■ma 
 
I&CHJLNG.. 
 
 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 of the Age of Elizabeth 
 
 A THESIS 
 
 Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the 
 
 University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfilment 
 
 of the Requirements for the Degree of 
 
 Doctor of Philosophy 
 
 BY 
 HARRIET MANNING BLAKE 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 Steinman & Foltz, 
 lancaster, pa. 
 
Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 of the Age of Elizabeth 
 
 A THESIS 
 
 Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the 
 
 University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfilment 
 
 of the Requirements for the Degree of 
 
 Doctor of Philosophy 
 
 BY 
 
 HARRIET MANNING BLAKE 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 STEINMAN & FOLTZ, 
 
 LANCASTER, PA. 
 
That this study has been a pleasure is due 
 to the continual encouragement and the 
 generous criticism of Professor Felix E. 
 Schelling, who has been its inspiration. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction 5 
 
 I. Plays on Classic Subjects before 1642 8 
 
 II. Classification 12 
 
 III. The Rise of Opera, and Plays with Classic Titles between 
 
 1642 and 1700 25 
 
 IV. The Myth of (Enone and The Arraignment of Paris by 
 
 George Peele 39 
 
 V. The Cupid and Psyche Myth and Love's Mistress by Thomas 
 
 Heywood 49 
 
 VI. The Myth of Phaeton and The Sun's Darling by Ford and 
 
 Dekker 61 
 
 List of Plays 68 
 
 Bibliography 73 
 
 Index 79 
 
 25349G 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 Microsoft Corporation 
 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/classicmythinpoeOOblakrich 
 
Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama of the 
 Age of Elizabeth 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Long after medieval times, allegory remained in England. As 
 the delighted reader of the Faerie Queene, recognized in the 
 Red Cross Knight, a loyal subject of England's Virgin Queen, 
 so those who saw the court plays of John Lyly found the same 
 radiant opportunity. Here, the dazzling heroes of old, re-dis- 
 covered in the new heritage of Greek and Roman story, played 
 parts invested with an added interest, for they "shadowed 
 forth" the familiar figures of the court of Elizabeth. In the 
 Endimion and the Midas of Lyly, classic myth appeared, yet 
 speaking the language and the thoughts of the audience itself. 
 This kind of association of the old with the new always gives 
 satisfaction, while classic myth lends itself to the spectacular, 
 and was thus an eminently fitting theme for court plays. Lyly's 
 influence reached down through the entertainments of Daniel 
 and the masques of Jonson, while classic myth always remained 
 a favorite subject. In the Lord Mayors' Pageants 1 also myth 
 easily came to be the popular medium of appeal, and each year 
 from 1580 to 1639 we find the merchant adventurers and the 
 mariners of England glorified into classical or national heroes. 
 The allegory was so arranged as to glorify, not only the com- 
 pany or the Lord Mayor of London as the seat of commerce, 
 but also the riches procured by trade. Hence Jason and the 
 Golden Fleece, Neptune and his Tritons, Ulysses and the Sy- 
 rens, with Scylla and Charybdis, became familiar personages, 
 while many of the other Olympians figure in the thirty page- 
 
 1 Felix E. Schelling: The Elizabethan Drama, Vol. II, p. 128. Also Fair- 
 holt: Lord Mayors' Pageants, Percy Society, Vol. X. 
 
 5 
 
Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 
 ants that have come down to us. In Masque, and Court 
 Play, and Pageant, we realize how strong a hold allegory still 
 kept upon the imagination. 
 
 The reason for the choice of classic myth is very simple. Not 
 only does it offer opportunity for spectacle, but myth, which is "in 
 its origin, an explanation, by the uncivilized mind, of some natural 
 phenomenon" 1 offers a wealth of material for that ethical inter- 
 pretation of phenomena which is at the heart of allegory. "Les 
 facultes qui engendrent la mythologie sont les memes que celles 
 qui engendrent la philosophic, et ce n'est pas sans raison que 
 l'lnde et la Grece nous presentent le phenomene de la plus riche 
 mythologie a cotede la plus profondemetaphysique," says Renan. 
 He adds: "La conception de la multiplicity dans l'univers, c'est 
 le polytheisme chez les peuples enfant; c'est la science chez les 
 peuples arrives a l'&ge mur." 2 We might add that allegory falls 
 between these two ages, at the time when moral lesson holds its 
 fascination. That age lasted in England long after the moralities, 
 and it delighted especially in the pageants and the masques in 
 which, side by side with the growing national spirit, there came 
 down this delight in allegory and in ethical interpretation. 
 
 Yet while Lyly was entertaining the court, a play by a vei 
 young man, fresh from the University, George Peele, was given 
 before the Queen by the children of the Chapel Royal in 1584. 
 In his Arraignment of Paris, Peele used the familiar myth of the 
 Judgment of Paris, and cleverly, at the end, he changed the story, 
 in order to pay a graceful compliment to the Queen. This was not 
 allegory; it was simply a pretty turn of the fable for an aesthetic 
 purpose. The ethical intent had given place to the aesthetic. 
 There seems to be no great difference in kind between Lylys 
 court plays and Peele's Arraignment of Paris, and Peele's debt 
 to the older playwright has been emphasized often; but there is 
 this vital difference, that while Lyly's drama is allegorical in 
 spirit and ethical in intent, the younger playright has turned 
 aside, and poured out his poetry in the simple spirit of beauty. 
 Years afterwards, a little play, The Sun's Darling appeared, with 
 
 1 John Fiske: Myths and Myth-makers. (1873), p. 21. 
 2 Renan: Histoire Generate des Langues Semitiques (1863), Premiere 
 Partie, p. 9. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 7 
 
 the names of Ford and Dekker on the title page. This, too, is 
 filled with the aesthetic spirit. It is poetic drama. The ethical 
 and the aesthetic intent must ever be distinct. 
 
