M. W. MacCallum, Shakespeare's Roman Plays and their Background

---

---

3. English Followers of the French School.

The Wounds of Civil War

The Marc Antoine is the best tragedy on a Roman theme, and one of the best imitations of Seneca that France in the sixteenth century has to show. It deserved to find admirers on the other side of the Channel, and it did. Among the courtly and cultured circles in whose eyes the Latin drama was the ideal and criterion to which all poets should aspire [p. 45] and by which their achievements should be tested, it was bound to call forth no little enthusiasm. In England ere this similar attempts had been made and welcomed, but none had been quite so moving and interesting, above all none had conformed so strictly to the formal requirements of the humanist code. In Gorboduc, the first of these experiments, Sidney, lawgiver of the elect, was pleased to admit the “honest civility” and “skilful poetry,” but his praises were not without qualification:

As it is full of stately speeches and well sounding Phrases, clyming to the height of Seneca his stile, and as full of notable moralitie, which it doth most delightfully teach, and so obtayne the very end of Poesie: yet in troth it is very defectious in the circumstaunces: which greeveth mee, because it might not remaine as an exact model of all Tragedies. For it is faulty both in place, and time, the two necessary companions of all corporall actions. For where the stage should alwaies represent but one place, and the uttermost time presupposed in it, should be, both by Aristotles precept, and common reason, but one day: there is both many dayes, and many places, inartificially imagined.¹

Nor in such respects were things much better in the Misfortunes of Arthur, by Thomas Hughes, which was composed in 1587, the year after Sidney's death. But meanwhile France had been blessed with a play at least the equal of these native products in poetry and pathos, and much more observant of the unities that scholars were proclaiming. If the scene was not absolutely unchanged, at least the changes were confined within the area of a single town. If the time was not precisely marked, and in Plutarch's narrative slightly exceeded the orthodox limits, still Garnier had so managed it that the occurrences set forth might easily be conceived to take place in a single day. It seems just the modern play that would have fulfilled the desire of Sidney's heart; and since it was composed in a foreign tongue, what [p. 46] could be more fitting than that Sidney's sister, the famous Countess of Pembroke, who shared so largely in Sidney's literary tastes and literary gifts, should undertake to give it an English form? It may have been on her part a pious offering to his manes, an in 1590, four years after her brother's death, her version was complete.² She was well fitted for her task, and she has discharged it well. Sometimes she may take her liberties, but generally she is wonderfully faithful, and yet neither in diction nor versification is she stiffer than many contemporary writers of original English verse. Here, for instance, is Diomed's eulogy of Cleopatra's charm:

Nought liues so faire. Nature by such a worke
Hir selfe, should seeme, in workmanship hath past.
She is all heau'nlie: neuer any man
But seing hir, was rauish'd with hir sight.
The Allablaster couering of hir face,
The corall colour hir two lipps engraines,
Hir beamie eies, two sunnes of this our world,
Of hir faire haire the fine and flaming golde,
Hir braue streight stature and her winning partes
Are nothing else but fiers, fetters, dartes.
Yet this is nothing to th‘ enchaunting skilles,
Of her coelestiall Sp'rite, hir training speache,
Hir grace, hir Maiestie, and forcing voice,
Whether she it with fingers speache consorte,
Or hearing sceptred kings ambassadors
Answer to eache in his owne language make. This excellently preserves many details as well as

the pervading tone of the original:

Rien ne vit de si beau, Nature semble avoir
Par un ouvrage tel surpassé son pouvoir: [p. 47]
Elle est toute celeste, et ne se voit personne
La voulant contempler, qu'elle ne passionne.
L‘albastre qui blanchist sur son visage saint,
Et le vermeil coral qui ses deux lévres peint,
La clairté de ses yeux, deux soleils de ce monde,
Le fin or rayonnant dessur sa tresse blonde,
Sa belle taille droitte, et ses frians attraits,
Ne sont que feux ardents, que cordes, et que traits.
Mais encor ce n'est rien aupres des artifices
De son esprit divin, ses mignardes blandices,
Sa maiestie, sa grace, et sa forçante voix,
Soit qu'ell‘ la vueille joindre au parler de ses doigts,
Ou que des Rois sceptrez recevant les harangues,
Elle vueille respondre à chacun en leurs langues.

