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to eat.

Itylus. After five years, at the request of his wife, he went to Athens to persuade her younger sister Philomela to visit her; but falling in love with Philomela, he, on the way to Thrace, ravished her, and cut out her tongue in order that she might not be able to betray him. She, however, wove pictures of her wrongs in a web of cloth and sent it to Procne. The two sisters then, for revenge, killed Itys and served him up to his father When Tereus learned what they had done, he tried to kill them; but the gods changed him into a hawk, Procne into a swallow, and Philomela into a nightingale, and the pursuit and attempt to slay still continues. The story is frequently alluded to by Elizabethan poets. They had studied it in school in Ovid's Metamorphoses (VI, 412-674). Compare the love song on p. 94, Lyly's Spring's Welcome (p. 128), and As It Fell Upon a Day (p. 162). For modern versions, see Matthew Arnold's Philomela (p. 616), and Swinburne's Itylus (p. 642).

The tereu (Spring's Welcome, 1. 3) and teru (As It Fell Upon a Day, l. 14) come from a fancied resemblance between the vocative Tereu and the nightingale's song.

HYMN TO APOLLO

Apollo is addressed in his double character as the sun and as the god of intellectual endeavor, as appears in ll. 1-2.

1. 5. Python's skin. The Python was a serpent-monster slain by Apollo near Delphi, as is related in Ovid's Metamorphoses, I, 416-451.

1. 8. Doth teach to learn the good what travails do belong, i.e., what labor is involved in learning the good.

ARCADIA

Pp. 124 ff. Sidney's Arcadia was written to amuse his sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke. He seems to have considered it - what it ismere elaborate trifling, and on his deathbed he asked to have the manuscript burned. His sister, however, took charge of its publication in 1590. Its influence on Elizabethan prose was pronounced although perhaps not so great as was that of the sonnets on verse. It is too leisurely in movement and too complicated in structure to be well illustrated by a continuous selection, except as to its style, but the passage here presented seems better suited than any other of similar length to convey an idea of the nature of the story and the sources of its charm for Sidney's contemporaries.

On the Countess of Pembroke herself (cf. Browne's Epitaph, p. 177).

JOHN LYLY

Pp. 127 f. The selection from John Lyly's Euphues and his England may seem to some teachers shorter than is warranted by Lyly's reputation and his indubitable services to English prose. But the characteristics of his style are such as can be exhibited in comparatively small compass, and its excessive ornamentation soon becomes monotonous and unendurable. Moreover, it is not by its ornamental but by its structural features that it rendered its services to English prose, and the most significant of these, as Professor Morsbach has shown, is exact balance of accents in correlative phrases and clauses.

P. 128. Lyly's classical comedies, which delighted Elizabeth's court, were written for the boy actors of St. Paul's and the Savoy, and were played by them. Some scholars have thought that the exquisitely fanciful lyrics scattered through the plays were not written by Lyly; but the weight of evidence seems to me entirely against this view, and I have therefore presented them here, under Lyly's name.

SPRING'S WELCOME

11. 1-4. Cf. Sidney's The Nightingale (p. 123) and notes on it.

11. 6-8. Cf. Shakespeare's sonnet XXIX, 11-12 (p. 139), and the first song from Cymbeline (p. 145).

THOMAS LODGE

Pp. 129 ff. The subtitle of Rosalynde shows that Lodge was one of the immediate heirs to Lyly's affectations. Rosalynde is quite as artificial as Euphues and much more sentimental. Shakespeare borrowed the plot of As You Like It from Lodge's novel; but he made many important changes in structure and characterization, and the difference in atmosphere between the two works is as great as between a perfumed, lighted room and a forest glade in the sunshine. Compare this passage with Act III, Sc. ii, and Act IV, Sc. i, of the play. Read the madrigal from this romance published in England's Helicon, p. 164 of this volume.

P. 129 a. like the Syren. Cf. the passage from Chapman's Odysseys, pp. 145 f.

P. 129 b. Enone. . . Paris. See Peele's charming song, p. 161.

Sonnet. Cf. Sonetto on p. 131. Note that neither is in the conventional sonnet form. P. 130 b. with Ixion embrace Juno. Ixion was a king of the Lapithæ, who, for boasting that he had won the love of Juno, was bound forever to a revolving wheel in Tartarus, the place of punishment for the wicked.

flew to the fist. When the falconer whistles, the bird flies back and settles on his fist. So Ganimede, i.e., Rosalynde, recognized in Rosader her master and showed her preference for him, even though he did not know her and had not sent any "call."

