is much merry prattle between these two, especially when the presence of the lover of the one sharpens the teasing disposition of the other; when, for example, Rosader finding, not without good cause, some resemblance between the page and his Rosalind, pities the former, for not equalling the perfection of his mistress.

"He hath answered you, Ganimede, quoth Aliena, it is inough for pages to waite on beautifull ladies and not to be beautifull themselves.

"Oh! mistres," answers the she-page, who cannot help feeling some spite, "holde your peace, for you are partiall; who knowes not, but that all women have desire to tie sovereigntie to their peticoats, and ascribe beautie to themselves, where if boyes might put on their garments, perhaps they would proove as comely; if not as comely, it may be more curteous."

There are also some morning scenes full of pleasant mirth and cheerful light, in which perhaps there is more of Phoebus than of the sun, and more of Aurora than of the dawn; but this light, such as it is, is worth the looking at, so merrily it shines; and the talk of these early risers well suits the half-classic landscape.

"The sunne was no sooner stept from the bed of Aurora, but Aliena was wakened by Ganimede, who restlesse all night, had tossed in her passions; saying it was then time to goe to the field to unfold their sheepe.

"Aliena ... replied thus: What? wanton, the sun is but new up, and as yet Iris riches lies folded in the bosom of Flora; Phoebus hath not dried the pearled deaw, and so long Coridon hath taught me it is not fit to lead the sheepe abroad lest the deaw being unwholesome they get the rot. But now see I the old proverbe true ..." (and here comes some euphuism).

"Come on," answers Ganimede, who does not seem in a mood to appreciate euphuism just then, "this sermon of yours is but a subtiltie to lie still a bed, because either you think the morning colde, or els I being gone, you would steale a nappe; this shifte carries no palme, and therefore up and away. And for Love, let me alone; Ile whip him away with nettles and set Disdaine as a charme to withstand his forces; and therefore, looke you to your selfe; be not too bolde, for Venus can make you bend; nor too coy, for Cupid hath a piercing dart that will make you cry _Peccavi_.

"And that is it, quoth Aliena, that hath raysed you so early this morning?

"And with that she slipt on her peticoate, and start up; and assoone as she had made her readie and taken her breakfast, away goe these two with their bagge and bottles to the field, in more pleasant content of mind than ever they were in the court of Torismond."

In the same way as in Shakespeare, fair Phoebe, deceived by Rosalind's dress, Phoebe, who thought herself beyond the reach of love, becomes enamoured of the page and feels at last all the pangs of an unrequited passion. Lodge's Rosalind, more human we think than her great Shakespearean sister, uses, to persuade Phoebe into loving Montanus, a kindly, tender language, meant to heal rather than irritate the poor shepherdess's wounds. "What!" will exclaim the great sister, ...

"... What though you have no beauty ...
Must you be therefore proud and pitiless?
Why, what means this? Why do you look on me?
I see no more in you than in the ordinary
Of nature's sale-work: Od's my little life!
I think she means to tangle my eyes too:--
No, 'faith, proud mistress, hope not after it;
'Tis not your inky brows, your black silk-hair,
Your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream
That can entame my spirits to your worship."[162]

Very spiritless, and tame, and old fashioned, will the other Rosalind appear by the side of this impetuous, relentless deity. A few perhaps will consider that her tame, kindly, old-fashioned, mythological piece of advice to the shepherdess, makes her the more lovable: "What, shepheardesse, so fayre and so cruell?... Because thou art beautifull, be not so coye: as there is nothing more faire, so there is nothing more fading, as momentary as the shadowes which growes from a cloudie sunne. Such, my faire shepheardesse, as disdaine in youth, desire in age, and then are they hated in the winter, that might have been loved in the prime. A wrinkled maid is like a parched rose, that is cast up in coffers to please the smell, not worn in the hand to content the eye. There is no folly in love to had-I-wist, and therefore, be rulde by me. Love while thou art young, least thou be disdained when thou art olde. Beautie nor time cannot bee recalde, and if thou love, like of Montanus; for if his desires are manie, so his deserts are great."[163] And it is indeed quite touching to see poor Montanus in the simplest lover fashion verify by his acts this description of himself; for while reduced to the last degree of despair, seeing the unconquerable love Phoebe entertains for the page, he beseeches Rosalind to save her by returning her love; sorrow will kill him any way, but he will die contented if he thinks that even through another's love Phoebe will live happy in her Arcadian vale.