The most notable privilege of which the translation makes use is to soften or refine certain expressions that may have seemed too vigorous to the highbred English lady. This, for example, is her rendering of the lines already quoted in which Antony denounces his voluptuous life:

Careless of uertue, careless of all praise,
Nay, as the fatted swine in filthy mire,
With glutted heart I wallow'd in delights,
All thoughts of honor troden under foote. Similarly, in Cleopatra's closing speech, the original

expression, “mon ame vomissant,” yields to a gentler and not less poetical equivalent:

A thousand kisses, thousand thousand more
Let you my mouth for honor's farewell give:
That, in this office, weake my limmes may growe
Fainting on you, and fourth my soule may flowe.

As the deviations are confined to details, it is not necessary to repeat the account of the tragedy as a whole. These extracts will show that Garnier's Marc Antoine was presented to the English public in a worthy dress; and the adequacy of the workmanship, the appeal to cultivated taste, the prestige [p. 48] of the great Countess as “Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother,” her personal reputation among literary men, procured it immediate welcome and lasting acceptance. Fifteen years after its first publication it had passed through five editions, and must have been a familiar book to Elizabethan readers who cared for such wares. Moreover, it directly evoked an original English play that followed in part the same pattern and treated in part the same theme.

In 1594 appeared the Cleopatra of Samuel Daniel, dedicated to Lady Pembroke with very handsome acknowledgments of the stimulus he had received from her example and with much modest deprecation of the supplement he offered. His muse, he asserts, would not have digressed from the humble task of praising Delia,

had not thy well graced Antony
(Who all alone, having remained long)
Requir'd his Cleopatra's company.

These words suggest that it was not written at once after the Countess's translation: on the other hand there can have been no very long delay, as it was entered for publication in October, 1593. The first complete and authorised edition of Delia along with the Complaint of Rosamond, which Daniel does not mention, had been given to the world in 1592; and we may assume from his own words that the Cleopatra was the next venture of the young author just entering his thirties, and ambitious of a graver kind of fame than he had won by these amatorious exercises. He had no reason to be dissatisfied with the result, and perhaps from the outset his selfdis- paragement was not very genuine. His play was reprinted seven times before his death, and these editions show one complete revision and one thorough recast of the text. Poets are not wont [p. 49] to spend such pains on works that they do not value. The truth is that Daniel's Cleopatra may take its place beside his subsequent Philotas among the best original Senecan tragedies that Elizabethan England produced. Its claims, of course, are almost exclusively literary and hardly at all theatrical, though some of the changes in the final version of 1607 seem meant to give a little mobility to the slow-paced scenes. But from first to last it depends on the elegiac and rhetorical qualities that characterise the whole school, and in its undivided attention to them recalls rather Jodelle's Cleopatre Captive than Garnier's Marc Antoine. The resemblance to the earlier drama is perhaps not accidental. The situation is precisely the same, for the story begins after the death of Antony, and concludes with the account of Cleopatra's suicide. Thus, despite Daniel's statement, his play is not in any true sense a sequel to the one which the Countess had rendered, nor is it the case, as his words insinuate, that in the Antonius Cleopatra still delayed to join her beloved: on the contrary we take leave of her as she is about to expire upon his corpse. So though his patroness's translation may very well have suggested to him his heroine, it could not possibly prescribe to him his argument. And surely after Garnier had shown the more excellent way of treating the subject so as to include both the lovers, this truncated section of the history would not spontaneously occur to any dramatist as the material most proper for his needs. It seems more than likely that Daniel was acquainted with Jodelle's play, and that the precedent it furnished, determined him in his not very happy selection of the final episode to the exclusion of all that went before. A careful comparison of the two Cleopatras supports this view. No doubt in general treatment they differ widely, and most of the coincidences in [p. 50] detail are due to both authors having exploited Plutarch's narrative. But this is not true of all. There are some traits that are not to be accounted for by their common pedigree, but by direct transmission from the one to the other. Thus, to mention the most striking, in Jodelle Seleucus is made to express penitence for exposing the Queen's misstatement about her treasure. There is no authority for this: yet in Daniel the new motif reappears. Of course it is not merely repeated without modification. In Jodelle it is to the chorus that the culprit unbosoms himself; in Daniel it is to Rodon, the false governor who has betrayed Caesarion, and who similarly and no less fictitiously is represented as full of remorse for his more heinous treason. But imitators frequently try in this fashion to vary or heighten the effect by duplicating the roles they borrow; and Daniel has done so in a second instance, when he happened to get his suggestion from Garnier. In the Marc Antoine, as we saw, there is the sententious but quite superfluous figure of the philosopher Philostratus; Daniel retains him without giving him more to do, but places by his side the figure of the equally sententious and superfluous philosopher Arius. In Rodon we have just such another example of gemination. It is safe to say that the contrite Seleucus comes straight from the pages of Jodelle; and his presence, if there were any doubt, serves to establish Daniel's connection with the first French Senecan in the vernacular.