 Notwithstanding the fact that myth abounds in Court Play, 
 and Masque, and Pageant, the present study excludes them all, 
 and confines itself to classic myth as it appears in poetic drama. 
 Yet a larger view of the same period seems wise, and the history 
 of classic subjects for plays in England from the 16th to the 18th 
 centuries, and of the source of these classic subjects seems neces- 
 sary in order to afford a true perspective. In the larger review, 
 not only the myths of Greece and Rome as they appear in English 
 drama have been considered, but classic story as well. The line 
 between story and myth is sometimes hard to draw, and except 
 that there is a true myth at the heart of each of the poetic dramas 
 of which especial study has been made, there has been no attempt 
 to separate myth from out the classic store of story as it came 
 down to us in the drama of the Elizabethan period. 
 
Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Plays on Classic Subjects before 1642. 
 
 Before 1642, at least twenty-nine classic subjects and fifty - 
 nine plays appeared. Five extant plays bear witness to the 
 popularity of Hercules as a hero, of which two, Hercules (Etceus 
 and Hercules Furens, appeared in Thomas Newton's Seneca 
 his Tenne Tragedies Translated into English, 1581. 1 The third 
 play, The Birth of Hercules, 2 is a "translation, now free, now 
 rather close, of the Amphitruo of Plautus, " although "nearly 
 one-third of the English play is entirely original." The Birth 
 of Hercules belongs to a period before 1610. 3 The two most 
 popular dramas on this subject were, however, those mentioned 
 by Henslowe, as "Hercules, Pt. I. Performed by the Admiral's 
 men 7 May 1595 and then till 6 Jan. 1595-6 — 11 performances," 
 and "Pt. II — Performed as a new play 23 May 1595 and thence 
 till 25 Nov. 1598 — 8 performances." 4 These have been gen- 
 erally accepted as Thomas Hey wood's Silver and Bronze Ages, 
 respectively. In 1592, Greene, in his Groatsworth of Wit, men- 
 tions a sixth play, The Twelve Labours of Hercules. 5 
 
 Of Dido plays, there remain two, the Latin Tragedy by Wil- 
 liam Gager, 1583, reprinted in Dyce's Marlowe, and the Dido, 
 Queen of Carthage of Marlowe and Nash, 1591; but there are 
 others which have not come down to us. Nichols mentions a 
 Latin Tragedy as having been acted at Cambridge in 1564, 6 and 
 Henslowe, a Dido and JEneas, 1598, 7 which Collier thought a re- 
 
 1 Edited by the Spenser Society, 1887. 
 
 * Edited, 1903, by Malcolm W. Wallace. 
 
 * M. W. Wallace: The Birth of Hercules, p. 168. 
 4 Greg's Henslowe Papers, Vol. II, p. 175. 
 
 *Grosart: The Life and Works of Robert Greene, Vol. XII, pp. 131, 132. 
 
 6 Nichols: Elizabeth, Vol. I, p. 245. 
 
 7 Greg's Henslowe, Vol. II, pp. 189, 190. See also J. Friedrich: Dido- 
 Dramen 1888. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 9 
 
 vival of Marlowe and Nash's tragedy, but which Fleay thinks 
 belonged to Jonson. 1 In addition to these, a Dido and JEneas, an 
 interlude, was apparently performed at Chester. 2 
 
 There were four plays on the tragedy of Orestes and four 
 Troys, two of these being tremendously popular — although it is 
 difficult to understand the reason — the parts one and two of the 
 Iron Age 3 of Hey wood. There were three Agamemnons, three 
 Ajaxes, and three Iphigenias. The tragedy of (Edipus was 
 twice translated, and there were two Antigones, two Atalantas, 
 and two Medeas. The Golden Fleece, however, although 
 touched upon by Hey wood, 4 was reserved for Lord Mayors' 
 Pageants, in which the "Sea-dogs" of Elizabethan times, es- 
 pecially Drake, "England's true Jason," were idealized as hav- 
 ing gone out, not in search of slaves or of Spanish gold, but to 
 gain the Golden Fleece. Yet as early as 1566, 5 we find the 
 Stationers' Registers recording "The Story of Jason, howe he 
 gotte the golden fleece, and howe he did begyle Medea out of 
 latin into Englisshe by nycholas Whyte. " Among the lighter 
 themes, Narcissus, Cupid and Psyche, Actseon and Diana, 
 Jupiter and Io, Apollo and Daphne appear. 
 
 There are frequent evidences of familiarity with the stories of 
 Ovid's Metamorphoses in Elizabethan times. An interesting example 
 occurs in a letter of the Spanish Ambassador, De Silva, to Philip 
 II, on 12 March, 1565. "On the 5th instant the party of the 
 Earl of Leicester gave a supper to the Queen in the palace. * * * 
 When this was ended, we went to the Queen's rooms and descend- 
 ed to where all was prepared for the representation of a comedy 
 in English, of which I understood just so much as the Queen told 
 me. The plot was founded on the question of marriage, discussed 
 between Juno and Diana, Juno advocating marriage, and Diana, 
 chastity. Jupiter gave a verdict in favor of matrimony after 
 many things had passed on both sides in defense of the respective 
 arguments. The Queen turned to me and said, 'This is all 
 
 1 Schelling: Elizabethan Drama, Vol. II, pp. 18, 19. 
 2 Hazlitt's Manual, p. 64. 
 
 8 Schelling: Elizabethan Drama, Vol. II, p. 20, and Greg's Henslowe, Vol. 
 II, p. 202. 
 4 The Brazen Age, Act I. 
 6 Arber's Stationers' Register, Vol. I, p. 299. 
 
io Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 against me.' After the comedy, there was a masquerade of 
 satyrs and wild gods, who danced with the ladies." 1 In 1578, 
 Francis Meres wrote of Shakespeare: "As the Soul of Euphor- 
 bus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweete, wittie soule 
 of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare;" 2 and 
 Ovid's Metamorphoses divides the palm with Painter's Palace of 
 Pleasure as, after North's Plutarch and Holinshed'sC/^wwc/e, the 
 most important source of Shakespeare's work. 3 Robert Greene, 
 in his Mamillia* 1583, suggests the sources of his knowledge of 
 the persons of classic myth to whom he refers so frequently, as the 
 "Roman records or Grecian histories, either fained fables or true 
 tales." His romantic regard for woman, and his knowledge of 
 the evil in the world are alike fortified by his readings in ancient 
 story. "The fairest face," he says, "hath oft times the falsest 
 heart, and the comeliest creature most currish conditions: who 
 more faire than Paris, yet a trothlesse traitor to his love, Oenone. 
 Ulisses was wise, yet wavering, Eneus a pleasant tongue, yet 
 proved a parasitical flatterer * * * Jason promiseth much yet 
 performed little, and Theseus addeth a thousand othes to Ari- 
 adne, yet never a one proved true." 6 Thomas Heywood was 
 Greene's successor in the familiar possession of classic myth, just 
 as he takes his place near Greene and Shakespeare in his belief 
 in the constancy and devotion of woman. The lesser writings, 
 prose and verse, of the Elizabethan period, abound in allusions 
 and illustrations from classic myth. 
 
 In the list of plays before 1642, I have omitted The Turkish 
 Mahomet and Hiren the Fair Greek of Peele, a lost play, and The 
 Grecian Comedy identified by Fleay as the same, 6 because it is 
 not known whether the subject was truly classic; and I have dis- 
 regarded Browne's Inner Temple Masque? for, although in it a 
 classic theme has been treated so successfully, this story of Ulys- 
 
 1 Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, 1558-1567, No. 286. 
 1 Haslewood MS. Francis Meres: Palladis Tamia, p. 115. 
 W. H. D. Rouse: Golding's Translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses 1904. 
 See Introduction. 
 4 Grosart's Robert Greene, Vol. II, p. 157. 
 5 Ibid, p. 264. 
 
 •Greg's Henslowe, Vol. II, p. 169. 
 7 Schelling: Elizabethan Drama, Vol. II, p. 126. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth ii 
 
 ses and Circe is a masque. As Hazlitt suggests, 1 the story of 
 Ulysses and the Syrens had doubtless become familiar through 
 Samuel Daniel's poem, and the subject is found, not only in the 
 Ulysses Redux of Gager, but also in Gower's Confessio A mantis. 
 The subject of Trolius and Cressida has been omitted also, 
 since the episode of the Trojan War which forms the theme of 
 Shakespeare's play is not classic story, but the romantic tale of 
 the medieval Roman de Troyes of Ben6it de Sainte-More. 2 
 
 As one surveys the period, it seems strange that among all 
 these plays there is none that is truly great. School and univer- 
 sity had given their best ; yet perhaps their plays were, on the whole, 
 the least interesting of all. Shakespeare took no truly classic 
 theme for the subject of a play, and Jonson turned to history, 
 not to story, for his classic dramas. 
 
 1 The Whole Works of William Browne: Printed for the Roxburghe Library 
 and edited by W. C. Hazlitt. 1868, pp. xxviii-xxx. 
 
 2 Ward, History of English Dramatic Literature, Vol. II, pp. 145-153. 
 
12 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Classification. 
 
 An examination of plays on classic themes licensed before 1642 
 reveals five distinct sources, — Classic Tragedy, Epic Story, 
 Satire, Romance, Mythology. Classic Tragedy came by way of 
 Latin, and, as has already been indicated, Seneca is the great 
 source. The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy has been 
 traced by Prof. John W. Cunliffe, 1 and further established by 
 Prof. Felix E. Schelling. 2 It was far wider than appears in trans- 
 lations such as those collected by Thomas Newton in 158 1, and in 
 plays in the form of Senecan drama like the Meleager of Dr. Wil- 
 liam Gager. Prof. Cunliffe traces the influence of Seneca through 
 the works of all the great writers of tragedy, — Shakespeare, Ben 
 Jonson, Chapman, Webster, and Ford. Yet in a later work, 3 he 
 says that the influence is found, "not in what lies on the surface — 
 such mechanical devices as the use of the chorus and the division 
 into five acts, the ghost and other exaggerated horrors; it was 
 something more subtle and difficult to trace — the conception of a 
 real, though not formal, unity of interest, dignity of persons, and 
 decorum of style." Professor Schelling explains why Seneca 
 offered so much that was "alluring" to the Elizabethans. "He 
 is free from the local restrictions of Greek drama, and cosmo- 
 politan from his stoicism of temper. Moreover, he is introspec- 
 tive without morbidness and philosophical without deeps. The 
 Senecan rhetoric combines cleverness in dramatic construction and 
 a careful attention to character with an elevated and sententious 
 style, and a fondness for gnomic maxims and the commonplaces 
 of moralizing happily expressed. Lastly, the matter of the Sen- 
 ecan tragedies is sensational and laden with lust and blood, and 
 
 1 J. W. Cunliffe: The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy. 
 
 2 Schelling: Elizabethan Drama, Vol. I, Chapter III. 
 
 • Cambridge History of English Literature, Vol. V, pp. 98, 99. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 13 
 
 with terror and revenge." 1 Seneca reached England not only 
 by way of Italy, but also through contact with France. 2 
 
 Epic story is the source of the Dido plays of the period, not- 
 ably the Dido, Queen of Carthage, 3 acted by the Children of the 
 Chapel, in 1591, and published in 1594. The play bears the 
 names of Marlowe and Nash, and is thought by Fleay 4 to have 
 been written by the young men at Cambridge before either 
 left the University. The play contains much poetic imagery 
 and a wealth of classical allusion, but it follows the epic Virgil 
 too closely, and falls short in dramatic force and passion. At 
 times the blank verse rises into power, but the outbursts of fervor 
 are brief and soon fall into expressions of emotion that fail to 
 stir. Ward calls attention to Dido's "gallery of neglected suit- 
 ors" (Act III, Scene I), as recalling Portia's "reminiscences," 
 and says that perhaps such scenes were suggested by Elizabeth's 
 array of suitors. This may be true, but the final statement, 
 that "the parallel of Dido would be particularly appropriate to 
 the dissembling and procrastinating Virgin Queen of England" 
 is not altogether apparent. Whether or not Elizabeth had her 
 Aeneas, no amount of scholarship will ever determine. 
 
