The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1

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[Footnote 17: The tales are ten--1. Sinorix and Camma
[= Tennyson's _Cup_]; 2. Tereus and Progne; 3. Germanicus and
Agrippina; 4. Julius and Virginia; 5. Admetus and Alcest; 6. Silla
and Minos; 7. Curiatius and Horatia; 8. Cephalus and Procris;
9. Pigmalion and his Image; 10. Alexius.]

[Footnote 18: M. Jusserand gives a list of most of these
translations of French and Italian novels in his just issued
_English Novel in the Elizabethan Age_, 1890, pp. 80-1. He also
refers to works by Rich and Gascoigne in which novels occur.]

The quarter of a century from 1565 to 1590 was the seed-time of the
Elizabethan Drama, which blossomed out in the latter year in Marlowe's
_Tamburlaine the Great_. The only play which precedes that period,
_Gordobuc_ or _Ferrex and Porrex_, first played in 1561, indicates what
direction the English Drama would naturally have taken if nothing had
intervened to take it out of its course. _Gordobuc_ is severely
classical in its unities; it is of the Senecan species. Now throughout
Western Europe this was the type of the modern drama,[19] and it
dominated the more serious side of the French stage down to the time of
Victor Hugo. There can be little doubt that the English Drama would have
followed the classical models but for one thing. The flood of Italian
_novelle_ introduced into England by Painter and his school, imported a
new condition into the problem. It is essential to the Classical Drama
that the plot should be already known to the audience, that there should
be but one main action, and but one tone, tragic or comic. In Painter's
work and those of his followers, the would-be dramatists of Elizabeth's
time had offered to them a super-abundance of actions quite novel to
their audience, and alternating between grave and gay, often within the
same story.[20] The very fact of their foreignness was a further
attraction. At a time when all things were new, and intellectual
curiosity had become a passion, the opportunity of studying the varied
life of an historic country like Italy lent an additional charm to the
translated _novelle_. In an interesting essay on the "Italy of the
Elizabethan Dramatists,"[21] Vernon Lee remarks that it was the very
strangeness and horror of Italian life as compared with the dull decorum
of English households that had its attraction for the Elizabethans. She
writes as if the dramatists were themselves acquainted with the life
they depicted. As a matter of fact, not a single one of the Elizabethan
dramatists, as far as I know, was personally acquainted with Italy.[22]
This knowledge of Italian life and crime was almost entirely derived
from the works of Painter and his school. If there had been anything
corresponding to them dealing with the tragic aspects of English life,
the Elizabethan dramatists would have been equally ready to tell of
English vice and criminality. They used Holinshed and Fabyan readily
enough for their "Histories." They would have used an English Bandello
with equal readiness had he existed. But an English Bandello could not
have existed at a time when the English folk had not arrived at
self-consciousness, and had besides no regular school of tale-tellers
like the Italians. It was then only from the Italians that the
Elizabethan dramatists could have got a sufficient stock of plots to
allow for that interweaving of many actions into one which is the
characteristic of the Romantic Drama of Marlowe and his compeers.

[Footnote 19: A partial exception is to be made in favour of the
Spanish school, which broke loose from the classical tradition
with Lope de Vega.]

[Footnote 20: It is probable however that the "mixture of tones"
came more directly from the Interludes.]

[Footnote 21: _Euphorion_, by Vernon Lee. Second edition, 1885,
pp. 55-108.]

[Footnote 22: It has, of course, been suggested that Shakespeare
visited Venice. But this is only one of the 1001 mare's nests of
the commentators.]

That Painter was the main source of plot for the dramatists before
Marlowe, we have explicit evidence. Of the very few extant dramas before
Marlowe, _Appius and Virginia_, _Tancred and Gismunda,_ and _Cyrus and
Panthea_ are derived from Painter.[23] We have also references in
contemporary literature showing the great impression made by Painter's
book on the opponents of the stage. In 1572 E. Dering, in the Epistle
prefixed to _A briefe Instruction_, says: "To this purpose we have
gotten our Songs and Sonnets, our Palaces of Pleasure, our unchaste
Fables and Tragedies, and such like sorceries.... O that there were
among us some zealous Ephesian, that books of so great vanity might be
burned up." As early as 1579 Gosson began in his _School of Abuse_ the
crusade against stage-plays, which culminated in Prynne's
_Histriomastix_. He was answered by Lodge in his _Defence of Stage
Plays_. Gosson demurred to Lodge in 1580 with his _Playes Confuted in
Five Actions_, and in this he expressly mentions Painter's _Palace of
Pleasure_ among the "bawdie comedies" that had been "ransacked" to
supply the plots of plays. Unfortunately very few even of the titles of
these early plays are extant: they probably only existed as prompt-books
for stage-managers, and were not of sufficient literary value to be
printed when the marriage of Drama and Literature occurred with Marlowe.