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A GROAT'S WORTH OF WIT BOUGHT WITH A MILLION OF REPENTANCE

Pp. 133 ff. Although this purports to be a deathbed confession and admonition by Greene, it is probably, as some of his friends declared when it was published (after his death), the work of Henry Chettle. Professor Vetter's arguments against Greene's authorship (Abhandl. d. 44ten Sammlung d. d. Schulmänner, Teubner, 1897) seem to me conclusive, and it would not be difficult to add to them.

The extract given, however, is interesting as showing a contemporary Puritan view of Greene, and as touching upon the lives of several of his famous companions.

P. 133 a. Delphrigus, etc. Allusions to characters in plays and to plays of the time not now identified.

P. 133 b. thou famous gracer of tragedians,

Marlowe, who, for the unconventional utterances in his plays, especially Tamburlane, was regarded as nothing less than an atheist. In point of fact, he was a kind of Unitarian.

P. 134 a. Machiavellian policy. To the Elizabethans Niccolo Machiavelli was the devil incarnate, and from his name is said to come the term Old Nick. In reality he merely set forth in his treatise The Prince the methods which successful rulers used and still use. He recognized their immorality and brutality as clearly as any one.

perished as ill as Julian, the Emperor Julian the Apostate, nephew of Constantine the Great, who because of ill-treatment by Christians in his youth abjured their religion. He died of a spear-thrust in battle. He was one of the stock examples of the punishment of atheists.

young Juvenal, Thomas Nash, the bitterest satirist of the age, who was repeatedly referred to by that name.

thou no less deserving, perhaps George Peele; certainly the description fits him.

P. 134 b. an upstart Crow . . . Johannes fac totum ( Jack-of-all-trades) Shake-scene, undoubtedly Shakespeare. The Tiger's heart, etc., is a parody of 3 Henry VI, I, iv, 137.

buckram gentlemen, imitation gentlemen. Buckram was a coarse linen cloth (often stiffened with glue or gum). It seems to have been worn only by the lower classes (see Falstaff's account of the "rogues in buckram" who robbed him, 1 Henry IV, II, iv), and was used as a general term of contempt: "Thou say (i.e. silk), thou serge, nay, thou buckram lord!" 2 Henry VI, IV, vii,

27.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

HERO AND LEANDER

Pp. 135 ff. This unfinished poem was Marlowe's last work. He seems to have written only two books and a fragment of the third. Seemingly at his request, his friend Chapman, the translator of Homer, finished the poem and published it in 1598, five years after Marlowe's death.

The story of Hero and Leander is taken from a Greek poem, attributed to a pre-Homeric legendary poet named Musæus (1. 52). No genuine writings of Musæus, however, are known. Marlowe's original was written by an unknown author, probably in the fifth or sixth century after Christ. Of this work, however, Marlowe used little more than the bare outlines; the imaginative fire and strong power of visualization that enter into his wonderful pageantry of pictures are as much his

own as is the rich and musical verse. To appreciate its splendor, read with it the selection from Venus and Adonis (p. 137), in which even Shakespeare, writing, as he undoubtedly did on that occasion, in a commercial spirit, lags far behind.

The First Sestiad. Sestiad is derived from Sestos as Iliad from Ilium; hence, Sestiad means a poem about Sestos as Iliad a poem about Troy (Ilium). But the Elizabethans used both words in the plural for the whole work and in the singular for each book.

Marlowe's familiarity with the classics appears from many allusions, which may be studied in Gayley's Classic Myths or in the special references given below with each.

ll. 12-14. Adonis was a huntsman and scorned the goddess of love. The outcome of the story as told by Shakespeare follows on pp. 137 ff.

ll. 45-50. Hero was so lovely that Nature wept because she took more than half of the beauty of the world; and as a sign of her loss, since Hero's time, half the people of the world have been black.

11. 56-58. Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece of Colchis and his flight with Medea, the king's daughter, are told in Ovid's Metamorphoses, VII, 1-452, Heroides, VI, and in William Morris's Life and Death of Jason.

1.59. Sphere. See the note on Milton's astronomy, p. 717 below.

P. 136. I. 65. the white of Pelops' shoulder, ivory. Pelops was killed and served as a banquet to the gods by his father Tantalus; but was afterwards restored to life. The only part missing, his shoulder, was replaced by one of ivory (Metamorphoses, VI, 403-411).