But the Countess's protégé differs from her not only in reverting to an elder model: he distinctly improves on her practice by substituting for her blank verse his own quatrains. The author of the Defence of Ryme showed a right instinct in this. Blank verse is doubtless the better dramatic measure, but these pseudo-Senecan pieces were lyric rather [p. 51] than dramatic, and it was not the most suitable for them. The justice of Daniel's method is proved by its success. He not only carried the experiment successfully through for himself, which might have been a tour de force on the part of the “welllanguaged” poet, but he imposed his metre on successors who were less skilled in managing it, like Sir William Alexander.

Such, then, is the Cleopatra of Daniel, a play that, compared even with the contemporary classical dramas of France, belongs to a bygone phase of the art; a play that is no play at all, but a series of harangues interspersed with odds and ends of dialogue and the due choric songs; but that nevertheless, because it fulfils its own ideal so thoroughly, is admirable in its kind, and still has charms for the lover of poetry.

The first act is occupied with a soliloquy of Cleopatra,³ in which she laments her past pleasure and glory, and proclaims her purpose of death.

Thinke, Caesar, I that liu'd and raign'd a Queene,
Do scorne to buy my life at such a rate,
That I should underneath my selfe be seene,
Basely induring to suruiue my state:
That Rome should see my scepter-bearing hands
Behind me bound, and glory in my teares;
That I should passe whereas Octauia stands,
To view my misery, that purchas'd hers.⁴

She has hitherto lived only to temporise with Caesar for the sake of her children, but to her late-born [p. 52] love for Antony her death is due. She remembers his doting affection, and exclaims:

And yet thou cam'st but in my beauties waine,
When new appearing wrinckles of declining
Wrought with the hand of yeares, seem'd to detaine
My graces light, as now but dimly shining . . .
Then, and but thus, thou didst loue most sincerely,
O Antony, that best deseru'd it better,
This autumn of my beauty bought so dearely,
For which in more then death, I stand thy debter. In the second act Proculeius gives an account of

Cleopatra's capture, and describes her apparent submission, to Caesar, who suspects that it is pretence. In the first scene of the third act Philostratus and Arius philosophise on their own misfortunes, the misfortunes of the land, and the probable fate of Cleopatra's children. The next scene presents the famous interview between Caesar and Cleopatra, with the disclosures of Seleucus, to which are added Dolabella's avowal of his admiration, and Caesar's decision to carry his prisoner to Rome. In the fourth act Seleucus, who has betrayed the confidence of his mistress, bewails his disloyalty, to Rodon, who has delivered up Caesarion to death; but they depart to avoid Cleopatra, whom Dolabella has informed of the victor's intentions, and who enters, exclaiming:

What, hath my face yet powre to win a louer?
Can this torn remnant serue to grace me so,
That it can Caesar's secret plots discouer,
What he intends with me and mine to do?
Why then, poore beauty, thou hast done thy last
And best good seruice thou could'st doe unto me:
For now the time of death reueal'd thou hast,
Which in my life didst serue but to undoe me.

In the first scene of the fifth act Titius tells how Cleopatra has sent a message to Caesar, and in the second scene we learn the significance of this from the Nuntius, who himself has taken her the asps. [p. 53]

Well, in I went, where brighter then the Sunne,
Glittering in all her pompeous rich aray,
Great Cleopatra sate, as if sh‘ had wonne
Caesar, and all the world beside, this day:
Euen as she was, when on thy cristall streames,
Cleare Cydnos, she did shew what earth could shew:
When Asia all amaz'd in wonder, deemes
Venus from heauen was come on earth below.
Euen as she went at firste to meete her loue,
So goes she now againe to finde him.
But that first, did her greatnes onely proue,
This last her loue, that could not liue behind him.

Her words to the asp are not without a quaint pathetic tenderness, as she contrasts the “ugly grimness” and “hideous torments” of other deaths with this that it procures:

Therefore come thou, of wonders wonder chiefe,
That open canst with such an easie key
The doore of life: come gentle cunning thiefe
That from our selues so steal'st our selues away.

And her dallying with the accepted and inevitable end is good:

Looke how a mother at her sonnes departing,
For some farre voyage bent to get him fame,
Doth entertaine him with an ydle parting
And still doth speake, and still speaks but the same:
Now bids farewell, and now recalles him backe,
Tels what was told, and bids againe farewell,
And yet againe recalles; for still doth lacke
Something that Loue would faine and cannot tell:
Pleased he should goe, yet cannot let him goe.
So she, although she knew there was no way
But this, yet this she could not handle so
But she must shew that life desir'd delay.