[Footnote 23: Altogether in the scanty notices of this period we
can trace a dozen derivatives of Painter. See Analytical Table on
Tome I. nov. iii., v., xi., xxxvii., xxxix., xl., xlviii., lvii.;
Tome II. nov. i., iii., xiv., xxxiv.]

But we have one convincing proof of the predominating influence of the
plots of Painter and his imitators on the Elizabethan Drama.
Shakespeare's works in the first folio, and the editions derived from
it, are, as is well known, divided into three parts--Comedies,
Histories, and Tragedies. The division is founded on a right instinct,
and applies to the whole Elizabethan Drama.[24] Putting aside the
Histories, which derive from Holinshed, North, and the other historians,
the _dramatis personae_ of the Tragedies and Comedies are, in nineteen
cases out of twenty, provided with Italian names, and the scene is
placed in Italy. It had become a regular convention with the
Elizabethans to give an Italian habitation and name to the whole of
their dramas. This convention must have arisen in the pre-Marlowe days,
and there is no other reason to be given for it but the fact that the
majority of plots are taken from the "Palace of Pleasure" or its
followers. A striking instance is mentioned by Charles Lamb of the
tyranny of this convention. In the first draught of his _Every Man in
his Humour_ Ben Jonson gave Italian names to all his _dramatis personae_.
Mistress Kitely appeared as Biancha, Master Stephen as Stephano, and
even the immortal Captain Bobabil as Bobadilla. Imagine Dame Quickly as
Putana, and Sir John as Corporoso, and we can see what a profound
influence such a seemingly superficial thing as the names of the
_dramatis personae_ has had on the Elizabethan Drama through the
influence of Painter and his men.

[Footnote 24: In the _Warning for Fair Women_ there is a scene in
which Tragedy, Comedy, and History dispute for precedence.]

But the effect of this Italianisation of the Elizabethan Drama due to
Painter goes far deeper than mere externalities. It has been said that
after Lamb's sign-post criticisms, and we may add, after Mr. Swinburne's
dithyrambs, it is easy enough to discover the Elizabethan dramatists
over again. But is there not the danger that we may discover too much in
them? However we may explain the fact, it remains true that outside
Shakespeare none of the Elizabethans has really reached the heart of the
nation. There is not a single Elizabethan drama, always of course with
the exception of Shakespeare's, which belongs to English literature in
the sense in which _Samson Agonistes_, _Absalom and Achitophel_,
_Gulliver's Travels_, _The Rape of the Lock_, _Tom Jones_, _She Stoops
to Conquer_, _The School for Scandal_, belong to it. The dramas have not
that direct appeal to us which the works I have mentioned have continued
to exercise after the generation for whom they were written has passed
away. To an inner circle of students, to the 500 or so who really care
for English literature, the Elizabethan dramas may appeal with a power
greater than any of these literary products I have mentioned. We
recognise in them a wealth of imaginative power, an ease in dealing with
the higher issues of life, which is not shown even in those
masterpieces. But the fact remains, and remains to be explained, that
the Elizabethans do not appeal to the half a million or so among English
folk who are capable of being touched at all by literature, who respond
to the later masterpieces, and cannot be brought into _rapport_ with the
earlier masters. Why is this?

Partly, I think, because owing to the Italianisation of the Elizabethan
Drama the figures whom the dramatists drew are unreal, and live in an
unreal world. They are neither Englishmen nor Italians, nor even
Italianate Englishmen. I can only think of four tragedies in the whole
range of the Elizabethan drama where the characters are English:
Wilkins' _Miseries of Enforced Marriage_, and _A Yorkshire Tragedy_,
both founded on a recent _cause celebre_ of one Calverly, who was
executed 5 August 1605; _Arden of Faversham_, also founded on a _cause
celebre_ of the reign of Edward VI.; and Heywood's _Woman Killed by
Kindness_. These are, so far as I remember, the only English tragedies
out of some hundred and fifty extant dramas deserving that name.[25] As
a result of all this, the impression of English life which we get from
the Elizabethan Drama is almost entirely derived from the comedies, or
rather five-act farces, which alone appear to hold the mirror up to
English nature. Judged by the drama, English men and English women under
good Queen Bess would seem incapable of deep emotion and lofty
endeavour. We know this to be untrue, but that the fact appears to be so
is due to the Italianising of the more serious drama due to Painter and
his school.