11. 73-76. Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection in a pool and pined away because he could not embrace it (Metamorphoses, III, 339-510).

1. 77. wild Hippolytus, son of the Amazon Antiope, served Artemis (Diana); and was untamed by love (Ovid, Heroides, IV).

11. 81-82. Thrace was a mountainous country. In classical times mountaineers were called barbarians, as over against the more civilized inhabitants of cities.

ll. 101-102. Phaeton, son of Apollo, tried to drive his father's chariot; the horses ran away with him and almost destroyed the world by fire (Metamorphoses, II, 1-400).

1. 105. Cf. Chapman's Odysseys, p. 146.

11. 114-115. Ixion's shaggy-footed race. Ixion was the father of the Centaurs, a race of beings

half-man and half-horse (Metamorphoses, XII, 210-535).

1. 137. Proteus was a sea god, a shape-shifter, who could assume any form he wished (cf. Odyssey, IV, 384 ff., and Vergil, Georgics, IV, 387-452).

1. 158. turtles' blood. It should be noted that in Elizabethan English turtle always means "dove"; it was not until nearly a century later that it was applied to the water-tortoise.

1. 161. Love has two arrows: one, with a golden head, which causes successful love; the other, with a leaden head, causes unreciprocated love; cf. Midsummer Night's Dream, I, i, 170.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

VENUS AND ADONIS

Pp. 137 ff. Venus and Adonis was Shakespeare's first work to be printed (in 1593) and, in his own words, "the first heir of" his "invention." It was dedicated to the Earl of Southampton in extremely formal and respectful language. That it met with his approval is shown by the affectionate tone of the dedication to him in 1594 of The Rape of Lucrece.

Venus and Adonis became immediately popular and continued so. It went through about a dozen editions within the next fifty years. The story was taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses (X, 519739, with details from IV, 271-388, and VIII, 267-371) a book familiar to every one who went to school in Shakespeare's time with not a little added (perhaps through an intermediary) from the Greek pastoral writers. Cf. Andrew Lang's Theocritus, Bion and Moschus (in the Golden Treasury Series), especially The Lament for Adonis by Bion and the fifteenth idyl of Theocritus.

A familiar love story, with the fashionable idyllic background, and handled with the utmost license, was sure to succeed even though it showed little originality and only moderate imaginative fire.

The verse form and some details are borrowed from Lodge's Scillaes Metamorphosis (also derived from Ovid), published in 1589.

P. 138. l. 1109-1116. Cf. Theocritus, The Dead Adonis, in Idyl XXX.

SONNETS

P. 139 ff. The only edition of Shakespeare's sonnets in his lifetime was seemingly unauthorized. We do not know for whom they were written or whether they are now placed in the order in which

he meant them to be read. Although the critics agree that Nos. I-CXXVI are, for the most part, addressed to a young man who was at once patron and friend, and CXXVII-CLIV to a dark lady with whom the poet was in love, this conclusion is based entirely upon internal evidence, and does not explain some features of the texts as they stand. No attempt to identify the persons mentioned has been universally accepted as convincing.

The sonnets are very unequal in value, ranging from the extravagant commonplaces of conventional Elizabethan flattery to serious reflections of personal experience and opinion. It is best to judge each on its own merits without regard to the series as a whole.

In form they belong to the loosely-knit English type of three distinct quatrains, with a summarizing couplet that often has a tacked-on effect.

The best sonnet writers of the nineteenth century see the examples given below of Wordsworth, Keats, the Rossettis, and Mrs. Browning returned to the Italian model.

XII, 1. 10. thou among the wastes of time must go, thou must take thy place among things injured by time.

XV, 1. 4. The stars comment upon the unsubstantial forms and events of life by making or marring them through their secret influence.

ll. 11-12. Time discusses with Decay how to change your youth to age.

ll. 13-14. Warring with Time because of my love for you, I, in my verses, give you life as fast as he takes it.

XVII, 1. 11. Cf. what Theseus says of "the lunatic, the lover and the poet," Midsummer Night's Dream, V, i, 2–17.

1. 12.

stretched metre, exaggerated verse. XXIX, ll. 10-12. Cf. Lyly's Spring's Welcome, 11. 6-8, p. 128, Shakespeare's first song from Cymbeline, l. 1, p. 145, and Par. Lost, V, 198.

