Part 3 (1/2)
[62] Bond, vol. I. pp. 164-175.
The first of these is the dramatist Kyd, who completed his well-known _Spanish Tragedy_ between 1584 and 1589, that is at the height of the euphuistic fas.h.i.+on. This play was apparently an inexhaustible joke to the Elizabethans; for the references to it in later dramatists are innumerable. One pa.s.sage must have been particularly famous, for we find it parodied most elaborately by Field, as late as 1606, in his _A Woman is a Weatherc.o.c.k_[63]. The pa.s.sage in question, which was obviously inspired by Lyly, runs as follows:
”Yet might she love me for my valiance: I, but that's slandered by captivity.
Yet might she love me to content her sire: I, but her reason masters her desire.
Yet might she love me as her brother's friend: I, but her hopes aim at some other end.
Yet might she love me to uprear her state: I, but perhaps she loves some n.o.bler mate.
Yet might she love me as her beautie's thrall: I, but I feare she cannot love at all.”
[63] Act I. Sc. II.
Nathaniel Field's parody of this melodramatic nonsense is so amusing that I cannot forbear quoting it. This time the despairing lover is Sir Abraham Ninny, who quotes Kyd to his companions, and they with the cry of ”Ha G.o.d-a-mercy, old Hieromino!” begin the game of parody, which must have been keenly enjoyed by the audience. Field improves on the original by putting the alternate lines of despair into the mouths of Ninny's jesting friends. It runs, therefore:
”--Yet might she love me for my lovely eyes.
--Ay but, perhaps your nose she does despise.
--Yet might she love me for my dimpled chin.
--Ay but, she sees your beard is very thin.
--Yet might she love me for my proper body.
--Ay but, she thinks you are an arrant noddy.
--Yet might she love me 'cause I am an heir.
--Ay but, perhaps she does not like your ware.
--Yet might she love me in despite of all.
(the lady herself)--Ay but indeed I cannot love at all.”
This parody, apart from any interest it possesses for the student of Lyly, is an excellent ill.u.s.tration of the ways of Elizabethan playwrights, and of the thorough knowledge of previous plays they a.s.sumed their audience to have possessed. There are several other examples of Kyd's acquaintance with the _Euphues_ in the _Spanish Tragedy_[64], in the other dramas[65], and in his prose works[66], which it is not necessary to quote. But there is one more pa.s.sage, again from his most famous play, which is so full of interest that it cannot be pa.s.sed over in silence. It is a counsel of hope to the despairing lover, and a.s.sumes this inspiring form:
”My Lord, though Belimperia seem thus coy Let reason hold you in your wonted joy; In time the savage Bull sustains the yoke, In time all Haggard Hawkes will stoop to lure, In time small wedges cleave the hardest Oake, In time the flint is pearst with softest shower, And she in time will fall from her disdain, And rue the sufferance of your deadly paine[67].”
[64] _Sp. Trag._, Act IV. 190 (cp. _Euphues_, p. 146).
[65] _Soliman and Perseda_, Act III. 130 (cp. _Euphues_, p. 100), and Act II. 199.
[66] _Kyd's Works_ (Boas), p. 288, and ch. IX.
[67] _Sp. Trag._, Act II. 1-8.
Now these lines are practically a transcript of the opening words of the 47th sonnet in Watson's _Hekatompathia_ published in 1582. Remembering Lyly's penetrating observation that ”the soft droppes of rain pearce the hard marble, many strokes overthrow the tallest oake[68],” and bearing in mind that the high priest of euphuism himself contributed a commendatory epistle to the _Hekatompathia_, we should expect that these Bulls and Hawkes and Oakes were choice flowers of speech, culled from that botanico-zoological ”garden of prose”--the _Euphues_. But as a matter of fact Watson himself informs us in a note that his sonnet is an imitation of the Italian Serafino, from whom he also borrows other sonnet-conceits in the same volume, some of which are full of similar references to the properties of animals and plants. The conclusion is forced upon us therefore that Watson and Lyly went to the same source, or, if a knowledge of Italian cannot be granted to our author, that he borrowed from Watson. At any rate Watson cannot be placed amongst the imitators of _Euphues_. Like Pettie and Gosson he must share with Lyly the credit of creation. He was a friend of Lyly's at Oxford; they dedicated their books to the same patron, and they employed the same publisher. Moreover, the little we have of Watson's prose is highly euphuistic, and it is apparent from the epistle above mentioned that he was on terms of closest intimacy with the author of _Euphues_. In him we have another member of that interesting circle of Oxford euphuists, who continued their connexion in London under de Vere's patronage.
[68] _Euphues_, p. 337.
Watson again was a friend of the well-known poet Richard Barnefield, who though too young in 1578 to have been of the University coterie of euphuists, shows definite traces of their affectation in his works. The conventional ill.u.s.trations from an ”unnatural natural history” abound in his _Affectionate Shepherd_[69] (1594), and he repeats the jargon about marble and showers[70] which we have seen in Lyly, Watson and Kyd. Again in his _Cynthia_ (1594) there is a distinct reference to the opening words of _Euphues_ in the lines,
”Wit without wealth is bad, yet counted good; Wealth wanting wisdom's worse, yet deemed as well[71].”
His prose introduction betrays the same influence.