[Footnote 25: Curiously enough, two of the four have been
associated with Shakespeare's name. It should be added, perhaps,
that one of the _Two Tragedies in One_ of Yarington is English.]

In fact the Italian drapery of the Elizabethan Drama disguises from us
the significant light it throws upon the social history of the time.
Plot can be borrowed from abroad, but characterisation must be drawn
from observation of men and women around the dramatist. Whence, then
comes the problem, did Webster and the rest derive their portraits of
their White Devils, those imperious women who had broken free from all
the conventional bonds? At first sight it might seem impossible for the
gay roysterers of Alsatia to have come into personal contact with such
lofty dames. But the dramatists, though Bohemians, were mostly of gentle
birth, or at any rate were from the Universities, and had come in
contact with the best blood of England. It is clear too from their
dedications that the young noblemen of England admitted them to familiar
intercourse with their families, which would include many of the _grande
dames_ of Elizabeth's Court. Elizabeth's own character, recent
revelations about Mistress Fitton, Shakespeare's relations with his Dark
Lady, all prepare for the belief that the Elizabethan dramatists had
sufficient material from their own observation to fill up the outlines
given by the Italian novelists.[26] The Great Oyer of Poisoning--the
case of Sir Thomas Overbury and the Somersets--in James the First's
reign could vie with any Italian tale of lust and cruelty.

[Footnote 26: The frequency of scenes in which ladies of high
birth yield themselves to men of lower station is remarkable in
this connection.]

Thus in some sort the Romantic Drama was an extraneous product in
English literature. Even the magnificent medium in which it is composed,
the decasyllabic blank verse which the genius of Marlowe adapted to the
needs of the drama, is ultimately due to the Italian Trissino, and has
never kept a firm hold on English poetry. Thus both the formal elements
of the Drama, plot and verse, were importations from Italy. But style
and characterisation were both English of the English, and after all is
said it is in style and characterisation that the greatness of the
Elizabethan Drama consists. It must however be repeated that in its
highest flights in the tragedies, a sense of unreality is produced by
the pouring of English metal into Italian moulds.

It cannot be said that even Shakespeare escapes altogether from the ill
effects of this Italianisation of all the externalities of the drama. It
might plausibly be urged that by pushing unreality to its extreme you
get idealisation. A still more forcible objection is that the only
English play of Shakespeare's, apart from his histories, is the one that
leaves the least vivid impression on us, _The Merry Wives of Windsor_.
But one cannot help feeling regret that the great master did not express
more directly in his immortal verse the finer issues and deeper passions
of the men and women around him. Charles Lamb, who seems to have said
all that is worth saying about the dramatists in the dozen pages or so
to which his notes extend, has also expressed his regret. "I am
sometimes jealous," he says, "that Shakespere laid so few of his scenes
at home." But every art has it conventions, and by the time Shakespeare
began to write it was a convention of English drama that the scene of
its most serious productions should be laid abroad. The convention was
indeed a necessary one, for there did not exist in English any other
store of plots but that offered by the inexhaustible treasury of the
Italian _Novellieri_.

Having mentioned Shakespeare, it seems desirable to make an exception in
his case,[27] and discuss briefly the use he made of Painter's book and
its influence on his work. On the young Shakespeare it seems to have had
very great influence indeed. The second heir of his invention, _The Rape
of Lucrece_, is from Painter. So too is _Romeo and Juliet_,[28] his
earliest tragedy, and _All's Well_, which under the title _Love's Labour
Won_, was his second comedy, is Painter's _Giletta of Narbonne_ (i. 38)
from Bandello.[29] I suspect too that there are two plays associated
with Shakespeare's name which contain only rough drafts left unfinished
in his youthful period, and finished by another writer. At any rate it
is a tolerably easy task to eliminate the Shakespearian parts of _Timon
of Athens_ and _Edward III._, by ascertaining those portions which are
directly due to Painter.[30] In this early period indeed it is somewhat
remarkable with what closeness he followed his model. Thus some gushing
critics have pointed out the subtle significance of making Romeo at
first in love with Rosalind before he meets with Juliet. If it is a
subtlety, it is Bandello's, not Shakespeare's. Again, others have
attempted to defend the indefensible age of Juliet at fourteen years
old, by remarking on the precocity of Italian maidens. As a matter of
fact Bandello makes her eighteen years old. It is banalities like these
that cause one sometimes to feel tempted to turn and rend the
criticasters by some violent outburst against Shakespeare himself. There
is indeed a tradition, that Matthew Arnold had things to say about
Shakespeare which he dared not utter, because the British public would
not stand them. But the British public has stood some very severe things
about the Bible, which is even yet reckoned of higher sanctity than
Shakespeare. And certainly there is as much cant about Shakespeare to be
cleared away as about the Bible. However this is scarcely the place to
do it. It is clear enough, however, from his usage of Painter, that
Shakespeare was no more original in plot than any of his fellows, and it
is only the unwise and rash who could ask for originality in plot from a
dramatic artist.