But this is little more than by-play and make-believe. She does the deed, and when Caesar's messengers arrive, it is past prevention.

For there they found stretcht on a bed of gold,
Dead Cleopatra; and that proudly dead,
In all the rich attire procure she could;
And dying Charmion trimming of her head, [p. 54]
And Eras at her feete, dead in like case.
“Charmion, is this well done?“ sayd one of them.
“Yea, well,“ sayd she, “and her that from the race
Of so great Kings descends, doth best become.“
And with that word, yields to her faithfull breath
To passe th‘ assurance of her loue with death.

One more example of the influence of the French Senecans remains to be mentioned, and though, as a translation, it is less important than Daniel's free reproduction, the name of the translator gives it a special interest. The stately rhetoric of the Cornélie caught the fancy of Thomas Kyd, who from the outset had found something sympathetic in Garnier's style, and, perhaps in revolt from the sensationalism of his original work, he wrote an English version which was published in 1594. When this was so, it need the less surprise us that the Senecan form should still for years to come be cultivated by writers who had seen the glories of the Elizabethan stage, above all for what would seem the peculiarly appropriate themes of classic history: that Alexander should employ it for his Julius Caesar and the rest of his Monarchic Tragedies even after Shakespeare's Julius Caesar had appeared, and that Ben Jonson himself should, as it were, cast a wistful, backward glance at it in his Catiline, which he supplies, not only with a chorus, but with a very Senecan exposition by Sylla's ghost. If this style appealed to the author of The Spanish Tragedy, it might well appeal to the more fastidious connoisseurs in whom the spirit of the Renaissance was strong. It was to them Kyd looked for patronage in his new departure and he dedicates his Cornelia to the Countess of Suffolk, aunt of the more memorable lady who had translated the Marc Antoine.

In execution it hardly equals the companion piece: the language is less flexible and graphic, and the whole effect more wearisome; which, however, may [p. 55] be due in part to the inferior merit of the play Kyd had to render, as well as to the haste with which the rendering was made. But he aims at preserving the spirit of the French, and does preserve it in no small degree. The various metres of the chorus are managed with occasional dexterity; the rhyme that is mingled with the blank verse of the declamation relieves the tedium of its somewhat monotonous tramp, and adds point and effectiveness. A fair specimen of his average procedure may be found in his version of the metaphorical passage in Cassius' speech, that, as has been pointed out, can be traced back to Grévin and Muretus.

The stiff-neckt horses champe not on the bit
Nor meekely beare the rider but by force:
The sturdie Oxen toyle not at the Plough
Nor yeeld unto the yoke, but by constraint.
Shall we then that are men and Romains borne,
Submit us to unurged slauerie?
Shall Rome, that hath so many ouerthrowne
Now make herselfe a subject to her owne?

⁵ Kyd was certainly capable of emphasis, both in the good and the bad sense, which stands him in good stead when he has to reproduce the passages adapted from Lucan. These he generally presents in something of their native pomp, and indeed throughout he shows a praiseworthy effort to keep on the level of his author. The result is a grave and decorous performance, which, if necessarily lacking in distinctive colour, since the original had so little, is almost equally free from modern incongruities. It can hardly be reckoned as such that Scipio grasps his “cutlass,” or that in similar cases the equivalent for a technical Latin term should have a homely sound. Perhaps the most serious anachronism [p. 56] occurs when Cicero, talking of “this great town” of Rome, exclaims:

Neither could the flaxen-haird high Dutch,
(A martiall people, madding after Armes),
Nor yet the fierce and fiery humord French . . .
Once dare t'assault it.

Garnier is not responsible: he writes quite correctly:

Ny les blons Germains, peuple enrage de guerre,
Ny le Gaulois ardent.

This, however, is a very innocent slip. It was different when another scholar of the group to which Kyd belonged treated a Roman theme in a more popular way.

But before turning to him it may be well to say a word concerning the influence which these Senecan pieces are sometimes supposed to have had on Shakespeare's Roman plays that dealt with kindred themes.