I need not add that all these troubles end as happily as possible; the storms pass away and a many-coloured rainbow encompasses Arden, Arcady, and the kingdom of France; every lover becomes loved, the three couples get married, and while the music of the bridal fete is still in our ears, news is brought that "hard by, at the edge of this forest, the twelve peers of France are up in arms" to recover Gerismond's rights. They accomplish this feat in a twinkling, as French peers should; why they did not do it before does not appear: probably because the treble marriage would not have looked so pretty in Notre Dame as under the lemon trees. There is much bloodshed of course, but it is blood we do not care for, and we are allowed to part from our shepherd friends with the pleasing thought that they will see no end to their loves and happiness.

Such is "Euphues golden legacy," one of the best examples of the sort of novel that was being written at this period. It has all the characteristics of this kind of writing such as it had come to be understood at that date; prose is mixed with verse, and several of Lodge's best songs are included in "Rosalynde"; it is full of meditations and monologues like those with which the neo-classic drama of the French school has made us familiar.[164] In the more important places, in monologues, speeches and letters euphuistic style usually prevails;[165] the chronology and geography of the tale, its logic and probability, the grouping of events are of the loosest description; but it has moreover a freshness and sometimes a pathos which is more easily felt than expressed and of which the above quotations may have given some idea.

In "Rosalynde" we see Lodge at his best. Perhaps, remembering his threats, it is better not to try to see him at his worst; it will therefore be sufficient to add that, having published also satires and epistles imitated from Horace, eclogues, some other short stories or romances, a translation of the philosophical works of Seneca, two or three incoherent dramas (in one of which a whale comes on to the stage, and without any ceremony vomits forth the prophet Jonah),[166] Lodge changed his profession once again, abandoned the sword for the lancet, became a physician, gained a fortune, and died quietly a rich citizen in 1625.

He had thus lived beyond the period of Lyly's fame, of Greene's reputation, of Shakespeare's splendour, and saw, before he died, the beginnings of a new and very different era in which both the drama and the novel were to undergo, as we shall see, many and vast transformations.

FOOTNOTES:

[103] "Prose and Verse" by John Dickenson, ed. Grosart, Manchester, 1878, 4to. At a later date Dickenson took Greene for his model when he wrote his "Greene in conceipt new raised from his grave, to write the tragique history of the faire Valeria of London," 1598. In this Dickenson imitates Greene's descriptions of the life of the courtezans of London (Troy-novant). See _infra_, pp. 187 _et seq._

[104] "The straunge and wonderfull Adventures of Don Simonides," London, 1581, 4to; in 1584 appeared "The second tome of the travailes ... of Don Simonides."

[105] "Riche his Farewell to Militarie profession: Conteining verie pleasaunt discourses fit for a peaceable tyme. Gathered together for the onely delight of the Courteous Gentlewoemen bothe of England and Irelande, for whose onely pleasure thei were collected together, and unto whom thei are directed and dedicated," London, 1581, 4to. By the same: "The Adventures of Brusanus, Prince of Hungaria," 1592; "Greenes newes both from heaven and hell," 1593, &c.

[106] London, 1580, 4to. One copy in the Bodleian Library.

[107] "Philotimus, the warre betwixt nature and fortune," London, 1583, 4to. A copy in the Bodleian Library.

[108] "Syrinx or a seavenfold historie ... newly perused and amended by the original author," London, 1597, 4to. Warner died in 1609.

[109] "Episode of Julia and Proteus." This episode has been traced to the story of the shepherdess Felismena, in Montemayor's "Diana." But Shakespeare may have taken some hints also from Warner. Opheltes (Proteus) married (not betrothed) to the virtuous Alcippe (Julia), goes to "Sardis," where he becomes acquainted (in the same manner as Greene's Francesco) with the courtesan Phoemonoe (Greene's Infida). Alcippe hears of it, and wants at least to be able to see her husband; she enters the service of the courtesan, and there suffers a moral martyrdom. Opheltes is ruined, and, in words which Greene nearly copied, "Phoemonoe not brooking the cumbersome haunt of so beggerly a guest, with outragious tearms flatly forbad him her house." Alcippe makes herself known, and all ends well for the couple.