[Footnote 27: The other Elizabethan dramatists who used Painter
are: Beaumont (I. xlii.; II. xvii.), Fletcher (I. xlii.; II. xvii.,
xxii.), Greene (I. lvii.), Heywood (I. ii.), Marston (I. lxvi.;
II. vii., xxiv., xxvi.), Massinger (II. xxviii.), Middleton
(I. xxxiii.), Peele (I. xl.), Shirley (I. lviii.), Webster (I. v.;
II. xxiii.). See also I. vii., xxiv., lxvi.]

[Footnote 28: Shakespeare also used Arthur Brook's poem. On the
exact relations of the poet to his two sources see Mr. P. A.
Daniel in the New Shakespere Society's _Originals and Analogies_,
i., and Dr. Schulze in _Jahrb. d. deutsch. Shakespeare
Gesellschaft_ xi. 218-20.]

[Footnote 29: Delius has discussed _Shakespeare's "All Well" und
Paynter's "Giletta von Narbonne"_ in the Jahrbuch xxii. 27-44,
in an article which is also reprinted in his _Abhandlungen_ ii.]

[Footnote 30: I hope to publish elsewhere detailed substantiation
of this contention.]

But if the use of Italian _novelle_ as the basis of plots was an evil
that has given an air of unreality and extraneousness to the whole of
Elizabethan Tragedy, it was, as we must repeat, a necessary evil.
Suppose Painter's work and those that followed it not to have appeared,
where would the dramatists have found their plots? There was nothing in
English literature to have given them plot-material, and little signs
that such a set of tales could be derived from the tragedies going on in
daily life. But for Painter and his school the Elizabethan Drama would
have been mainly historical, and its tragedies would have been either
vamped-up versions of classical tales or adaptations of contemporary
_causes celebres_.

And so we have achieved the task set before us in this Introduction to
Painter's tales. We have given the previous history of the _genre_ of
literature to which they belong, and mentioned the chief _novellieri_
who were their original authors. We have given some account of Painter's
life and the circumstances under which his book appeared, and the style
in which he translates. We have seen how his book was greeted on its
first appearance by the adherents of the New Learning and by the
opponents of the stage. The many followers in the wake of Painter have
been enumerated, and some account given of their works. It has been
shown how great was the influence of the whole school on the Elizabethan
dramatists, and even on the greatest master among them. And having
touched upon all these points, we have perhaps sufficiently introduced
reader and author, who may now be left to make further acquaintance with
one another.

HASLEWOOD'S

Preliminary Matter.

_OF THE TRANSLATOR._

William Painter was, probably, descended from some branch of the family
of that name which resided in Kent. Except a few official dates there is
little else of his personal history known. Neither the time nor place of
his birth has been discovered. All the heralds in their Visitations are
uniformly content with making him the root of the pedigree.[31] His
liberal education is, in part, a testimony of the respectability of his
family, and, it may be observed, he was enabled to make purchases of
landed property in Kent, but whether from an hereditary fortune is
uncertain.

[Footnote 31: The Visitation Book of 1619, in the Heralds College,
supplied Hasted with his account. There may also be consulted Harl.
MSS. 1106, 2230 and 6138.]

The materials for his life are so scanty, that a chronological notice of
his Writings may be admitted, without being deemed to interrupt a
narrative, of which it must form the principal contents.

He himself furnishes us with a circumstance,[32] from whence we may fix
a date of some importance in ascertaining both the time of the
publication and of his own appearance as an author. He translated from
the Latin of Nicholas Moffan, (a soldier serving under Charles the
Fifth, and taken prisoner by the Turks)[33] the relation of the Murder
which Sultan Solyman caused to be perpetrated on his eldest Son
Mustapha.[34] This was first dedicated to Sir William Cobham Knight,
afterwards Lord Cobham, Warden of the Cinque Ports; and it is material
to remark, that that nobleman succeeded to the title Sept. the 29th,
1558;[35] and from the author being a prisoner until Sept. 1555, it is
not likely that the Translation was finished earlier than circa 1557-8.