And in the first place it may be taken as extremely probable that he had read them. They were well known to the Elizabethan public, the least famous of them, Kyd's Cornelia, reaching a second edition within a year of its first issue. They were executed by persons who must have bulked large in Shakespeare's field of vision. Apart from her general social and literary reputation, the Countess of Pembroke was mother of the two young noblemen to whom the first folio of Shakespeare's plays was afterwards dedicated on the ground that they had “prosequutted both them and the author living with so much favour.” Some of Daniel's works Shakespeare certainly knew, for there are convincing parallelisms between the Complaint of Rosamond on the one hand, and the Rape of Lucrece and Romeo and Juliet on the other; nor can there be much question about the indebtedness of Shakespeare's Sonnets to Daniel's Delia. Again, with Kyd's acting dramas Shakespeare was [p. 57] undoubtedly acquainted. He quotes The Spanish Tragedy in the Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear; and the same play, as well as Solyman and Perseda, if that be Kyd's, in King John: nor is it to be forgotten that many see Kyd's hand and few would deny Kyd's influence in Titus Andronicus, and that some attribute to him the losthe lost Hamlet. All these things considered, ShakespShakespeare's ignorance of the English Senecans would be much more surprising than his knowledge of them. Further, though his own method was so dissimilar, he would be quite inclined to appreciate them, as may be inferred from the approval he puts in Hamlet's mouth of Aeneas' tale to Dido, which reads like a heightened version of the narratives that occur so plentifully in their pages. So there is nothing antecedently absurd in the conjecture that they gave him hints when he turned to their authorities on his own behalf.

Nevertheless satisfactory proof is lacking. The analogies with Garnier's Marc Antoine not accounted for by the obligation of both dramatists to Plutarch are very vague, and oddly enough seem vaguer in the translation than in the original. Of this there is a good example in Antony's words when he recalls to his shame how his victor

Dealt on lieutenantry, and no practice had
In the brave squares of war.

Ant. 3. 10. 39.

There is similarity of motif, and even the suggestion of something more, in his outburst in Garnier:

Un home effeminé de corps et de courage
Qui du mestier de Mars n'apprist oncque l'usage.

But only the motif is left in the Countess of Pembroke's rendering:

A man, a woman both in might and minde,
In Marses schole who neuer lesson learn'd.

[p. 58] The alleged parallels are thus most apparent when Shakespeare is collated with the French, and of these the chief that do not come from Plutarch have already been quoted in the description of the Marc Antoine. They are neither numerous nor striking. Besides Antony's disparagement of his rival's soldiership there are only three that in any way call for remark. In Garnier, Cleopatra's picture of her shade wandering beneath the cypress trees of the Underworld may suggest, in Shakespeare, her lover's anticipation of Elysium, “where souls do couch on flowers” (A. and C. IV. xiv. 5 ); but there is a great difference in the tone of the context. Her dying utterance:

Que de mille baisers, et mille et mille encore
Pour office dernier ma bouche vous honore: is in the wording not unlike the dying utterance of

Antony:

Of many thousand kisses the poor last
I lay upon thy lips;

Ant. 4. 15. 20.

but there is more contrast than agreement in the ideas. Above all, Cleopatra's horror at the thought of her children being led in triumph through Rome and pointed at by the herd of citizens is close akin to the feeling that inspires similar passages in Shakespeare (A. and C. IV. xv. 23, V. ii. 55, v. ii. 207); but even here the resemblance is a little deceptive, since in Shakespeare she feels this horror for herself.

The correspondences between Shakespeare and Daniel are equally confined to detail, but they are more definite and more significant. It is Daniel who first represents Cleopatra as scorning to be made a spectacle in Rome; and her resentment at Caesar's supposing

That I should underneath my selfe be seene,

[p. 59] might have expressed itself in Shakespeare's phrase,

He words me, girls, he words me, that I should not
Be noble to myself.

Ant. v. ii. 191.

Noteworthy, too, in the same passage, is her reluctance to pass before the injured Octavia, for there is no mention of this point in Plutarch, but Shakespeare touches on it twice. Further, her very noticeable references to her waning charms, her wrinkles, her declining years have their analogies in Shakespeare and in Shakespeare alone; for Plutarch expressly says that she was “at the age when a woman's beawtie is at the prime.” The tenderness in tone of her address to the asp is common and peculiar to both English poets; and her adornment in preparation for death suggests to each of them, but not to Plutarch, her magnificence when she met Antony on the Cydnus.⁶

These coincidences are interesting, but they are not conclusive. They are none of them such as could not occur independently to two writers who vividly realised the meaning of Plutarch's data; for he, as it were, gives the premises though he does not draw the inference. Thus he says nothing of Cleopatra's disdain for the Roman populace, but he does make the knowledge that she must go to Rome determine her to die. He says nothing of her recoil from the thought of Octavia seeing her in her humiliation, but he does tell us of her jealousy of Octavia's superior claims. He never hints that Cleopatra was past her bloom, but his praise of her as at her prime belongs to 41 B.C., and the closing incident to 30 B.C., when she was in her thirtyninth year. He does not attribute to her any kindly greeting of the asp, but he does report that she chose it as providing the easiest and gentlest [p. 60] means of death. And though in describing her suicide he makes no reference to the meeting on the Cydnus, he dwells on the glorious array on both occasions, and the fancy naturally flies from one to the other. Each of these particulars separately might well suggest itself to more than one sympathetic reader. The most that can be said is that in their mass they have a certain cogency. In any case, however, characteristic and far-reaching as some of them are, they bear only on details of the conception.