 More than thirty years before the Dido, Queen of Carthage of 
 the two University men, and twenty-five years after Dr. William 
 Gager's Dido had been given with such magnificence in the 
 presence of the Polish Prince Palatine, Thomas Phaer, in 1558, 
 had translated trie first seven books of Vergil's Mneid, dedicat- 
 ing his work to Queen Mary. It was completed in 1578 by 
 Thomas Twine. The work nowhere rises to any distinction, 
 but its even mediocrity is far superior to the absurd combina- 
 tion of "pedantry and slang" of the second translator, Rich- 
 ard Stanyhurst. His work, The First Foure Bookes of Virgil 
 his Aeneas translated into English Heroical Verse appeared in 
 Leyden in 1582. Nash recognized that Stanyhurst had "re- 
 
 1 Schelling: The Elizabethan Drama, Vol. I, pp. 96, 97. 
 
 2 See Comparative Philology, Vol. I. Early French Tragedy in the Light 
 of Recent Scholarship. 
 
 8 Grosart: The Complete Works of Thomas Nash, Vol. VI. 
 
 4 F. G. Fleay: English Drama, Vol. II, p. 147 and Schelling: Elizabethan 
 Drama, Vol. I, p. 138. Also Ward: History of English Dramatic Literature, 
 Vol. I, pp. 357, 358. 
 
14 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 vived by his ragged quill such cartelie varietie [of poetry] as 
 no hodge plowman in a countrie, but would have held as the 
 extremitie of clownerie." 1 Rich remarked that "among other 
 Fictions, he [Stanyhurst] tooke upon him to translate Virgill, 
 and stript him out of a Velvett gowne into a Fooles coate, 
 out of a Latin Heroicall verse into English riffe raffe. " 2 But 
 others of the time seem to have accepted his jargon gratefully, 
 without realizing its absurdity. Long before either Phaer's 
 sober hexameter or Stanyhurst's incongrous measure, an Eng- 
 lish version of the Trojan War, The Sege of Troye, had been 
 written in the Southern Dialect, in the 15th Century, coming, 
 apparently by way of an intermediary French version, from 
 Guido and Dares. It appears in an Oxford manuscript. 3 
 
 In 1637, Thomas Heywood, whose pen, according to his friend, 
 Shakerley Marmion, 
 
 "Commends all history, all actions. 
 
 Counsels, Decrees, men, manners, States, and factions," 4 
 
 "Selected out of Lucian, etc." his Pleasant Dialogues and Dram- 
 mas. These are better adapted to reading than to the stage, 
 but it is possible that some of them were intended to be acted. 
 Burlesque, whether of gods or men, is a favorite amusement of 
 Heywood. Was this, in part, because of the influence of Lucian? 
 or did he enjoy Lucian as a kindred spirit? Heywood seems al- 
 most alone among the writers on classic subject in his interest in 
 the Greek satirist; yet almost seventy-five years earlier there had 
 appeared in the Stationers' Register for the year 1565, a license 
 for the Friendship of Lucian, from the Greek into English, 6 while, 
 in 1634, three years before the Pleasant Drammas, Francis Hickes 6 
 
 1 To the Gentlemen Students of both Universities: Grosart's Greene, Vol. 
 VI, p. 21. 
 
 2 Cambridge History of English Literature, Vol. IV, p. 21. The first chap- 
 ter of this volume gives an interesting account of the early translators. 
 
 3 See N. E. Griffen on The Sege of Troye, in Publications of the Modern 
 Language Association of America, 1907. 
 
 4 Pearson Reprint of the Works of Thomas Heywood, Vol. I. Recom- 
 mendatory verses prefixed to King Edward the First. 
 
 6 Arber's Transcript, Vol. I, p. 264. 
 6 See Dictionary of National Biography. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 15 
 
 had translated Certain Select Dialogues of Lucian: together with 
 his True Historie translated from the Greek into English. In 1638, 
 Jasper Mayne, 1 of the famous "tribe of Ben," had added to 
 Hickes's work a new translation. 
 
 The names of Heywood and Hickes and Jasper Mayne are not 
 the only ones connected with Lucian. Among the more ob- 
 scure and younger contemporaries of Heywood, there occurs 
 the record of one, "J. D., " identified by Grosart as John Dicken- 
 son. Almost nothing is known of this author of a small volume 
 of Prose and Verse. 2 He writes with sincere modesty of his 
 work as "toys" and "pithless blossoms of an unripe wit," and 
 he arouses in us a sympathetic appreciation, for he seems so 
 truly one of the charming family of amateur spirits. His verse 
 is graceful, and his "Euphuistic Prose" delightful, imitative 
 though it be. There are three romances: The Shepheardes 
 Complaint, Arisbas, and Greene in Conceipt: new raised from 
 his grave to write the Tragique Historie of faire Valeria of Lon- 
 don, 1598. In the last of these romances, Dickenson tells the 
 reader that he had been "sitting in his chamber, reading with 
 some pleasure Lucian's Timon," when suddenly the ghost of 
 Greene appeared eager to tell him a story. "None will believe 
 this," he writes, 3 "but rather deem it a blinde device of mine 
 to begge a title for my booke, and to pick up some crummes of 
 conceit from another's table. Some again, will charge me that 
 I have stole this conceit out of Lucian." 4 The barest outline 
 of the plot is taken from Lucian's Timon; the story is frankly 
 imitative of Greene. 5 The sources of Shakespeare's Timon, 
 notwithstanding the results of recent scholarship, have not been 
 established. The latest student on the subject, Dr. Ernest H. 
 Wright of Columbia, 6 agrees with Benno Tschischwitz and with 
 Mr. demons of Princeton in seeing that "in the tone and 
 depth of his misanthropy," 7 Shakespeare's Timon is drawn 
 