[Footnote 32: Palace of Pleasure, Vol. II. p. 663.]

[Footnote 33: The translation is reprinted in the second volume.
Of the original edition there is not any notice in Herbert.]

[Footnote 34: This happened in 1552, and Moffan remained a captive
until Sept. 1555.]

[Footnote 35: Brydge's _Peerage_, Vol. IX. p. 466. Banks's
_Dormant Peerage_, Vol. II. p. 108.]

In 1560 the learned William Fulke, D.D. attacked some inconsistent,
though popular, opinions, in a small Latin tract called
"Antiprognosticon contra invtiles astrologorvm praedictiones Nostrodami,
&c." and at the back of the title are Verses,[36] by friends of the
author, the first being entitled "Gulielmi Painteri ludimagistri
Seuenochensis Tetrasticon." This has been considered by Tanner as our
author,[37] nor does there appear any reason for attempting to
controvert that opinion; and a translation of Fulke's Tract also seems
to identify our author with the master of Sevenoaks School. The title is
"Antiprognosticon, that is to saye, an Inuectiue agaynst the vayne and
unprofitable predictions of the Astrologians as Nostrodame, &c.
Translated out of Latine into Englishe. Whereunto is added by the author
a shorte Treatise in Englyshe as well for the utter subversion of that
fained arte, as well for the better understandynge of the common people,
unto whom the fyrst labour semeth not sufficient. _Habet & musca splenem
& formice sua bilis inest._ 1560" 12mo. At the back of the title is a
sonnet by Henry Bennet: followed in the next page by Painter's Address.
On the reverse of this last page is a prose address "to his louyng
frende W. F." dated "From Seuenoke XXII of Octobre," and signed "Your
familiar frende William Paynter."[38]

[Footnote 36: These verses were answered by another Kentish
writer. "In conuersium Palengenii Barnabae Gogae carmen E. Deringe
Cantiani," prefixed to _the firste sixe bokes of the mooste
christian poet Marcellus Palingenius, called the Zodiake of Life_.
Translated by Barnabe Googe, 1561. 12mo. See Cens. Lit. Vol. II.
p. 212. Where it appears that Barnaby Googe was connected with
several Kentish families. He married a Darell. His grandmother was
Lady Hales.]

[Footnote 37: _Bibliotheca_, p. 570.]

[Footnote 38: M.S. Ashmole, 302. Mr. H. Ellis has kindly
furnished me with the above, during a late visit to Oxford, and
observes that the reference to Tanner is wrongly stated, the
article being in Ashmole's study.]

By the regulations of the school, as grammar-master, he must have been a
bachelor of arts, and approved by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to
the appointment was attached a house and salary of L50 per annum.[39]

[Footnote 39: Hasted's _Hist. of Kent_, Vol. III. p. 98.]

Of the appointment to the School I have not been able to obtain any
particulars. That situation[40] was probably left for one under
government, of less labour, as he was appointed by letters patent of the
9th of Feb. in the 2d of Eliz. (1560-1) to succeed John Rogers,
deceased, as Clerk of the Ordinance in the Tower, with the official
stipend of eightpence per diem, which place he retained during life.

[Footnote 40: If Painter had laid in this School the foundation of
that fortune, which he afterwards appears to have realised in land,
he did no more than was done by a celebrated successor, Thomas
Farnaby, a well-known annotator on Horace, who settled his male
posterity at Keppington, in the parish of Sevenoaks, where they
remained in rank and opulence, till the late Sir Charles Farnaby,
Bart., who at one time in the present reign represented the County
of Kent, sold that seat and estate to Francis Motley Austen, Esq.,
the present owner.]

In 1562 there was a license obtained by William Jones to print "The
Cytie of Cyvelite, translated into Englesshe by william paynter."
Probably this was intended for the present work, and entered in the
Stationers Register as soon as the translation was commenced, to secure
an undoubted copy-right to the Publisher. Neither of the stories bear
such a title, nor contain incidents in character with it. The
interlocutory mode of delivery, after the manner of some of the
originals, might have been at first intended, and of the conversation
introducing or ending some of those taken from the collection of the
Queen of Navarre, a part is even now, though incongruously,
retained.[41] By rejecting the gallant speeches of the courtiers and
sprightly replies of the ladies, and making them unconnected stories,
the idea of civility was no longer appropriate, and therefore gave place
to a title equally alliterative in the adoption of the Palace of
Pleasure.

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