The possible connection of Julius Caesar with the Cornélie is of a somewhat different kind. It is restricted almost entirely to the conversations between Cassius and Decimus Brutus on the one hand, and between Cassius and Marcus Brutus on the other. It is thought to show itself partly in particular expressions, partly in the general situation. So far as the former are concerned, it is neither precise nor distinctive; and it is rather remarkable that, as in the case of the Marc Antoine, more is to be said for it when Shakespeare's phraseology is compared with that of the original than when it is compared with that of the translation.⁷ In regard to the latter M. Bernage, the chief advocate of the theory, writes:

In the English play (Julius Caesar), as in our own, Brutus and Cassius have an interview before the arrival of the Dictator; the subject of their conversation is the same; it is Cassius too “who strikes so much show of fire” (“fait jaillir l'etincelle”) from the soul of Brutus. . . . These characters are painted by Garnier in colours quite similar (to Shakespeare's), and he is momentarily as vigorous and great. In like manner. . . Caesar crosses the stage after the interview of the two conspirators; he is moreover accompanied by Antony.⁸

In the whole tone and direction of the dialogue, too, Shakespeare resembles Garnier and does not [p. 61] resemble Plutarch. The Life records one short sentence as Brutus' part of the colloquy, while Cassius does nothing more than explain the importance of the anonymous letters and set forth the expectations that Rome has formed of his friend. There is no denunciation in Plutarch of Caesar either for his overgrown power or for his “feeble temper”; there is no lament for the degeneracy of the Romans; there is no reference to the expulsion of the kings or appeal to Brutus' ancestry; all of these matters on which both the dramatists insist. And at the end the two friends are agreed on their policy and depart to prosecute their plans, while in Garnier as in Shakespeare Brutus comes to no final decision.

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

Here the matter may rest. The grounds for believing that Shakespeare was influenced by Garnier's Marc Antoine are very slight; for believing that he was influenced by Daniel's Cleopatra are somewhat stronger; that he was influenced by Garnier's Cornélie are stronger still; but they are even at the best precarious. In all three instances the evidence brought forward rather suggests the obligation as possible than establishes it as certain. But it seems extremely likely that Shakespeare would be acquainted with dramas that were widely read and were written by persons none of whom can have been strange to him; and in that case their stateliness and propriety may have affected him in other ways than we can trace or than he himself knew. [p. 62]

Meanwhile the popular play had been going its own way, and among other subjects had selected a few from Roman history. We may be certain that slowly and surely it was absorbing some of the qualities that characterised the imitations of the classics; and this process was accelerated when university men, with Marlowe at their head, took a leading share in purveying for the London playhouse. The development is clearly marked in the general history of the drama. Of the Roman play in this transition phase, as treated by a scholar for the delectation of the vulgar, we have only one specimen, but it is a specimen that despite its scanty merit is important no less for the name of the author than for the mode of the treatment. That author was Thomas Lodge, so well known for his songs, novels, pamphlets, and translations. As dramatist he is less conspicuous, and we possess only two plays from his hand. In one of them, A Looking Glass for London and England, which gives a description of the corruption and repentance of Nineveh, and was acted in 1591, he co-operated with Robert Greene. Of the other,⁹ The Wounds of Civill War: Lively set forth in the true Tragedies of Marius and Scilla: As it hath beene publicquely plaide in London, by the Right Honourable the Lord High Admirall his Servants, he was sole author, and it is with it that we are concerned. It was printed in 1594, but was probably composed some years earlier.¹⁰ In [p. 63] any case it comes after the decisive appearance of Marlowe; but Lodge was far from rivalling that master or profiting fully by his example, and indeed is inferior to such minor performers as Peele or Greene. Moreover, in the present case he adds to his general dramatic disabilities, the incapacity to treat classical history aright. In this respect, indeed, he improves on the Senecan school by borrowing graphic minutiae from Plutarch, such as the prefiguration of Marius' future glory in his infancy by the seven eagles, the account of the Gaul's panic in Minturnae, or the unwilling betrayal of Antonius by the slave. But on the other hand he astonishes us by his failure to make use of picturesque incidents which he must have known; like Sulla's flight for shelter to his rival's house, the relief of Marius by the woman whom he had sentenced, the response of the exile from the ruins of Carthage. And even [p. 64] when he utilises Plutarch's touches, Lodge is apt to weaken or travesty them in his adaptation. The incident of the eagles, though it furnishes two of the best passages in the play, illustrates the enfeeblement. Plutarch had said:

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

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

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

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

Bright was the day, and on the spreading trees
The frolic citizens of forest sung
Their lays and merry notes on perching boughs;
When suddenly appeared in the east
Seven mighty eagles with their talons fierce,
Who, waving oft above our consul's head,
At last with hideous cry did soar away:
When suddenly old Marius aghast,
With reverend smile, determined with a sigh
The doubtful silence of the standers-by. [p. 65]
“Romans,“ he said, “old Marius must die:
These seven fair eagles, birds of mighty Jove,
That at my birthday on my cradle sat,
Now at my last day warn me to my death.“

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

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

Now when they were agreed upon it, they could not finde a man in the citie that durst take upon him to kill him; but a man of armes of the Gaules, or one of the Cimbres (for we finde both the one or the other in wryting) that went thither with his sword drawen in his hande. Now that place of the chamber where Marius lay was very darke, and, as it is reported, the man of armes thought he sawe two burninge flames come out of Marius eyen, and heard a voyce out of that darke corner, saying unto him: ‘O, fellowe, thou, darest thou come to kill Caius Marius?’ The barbarous Gaule, hearing these words, ranne out of the chamber presently, castinge his sworde in the middest of the flower,¹¹ and crying out these wordes onely: ‘I can not kill Caius Marius.’

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

Pedro.
Marius tu es mort. Speak dy preres in dy sleepe, for me sal cut off your head from your epaules, before you wake. Qui es stia? ¹² What kinde of a man be dis?

Favorinus.
Why, what delays are these? Why gaze ye thus?

Pedro.
Notre dame! Jésu! Estiene! O my siniors, der be a great diable in ce eyes, qui dart de flame, and with de voice d‘un bear cries out, “Villain, dare you kill Marius?” Je tremble; aida me, siniors, autrement I shall be murdered.

Pausanins.
What sudden madness daunts this stranger thus?

Pedro.
O me no can kill Marius; me no dare kill Marius! adieu, messieurs, me be dead, si je touche Marius. Marius est un diable. Jesu Maria, sava moy! exit fugiens.

[p. 66]

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

O most surpassing wine,
The marrow of the vine!
More welcome unto me
Than whips to scholars be.
Thou art, and ever was,
A means to mend an ass;
Thou makest some to sleep,
And many mo to weep,
And some be glad and merry.
With heigh down derry, derry.
Thou makest some to stumble
A many mo to fumble
And me have pinky neyne.¹³
More brave and jolly wine!
What need I praise thee mo,
For thou art good, with heigh-ho! . . . (To the Soldiers):

You would know where Lord Antony is? I perceive you.
Shall I say he is in yond farm-house? I deceive you.
Shall I tell you this wine is for him? The gods forfend.
And so I end.

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

Curtall
And are you no more master-dixcator, nor generality of the soldiers?

Sylla.
My powers do cease, my titles are resign'd. [p. 67]

Curtail.
Have you signed your titles? O base mind, that being in the Paul's steeple of honour, hast cast thyself into the sink of simplicity. Fie, beast!

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

Poppy.
Nay, goodman Curtall, your discretions are very simple; let me cramp him with a reason. Sirrah, whether is better good ale or small-beer? Alas! see his simplicity that cannot answer me; why, I say ale.

Curtall.
And so say I, neighbour.

Poppy.
Thou hast reason; ergo, say I, ‘tis better be a king than a clown. Faith, Master Sylla, I hope a man may now call ye knave by authority.

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

Marius.
Thus Marius lives disdain'd of all the gods,

Echo.
Gods!

Marius.
With deep despair late overtaken wholly.

Echo.
O lie!

Marius.
And will the heavens be never well appeased?

Echo.
Appeased.

Marius.
What mean have they left me to cure my smart?

Echo.
Art.

Marius.
>Nought better fits old Marius' mind then war.

Echo.
Then, war!

Marius.
Then full of hope, say, Echo, shall I go?

Echo.
Go!

Marius.
Is any better fortune then at hand?

Echo.
At hand.

Marius.
Then farewell, Echo, gentle nymph, farewell.

Echo.
Fare well.

Marius.
(soliloquises)
O pleasing folly to a pensive man!