 1 For Hickes's translation and that of Jasper Mayne, see Lowndes' Manual 
 and the D. N. B. 
 
 2 Prose and Verse by J. D., edited by Grosart, 1878. 
 
 3 Prose and Verse by J. D., p. 97. 
 
 4 Ibid, p. 99. 
 
 5 See on John Dickenson, Jusserand: The English Novel in the Time of 
 ■Shakespeare, pp. 145, 146. 
 
 6 Ernest Hunter Wright, The Authorship of Timon of Athens: N. Y., 1910. 
 
 7 Ibid, pp. 21, 22. 
 
1 6 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 in Lucian's able manner;" but he says that "such a resem- 
 blance is not necessarily the result of imitation; and as spe- 
 cific parallels of a convincing kind are lacking, direct relation 
 between Lucian's dialogue and the play of Shakespeare is not 
 proved." The bugbear has seemed to be that Shakespeare prob- 
 ably did not read Greek and there is no known early English 
 translation, 1 while the old academic play does not show the 
 qualities which Lucian's and Shakespeare's Timon possess in 
 common. The story of Timon was well known in Elizabethan 
 England; there are many allusions to it. We know that John 
 Dickenson, follower and admirer of Greene, knew Lucian's Timon. 
 It would not have been necessary for Shakespeare to read either 
 in Greek or in translation the story of a character about whom 
 his friends were talking. But this mild argument pales in the 
 light of Mr. J. Churton Collins's essay on Sliakespeare as a Classi- 
 cal Scholar. 2 Mr. Collins makes a very strong case for Shakes- 
 peare's knowledge of Latin and of Greek through Latin transla- 
 tions. Moreover, he produces cumulative and varied evidence 
 that "it is probable in the highest degree of probability" that he 
 could read Greek with more or less facility. 3 As to his familiar- 
 ity with the Latin language, Mr. Collins says this is evident 
 "first, from the fact that he has, with minute particularity of 
 detail, based a poem and a play 4 on a poem of Ovid and on a 
 comedy of Plautus, which he must have read in the original, as 
 no English translations, so far as we know, existed at the time; 5 
 
 1 See Ward: Vol. II, pp. 177-180 and the Bibliography of Mr. Wright's 
 thesis. 
 
 2 J. Churton Collins, Studies in Shakespeare, 1904. 
 
 3 Ibid, pp. 93-95. 
 
 4 The Rape of Lucrece and The Comedy of Errors. 
 
 6 Professor George P. Baker, in his Development of Shakespeare as a Drama- 
 tist, 1907, re-opens the question of Shakespeare's knowledge of Latin. Of 
 the Comedy of Errors, he says, on page 135: "The ultimate sources of the play 
 are the Menechmi of Plautus and his Amphitruo, but whether Shakespeare 
 worked from intermediary English versions is an open question. Certainly, 
 a non-extant Historie of Error, which may have been founded on Plautus, 
 was acted by the Children of Paul's on New Year's night, I576-I577- To 
 this, Shakespeare's play may possibly be indebted. Though no English 
 translation of the Menechmi was published before that of W. W. in 1595, the 
 manuscript of this had been in circulation among the friends of the translator 
 before it appeared in print and Shakespeare may have seen it. Certainly he 
 does not follow it closely." 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 17 
 
 secondly, from the fact that he had adapted and borrowed many 
 passages from the classics which were almost certainly only acces- 
 sible to him in the Latin language; and thirdly, from the fact 
 that where he may have followed English translations it is often 
 quite evident that he had the original either by him or in his 
 memory." He could have found ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and Eu- 
 ripides all published in Latin in his own day. 1 
 
 Thomas Heywood was interested in another of the ancient 
 satirists, Apuleius, although it is as a writer of romance that we 
 more often class the Latin writer. Lucian and Apuleius each 
 wrote the Metamorphosis of a very skittish and altogether amus- 
 ing Ass. Lucian's Aovkios 1} "Ovo? has been given as the source 
 of The Golden Ass of Apuleius. 2 It is, however, far 
 more likely that Apuleius and his contemporary, Lucian, 
 each drew independently from the Metamorphoses of Lucius of 
 Patras. z One cannot but wonder whether Thomas Heywood 
 himself, for he was no mean scholar, may not have been curious 
 about this very problem. Certain it is, that whether or not, 
 Heywood knew Aovkios 17 *Ovos he knew the Golden Ass 
 of Apuleius, the second century romance which is the 
 source of a number of plays on the Cupid and Psyche myth, 
 among them, Love's Mistress or The Queen's Masque. It is not 
 at all likely that Heywood went to translation for his story of 
 Cupid and Psyche. Marmion, in his recommendatory verses to 
 Heywood, writes: — 
 
 "Plays, Epicediums, odes and Lyricks, 
 
 Translations, Epitaphs, and Paneygricks, 
 
 They all doe speake thy worth. Nor dost thou teach 
 
 Things more prophane; but thy great muse doth reach 
 
 Above the Orbes into the outmost skie 
 
 And makes translation into Deitie. " 4 
 
 Marmion, at least, believed in Heywood 's learning. Yet if Hey- 
 wood cared for "those crummes that fal from the translators' 
 