[110] Arber's reprint, pp. 139 and 141.

[111] "The Repentance of Robert Greene," 1592. "Works," ed. Grosart, vol. xii. p. 172.

[112] He belonged then to Clare Hall; the preface to the second part of "Mamillia" (entered 1583) is dated "from my studie in Clarehall." Later in life he seems to have again felt the want of increasing his knowledge, and he was, for a while, incorporated at Oxford, July, 1588; he, therefore, describes himself on the title-page of some of his works, not without touch of pride, as belonging to both universities. In common with his friend Lodge he had a taste for medical studies, and he appears to have attempted to open to himself a career of this kind; he styles himself on the title-page of "Planetomachia," 1585, as "Student in Phisicke," but as he never gave himself any higher appellation we may take it for granted that he never went beyond the preliminaries.

[113] "The Repentance of Robert Greene," 1592, "Works" vol. xii. p. 173.

[114] "Greene's never too late," 1590, "Works," vol. viii. p. 101.

[115] "Greene's Groats-worth of wit," 1592, "Works," vol. xii. pp. 131 _et seq._ "Roberto ... whose life in most parts agreeing with mine, found one selfe punishment as I have done" (_Ibid._ p. 137).

[116] "Strange Newes," 1592. A rough engraving, showing Greene at his writing table, is to be seen on the title-page of "Greene in conceipt," a novel by T. Dickenson, 1598; his "peake" exists, but is not quite so long as Nash's description would have led us to expect.

[117] "Repentance," "Works," vol. xii. p. 164.

[118] See especially vol. x. of the "Works." Greene's example gave a great impetus to these strange kinds of works, but he was not the first to compose such; several came before him, especially T. Audeley, with his "Fraternitye of vacabondes," 1560-1, and Thomas Harman, "A caveat or warening for common cursetors vulgarely called vagabones," 1566 or 1567; both reprinted by Viles and Furnivall, Early English Text Society, 1869.

[119] See the note added by the editor to his "Repentance," "Works," vol. xii. p. 184.

[120] Epilogue to the "Groats-worth of wit," directed "to those gentlemen, his quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making plaies," "Works," vol. xii. p. 144. The verse quoted by Greene occurs in the third part of Henry VI., with the difference of "womans" for "players." About this, see Furnivall, Introduction to the "Leopold Shakspere," p. xvi. As to the identification of Greene's three friends, see Grosart's memorial introduction and Storojenko's "Life," in "Works," vol. i.

[121] The exaggeration in the attack was so obvious that it raised some protest, and Henry Chettle, who had edited Greene's "Groats-worth" after his death, felt obliged to print a rectification in his next book, as was the custom then, when newspapers did not exist. This acknowledgment, that would to-day have been published in the _Athenaeum_ or the _Academy_, was inserted in his "Kind Heart's Dream," issued in the same year, 1592, and is to the effect that so far as Shakespeare (for Chettle can allude here to no other) is concerned: "divers of worship have reported his uprightnes of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing that approoves his art."

[122] "The Silent Woman," act iv. sc. 2; and "Every man out of his humour," act ii. sc. 1.

[123] "Repentance," "Works," vol. xii. p. 185.

[124] The "Life and Complete Works" of Greene have been published by Dr. Grosart, London, 1881, 15 vols. 4to. His principal non-dramatic writings may be classified as follows:

1. _Romantic novels, or "love pamphlets"_: "Mamillia," 1583; "The second part," 1583; "Myrrour of Modestie," 1584; "Card of fancie," 1584 (?); "Arbasto," 1584 (?); "Planetomachia," 1585; "Morando, the Tritameron of love," 1586 (?); "Second part," 1587; "Debate betweene follie and love," 1587; "Penelopes web," 1587; "Euphues his censure to Philautus," 1587; "Perimedes," 1588; "Pandosto" (_alias_ "Dorastus and Fawnia"), 1588; "Alcida," 1588 (?); "Menaphon," 1589; "Ciceronis amor," 1589; "Orpharion," 1590 (?); "Philomela," 1592.

2. _Civic and patriotic pamphlets_: "Spanish Masquerado," 1589; "Royal Exchange," 1590; "Quip for an upstart courtier," 1592.