P. 140. LV, 1. 1 ff. The traditional idea, which goes back to Horace, that a poem, as poetry, will live forever, does not necessarily involve any personal conceit on the part of the poet.

1. 4. Than uncared-for gravestone stained by Time.

1. 13. Till the Judgment Day that bids you rise from the dead.

LXIV and LXV are closely connected, and should be read together. The first is pessimistic, and the second returns to the traditional poetic hope.

LXIV, 1. 2. Elaborate, expensive, and ancient monuments.

1. 4. Possibly suggested by Horace's monu

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1. 10.

Time is supposed to take things from this world and deposit them in the oblivion of his jewel-chest.

P. 141. LXXI. Cf. Christina Rossetti's Remember, p. 652.

LXXIII, ll. 1-4. This is a double metaphor: first of his own condition as that of the leafless boughs among which no birds now sing; then of the condition of those boughs as that of the choir of a ruined abbey. At the disestablishment of the monasteries by Henry VIII many were stripped and ruined and left to decay. These, as Steevens points out, would have been familiar and impressive sights to Shakespeare.

1. 12. The fire is consumed by the burning of the fuel which maintains it.

XCVII, 1. 5. time removed, time of absence. ll. 4-10. The autumn is represented as ready to bring forth the fruit begotten by the spring (the prime, 1. 7), but as the spring is dead, the autumn is a widow, and consequently the fruit hoped for will, when it is brought forth, be orphaned.

XCVIII, 1. 4. Saturn, the planet whose metal is lead, is supposed to govern heaviness and melancholy, and therefore stands here for all dull and low-spirited creatures.

XCIX. The first line is introductory; the sonnet is complete without it. It is made to fit the rhyme scheme of the first quatrain thus: babab.

1. 7. i.e., have stolen its fragrance, but some editors think that color (dark auburn) is meant. 1. 13. canker, canker-worm.

P. 142. CVII. Massey explained this as a song of triumph at the death of Elizabeth and the deliverance of Shakespeare's friend, the Earl of Southampton, from imprisonment in the Tower. Elizabeth would be the eclipsed mortal moon of 1. 5. This seems impossible on any hypothesis. The reason why the augurs are sad and mock their own prediction (1. 6) is certainly that the moon has passed through her eclipse and now shines clear

again; this could not apply to the death of Elizabeth. Rolfe thinks the moon represents Elizabeth; her survival of the eclipse represents, he thinks, the suppression of the Rebellion of Essex (1601); he also quotes with apparent approval Palgrave's suggestion that "the peace completed in 1609 might answer to the tone of this sonnet," though it does not appear why, if Shakespeare wrote as late as 1609, he should speak of an event of eight years earlier which had lost all interest.

But all such interpretations are excluded by the fact that the sonnet is a love sonnet, celebrating an ideal love or friendship. Such a love would not be affected by the imprisonment of either lover or beloved (cf. sonnet CXVI). The subject of the sonnet is some threatened and predicted estrangement between the friends which has now been removed. The eclipse and the endless peace are figurative expressions of aspects of the love story; the balmy time of 1. 9 is of the same nature and has nothing to do with "the weather at the time he writes," as Rolfe seems to think. Lines 3, 4, mean "none of these things can set limits to the duration of my love (which was falsely supposed to be nearing its end), because it is true and endless."

CIX, ll. 7–8. Prompt to the time, not changed by absence; so that, coming back as I do, I bring my own excuse.

CX, ll. 2-4. I have played the fool, done violence to my own thoughts, sold cheap what I prize most, committed grave offences by entertaining new affections. Line 2 contains a figure which may come from the stage (though household fools also wore motley), but ll. 7-8, 11-12 show that Shakespeare is not talking about his stage career but about this temporary interest in new friends, which had only made him love the old friend better.

ll. 10-12. I will never again whet my sword on newer armor (i.e., on a new friend) in order to test an older friend to whom I am bound.

CXI. This strongly personal sonnet is a protest against the deterioration in manners and character caused by the profession of acting (l. 4). CXVI, 11. 2-4. Love is not love if it alters when the loved one alters, or turns away (bends to remove) as the loved one withdraws.

11. 5-7. Cf. Spenser's Amoretti, XXIV.

P. 143. CXLVI. In this splendidly impersonal and virile sonnet, Shakespeare gets away from convention and expresses, in grim and powerful phrasing, a fundamental creed. The soul is the citadel of the body (sinful earth) warred upon by its own rebellious faculties. Why, as the body necessarily has so short a lease of life, should it

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