 1 J. Churton Collins: Studies in Shakespeare, pp. 39, 40. 
 
 2 See The Works of Lucian from the Greek, by Thomas Francklin, London, 
 1781. 
 
 3 Harper's Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities: Novels and 
 Romances. 
 
 4 Pearson's Reprint of Heywood? s Works, (1874) Vol. I. 
 
18 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 trencher," 1 as Nash scornfully puts it, he found translation at 
 hand. In 1566, William Adlington of University College, Ox- 
 ford, printed The Most Pleasant and Delectable Tale of the Marriage 
 of Cupid and Psyche. 2 Other editions followed in 1571, 1582, 
 1596, 1600, 1639. It is probable that William Adlington's trans- 
 lation was an important event. Stephen Gosson in his Plays 
 Confuted, published by his brother in 1582, remarks that the 
 Golden Ass was one of the books that had afforded material for 
 the English stage. "I may boldly say it, because I have seen it, 
 that the Palace of Pleasure, The Golden Ass * * * have been 
 thoroughly ransacked to furnish the Play-houses in London." 3 
 There is no proof that the Golden Ass in translation was used; 
 yet the style of Apuleius is florid and difficult to read, and the 
 fact of five editions of Adlington's work in thirty-four years gives 
 testimony of its popularity. In addition, the Stationers' Regis- 
 ter for July 12, 1637, 1 mentions an independent translation as 
 follows: "John Thomas: Entred for his Copie under the hands 
 of Thomas Weekes and Master Bourne Warden, a Booke called 
 Lucius Apuleius of the Golden Asse translated by W. S. 5 In the 
 preceding month, June 24,* another book is entered. "John 
 Okes: Entred for his Copie under the hands of Master Baker 
 and Master Downes Warden, a book called Cupid and Sica with 
 a description of a ffeast without meat, etc. by J. T." 
 
 Evidently, there were a number of plays of the period that 
 have been lost. Gosson, in his Plays Confuted, speaks of a 
 "Cupid and Psyche plaid at Paules. " 7 This was necessarily 
 before 1582. We know that there was a lost play of Chettle, 
 Day, and Dekker, — The Golden Ass or Cupid and Psyche? and 
 
 1 To the Gentlemen Students of Both Universities. Grosart's Greene, Vol. 
 VI, p. 10. 
 
 *Arber's Stationers' Register, Vol. II, p. 188. 
 
 1 J. Payne Collier, Annals of the Stage: (1831), Vol. II. pp. 419, 420. 
 
 4 Arber's Stationers' Register, Vol. III. 
 
 6 Arber queries: "Can this be Wye Saltonstall? The old translation by 
 William Adlington was reprinted in 1639." 
 
 * Arber's Stationers' Register, Vol. III. 
 
 7 J. Payne Collier: Annals of the Stage, Vol. I, p. 70. 
 
 8 Greg's Henslowe's Diary, Part II, p. 212. Also see Part I, pp. 120 and 
 122, for two entries of expenses for a Cupid and Psyche. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 19 
 
 Fleay suggests that there may have been a third lost play, — a 
 shorter and earlier version of Cupid and Psyche in one of Hey- 
 wood's Five Plays in One, about which there is so much question. 1 
 A greater influence than the Golden Ass, however, was classic 
 myth as it appeared in Ovid's Metamorphoses. 2 The popular 
 translation of this was made by Arthur Golding, who published 
 the first four books in 1565, the year before Adlington's first 
 edition of the Golden Ass, while the complete fifteen books ap- 
 peared in 1567. Reprints followed in 1575, 1584, 1587, 1593 
 (by two different publishers), 1603, 161 2. Many of Golding's 
 contemporaries testify to the value of his work. Nash, writing 
 in 1589, 3 speaks of "Aged Arthur Golding" and of his "indus- 
 trious toile in Englishing Ovid's Metamorphosis, besides manie 
 other exquisite editions of Divinitie, turned by him out of the 
 French tongue into our own. " "T. B. " in lines prefixed to John 
 Studley's translation of Seneca's Agamemnon, 1566, writes of 
 the renown of Golding, "which Ovid did translate," and of "the 
 thondring of his verse." 4 Puttenham associates Golding more 
 than once with Phaer, 5 the translator of Vergil, while Webbe 6 
 and Meres 7 enumerate Golding's Metamorphoses as among the 
 best translations of their age. Dr. Malcolm W. Wallace, in his 
 edition of A Tragedie of Abraham's Sacrifice, translated from the 
 French of Theodore Beza by Golding, has given added contem- 
 porary criticism of the translator, 8 and an admirable account of 
 
 1 Fleay's A Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama (1891). Vol. I. 
 p. 285. 
 
 2 See Ovid's Metamorphoses: Edited by W. H. D. Rouse. London, 1904. 
 The King's Library. 
 
 3 Preface to Greene's Menaphon. Grosart's Greene, Vol. VI, p. 20. 
 
 4 Warton's English Poets, edited by Hazlitt, Vol. IV, p. 275, note. 
 
 6 The Arte of English Poetrie: George Puttenham, edited by Haslewood, 
 181 1, p. 49. "Since him [Phaer] followed Maister Arthure Golding, who with 
 no lesse commendation turned into English meetre the Metamorphosis of 
 Ovide," and p. 51 [I commend], Phaer and Golding for a learned and well 
 corrected verse, specially in translation clear and very faithfully answering 
 their author's intent." 
 