[p. 68] Yet Lodge was a competent scholar who was by and by to translate The Famous and Memourable Workes of Josephus, a Man of Much Honour and Learning among the Jewes, and the Works both Moral and Natural of Lucius Annaeus Seneca. And already in this play he makes Sylla's genius, invisible to all, summon him in Latin Elegiacs audible only to him. If then the popular scenes in Shakespeare's Roman plays do not make a very Roman impression, it should be remembered that he is punctilious in comparison with the University gentleman who preceded him. Nor did the fashion of popularising antique themes with vulgar frippery from the present die out when Shakespeare showed a more excellent way. There is something of very much the same kind in Heywood's Rape of Lucrece which was published in 1608.

But these superficial laches are not the most objectionable things in the play. There is nothing organic in it. Of course its neglect of the unities of time and place is natural and right, but it is careless of unity in structure or even in portraiture. The canvas is crowded with subordinate figures who perplex the action without producing a vivid impression of their own characters. A few are made distinct by insistence on particular traits, like Octavius with his unbending civic virtue, or Antonius with his “honey-dropping” and rather ineffectual eloquence, or Lepidus with his braggard temporising. The only one of them who has real individuality is the younger Marius, insolent, fierce, and cruel, but full of energy and filial affection, and too proud to survive his fortunes. He perhaps is the most consistent and sympathetic person in the piece; which of itself is a criticism, for he occupies a much less important place than the two principals, expressly announced as the heroes in the title-page. It is difficult even to guess the intention of the [p. 69] author in this delineation of them, and in any case the result is not pleasing. Marius, despite a certain amount of tough fortitude--which for the rest is not so indomitable as in Plutarch-and a rude magnanimity displayed in the imaginary scene with Sylla's daughter and wife, is far from attractive; and it comes as a surprise that after all his violence and vindictiveness he should meet his death “with a reverend smile” in placid resignation. But with Sylla matters are worse. He would be altogether repulsive but for his courage, and Lodge seems to explain him and his career only by appealing to his own adopted epithet of Felix or Fortunate. His last words are:

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

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

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

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

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

To his wife, who soon after asks:

How fares my lord? How doth my gentle Sylla?

he replies still more devoutly:

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

[p. 70] There is thus no meaning in the story. The rival leaders are equally responsible for the Wounds of Civil War, but end as happily as though they had been benefactors of society. And this is by no means presented as an example of tragic irony, in which case something might be said for it, but as the natural, fitting, and satisfactory conclusion. Yet Plutarch tells of Marius' sleeplessness, drunkenness, and perturbation, and of Sylla's debaucheries and disease. These were hints, one might have thought, that would have suited the temper of an Elizabethan dramatist; but Lodge passes them over.

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

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

Yet Lodge's play is probably as good as any of those based on Roman History till Shakespeare turned his attention to such subjects. The titles of a number of others have come down to us. Some of these are of early date and may have approximated to the type of Apius and Virginia. Others would attempt the style of Seneca, either after the crude fashion of Gorboduc or subsequently under the better guidance of the French practitioners; and among these later Senecans were distinguished men like Lord Brooke, who destroyed a tragedy on [p. 71] Antony and Cleopatra in 1601, and Brandon, whose Vertuous Octavia, written in 1598, still survives.¹⁴ In others again there may have been an anticipation or imitation of the more popular manner of Lodge. But the fact that they were never published, or have been lost, or, in one or two cases where isolated copies are extant, have not been thought worth reprinting, affords a presumption that their claims are inferior, and that in them no very characteristic note is struck. It is pretty safe to suppose that they did not contain much instruction for Shakespeare, and that none of them would bridge the gap between Lodge's medley and Shakespeare's masterpiece.

The progress made since the middle of the century was, of course, considerable. A pioneer performance, like Apius and Virginia, had the merit of pushing beyond the landmarks of the old Morality, and of bringing Roman story within the ken of English playgoers, but it did nothing more. It treated this precisely as it might have treated any other subject, and looked merely to the lesson, though, no doubt, it sought to make the lesson palatable with such dramatic condiments as the art of the day supplied. The Senecans, inspired by the Octavia, make a disinterested effort to detach and set forth the conception of old Roman greatness, as it was given that age to understand it, and these productions show no impropriety and much literary skill, but the outlines and colours are too vague to admit of reality or life. Lodge is realistic enough in his way, but it is by sacrificing what is significant and characteristic, and submerging the majesty of ancient Rome in the banalities and trivialities of his own time. No dramatist had been able at once to rise to the [p. 72] grandeur of the theme and keep a foothold on solid earth, to reconcile the claims of the ideal and the real, the past and the present. That was left for Shakespeare to do. [p. 73]