 6 A Discourse of English Poetry, (1586), Ed. Haslewood, (1815). Vol. II. 
 
 7 Palladis Tamia, (1598), Ibid. 
 
 8 M. W. Wallace, A Tragedie of Abraham's Sacrifice (1906, University of 
 Toronto Libra rv), p. xix. 
 
20 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 what is known of his life and work. Golding was the friend of 
 the Earl of Leicester, and of Sir William Cecil. The first four 
 books of Ovid were written from Cecil-house and dedicated to 
 Leicester, and the fifteen Books, completed in 1567, were dedi- 
 cated to him. The Earl of Oxford, Sir Christopher Hatton, 
 the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Mildmay, were also among Golding's 
 friends. 1 He was an indefatigable worker, and his translations 
 included, not only the notable French play mentioned by Nash, 
 but eight books of Ccesar in 1565, 2 Seneca de Beneficiis, 1578, 
 and Trogus Pompeius, 1570. His only original work, apparently, 
 was "A discourse upon the earthquake that happened through 
 this realme and other places of Christendom the sixt of April, 
 1580. " 3 
 
 Golding, however, was not the first to translate Ovid. Cax- 
 ton had turned into English prose the last five books of the Meta- 
 morphoses, although the work seems not to have been printed 
 until 1 8 19, where it appeared in quarto from a manuscript in the 
 Pepysian collection at Cambridge and was presented to the mem- 
 bers of the Roxburghe Club by George Gilbert, Esq. 4 There is 
 also record of a black letter quarto by Wynkin de Worde, 1513, 
 "The Flores of Ovide de Arte Amandi with their Englysse afore 
 them." 6 In 1565, Thomas Peend, or De la Peend, published the 
 Pleasant Fable of Hermaphroditus and Salmacis,* from the fourth 
 book of the Metamorphoses.* In the preface the author asserts 
 that he had translated a great part of the Metamorphoses, intend- 
 ing to complete a version of Ovid, but he was led to relinquish 
 his design upon finding that Golding was engaged in the same 
 occupation. 7 The Stationers' Register for the years 1560-70, re- 
 cords a number of " ballets" on myths apparently from the 
 Metamorphoses; one of them, at least, before Golding's first four 
 books, for in 1560 appeared " The Fable of Ovid treting of Narcis- 
 sus translated out of Latin into English mytre, with a moral 
 
 1 Warton's The English Poets. 
 
 2 Arber's Stationer's Register, Vol. I, p. 266. 
 
 3 See Rouse's Reprint: Introduction. 
 
 4 Wallace's A Tragedie of Abraham's Sacrifice, p. XVII. 
 
 5 Lowndes' Manual. 
 
 * Stationers 1 Register, Vol. I. 
 
 7 A Tragedie of Abraham's Sacrifice, p. XVIII. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 21 
 
 there-unto, very plesante to rede." In 1565, there is an entry 
 for " The Story of Jason, howe he gotte the golden fleece, " alluded 
 to above, while in 1570 appeared the record of a license to Robert 
 Hackforth for the printing of a ballet entitled, The Mesyrable 
 State of Kynge Medas. 1 After the middle of the century, besides 
 Golding's translation, we have Turberville Heroides of Ovid, 
 1567, Underdowne's Ibis, 1569, and Churchyard's Tristia, while 
 in 1597, Marlowe's Amores appeared. There was no new trans- 
 lation of the Metamorphoses, however, until that of George Sandys, 
 in 1632. 
 
 Golding was a true Elizabethan, and, with an inclusive en- 
 thusiasm, he makes his claim to his newly discovered country 
 altogether without boundary. To the Gentle Reader, he writes : — 
 
 The high, the lowe; the riche, the poore; the mayster and the slave; 
 The mayd, the wife; the man, the chyld; the simple and the brave; 
 The yoong, the old; the good, the bad; the warrior strong and stout; 
 The wise, the foole; the countrie cloyne; the learned and the lout; 
 And every other living wight shall in this mirror see 
 His whole estate, thoughtes, woords and deedes expressly shewed to bee. 8 
 
 But the title-page contains a warning: 
 
 With skille, heed and judgement, this worke must be read, 
 For else to the Reader it standes in small steade. 
 
 Golding was a Puritan ; no wonder he felt anxious lest the moral 
 in some of the stories might not be apparent. 
 
 George Sandys, Golding's successor, was Treasurer of the Eng- 
 lish Colony of Virginia, and his translation of all except the first 
 four books of the Metamorphoses 1 was made on the banks of the 
 James River, "the first example of classical scholarship in the 
 new land of America." It is a quaint volume, each book illus- 
 trated by a symbolic wood-cut made by "a rare workman," and 
 each book of the second volume illuminated by a long and pious 
 interpretation. In his dedication to King Charles I. and Queen 
 Henrietta, Sandys says: "This book is a double stranger, sprung 
 from the stocke of the ancient Romans, but bred in the new world, 
 
 1 Stationers' Register, Vol. I, p. 401. 
 
 2 Rouse's Reprint, p. 18. 
 
 3 Ovid's Metamorphosis Englished, Mythologiz'd and Represented in Figures 
 by G. S., 1632. 
 
22 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 of the rudeness whereof it cannot but participate, especially hav- 
 ing Warres and Tumults to bring it to light instead of the Muses. 
 * * * To this I have added, as the Mind to the Body, the His- 
 tory and Philosophical Sense of the Fables." In the frontis- 
 piece, after explaining that Sacred Poetry shows that in ancient 
 fables lie "the mysteries of all Philosophic," he concludes by 
 gravely stating: 
 
 This Course our Poet steres: and those that faile 
 By wandering stars, not by his compasse faile. 
 
 In considering Golding's translation and that of Sandys, one is 
 reminded of the quotation Warton gives from Randolph's The 
 Muses Looking-Glass, where two Puritans are made spectators 
 of a play. In order to reconcile them, an actor promises to 
 "moralise the plot," and one of them answers, 
 
 That moralizing 
 I do approve; it may be for instruction. 1 
 
 It is interesting to note Genest's comment upon a later perform- 
 ance of a certain Play." 2 He writes, "It is well written, but 
 allegorical exhibitions rarely excite much interest on the Stage. " 
 Times had changed between 1642 and 1832. 
 
 It is difficult to determine how widely Golding's work was 
 read, but it is probable that many a playwright and poet pil- 
 fered from its voluminous pages, even though he knew his Ovid in 
 the original. The recent editor of Narcissus, the Twelfth Night 
 Merriment performed at St. John's College, Oxford, in 1602, 3 calls 
 attention to the fact that, as the prologue affirms, the play is 
 "Ovid's owne Narcissus" and declares that "the resemblance to 
 the Latin is in parts so close as necessarily to imply a knowledge 
 of the language on the part of the writer." Miss Lee notes "one 
 passage of literal and yet graceful translation which especially 
 betokens a scholarly hand." A comparison with Golding's trans- 
 lation, however, dashes our confidence in this particular proof 
 of the scholarliness of the author. The lines are unmistakably 
 written after Golding; they run as follows: — 
 
 1 Walton's History of English Poetry, Vol. IV, pp. 298, 299. 
 
 5 The Sun's Darling, by Ford and Dekker. 
 
 8 Miss Margaret L. Lee: Narcissus, a Twelfth Night Merriment, 1893. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 23 
 
 A well there was withouten mudd, 
 Of silver hue, with waters cleare, 
 Whom neither sheepe that chawe the cudd, 
 Shepheards nor goates came ever neare; 
 Whome, truth to say, nor beast nor bird, 
 Nor windfalls yet from trees had stirrde, 
 And round about it there was grasse, 
 As learned lines of poets showe, 
 Which by next water nourisht was; 
 Neere to it too a wood did growe, 
 To keep the place as well I wott, 
 With too much sunne from being hott. 1 
 
 Golding's translation reads: 
 
 There was a Spring withouten mudde, as silver cleare and still, 
 Which neyther sheepeheirds, nor the goates that fed upon the hill. 
 Nor other cattell troubled had, nor savage beast had styrd, 
 Nor braunch, nor sticke, nor leafe of tree, nor any foule nor byrd. 
 The moysture fed and kept aye fresh the grasse that grew about, 
 And with their leaves the trees did keepe the heate of Ph&bus out.* 
 
 It is all but certain that Shakespeare knew Golding's Ovid. 
 Ward states that Venus and Adonis, in 1593, issued from the 
 printing-press of Richard Field, the son of a Stratford -on-Avon 
 tradesman, who had printed the 1589 edition of Ovid's Metamor- 
 phoses? This is not without significance. A number of echoes 
 of Golding's translation have been noted in Shakespeare's plays, 4 
 most conspicuous among them, Prospero's cry, 
 
 Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves! 6 
 
 and Golding's 
 
 Ye Ayres and Windes; ye Elves of Hills, of Brookes, of Woods alone 
 Of standing Lakes, and of the Night approach ye every chone. 8 
 
 These echoes, as Mr. Collins 7 points out in comparing the two 
 passages in to to with the original, do not prove that Shakespeare 
 
 1 Ibid, page 18. 
 
 2 Ovid's Metamorphoses, edited by Rouse, p. 73, 11 508-514. 
 
 3 Ward, Vol. II, p. 24, Note. 
 
 4 See introduction to Rouse's Reprint of Golding's Metamorphoses. 
 6 The Tempest, Act V, 1. 
 
 6 Golding's Metamorphoses, VII, 265. 
 
 7 J. Churton Collins: Studies in Shakespeare, pp. 36-3 8 » 
 
24 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 did not know the Latin also, although they are unmistakable 
 evidence of his knowledge of the translation. As to this know- 
 ledge of the original, Mr. Collins feels very certain, for Shakes- 
 peare "has caught the colour, ring, and rhythm" of the lines of 
 Ovid, "which have been utterly missed in the lumbering home- 
 liness of Golding." 
 
 A review of plays according to classification reveals how various 
 were the sources, and how large a part translation played. Not 
 only did men like Golding and Stanyhurst produce huge volumes 
 of translation, but these volumes were reflected in the criticism 
 as well as in the drama of the age. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 25 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Rise of Opera, and Plays with Classic Titles between 
 
 1642 and 1700. 
 
 The history of Restoration Drama has no place in this study; 
 yet a survey of the field before the closing of the theatres is in- 
 complete without a glance at the plays which followed. There- 
 fore, I have crossed the boundaries of the Elizabethan period to 
 follow drama as far as the year 1700. Stage history is by no 
 means silent in regard to the years across the bridge from Eliza- 
 bethan to Restoration England. In the first place, Langbaine 
 tells us that at the Red Bull Playhouse, Robert Cox's " Drolls 
 and Farces such as Actceon and Diana were allowed to be given 
 under the Colour of Rope-dancing, by stealth and the connivance 
 of those straight lac'd Governors." 1 Indeed, dancing had not 
 been prohibited by Parliamentary Ordinance, and besides these 
 drolls and farces, masques continued to be given in private, while 
 we have record of the presentation of at least one masque in 
 November 1651, at the Middle Temple. "The proceedings were 
 opened with the Hundredth Psalm sung by the Benchers in the 
 Hall, after which these reverend Seniors having drunk a cup of 
 hypocras, retired to their chambers, and began to recreate them- 
 selves with civil dancing, and had melodious music. Ladies and 
 persons of quality were present as spectators, though they do not 
 appear to have shared in the display." 2 Meanwhile, Sir William 
 Davenant, long since Ben Jonson's successor as poet-laureate, 
 after exile in France and many adventures abroad, had returned 
 to England, and had managed to obtain from Cromwell permis- 
 
 1 Langbaine : An Account of the English Dramatic Poets, 1691, p. 89. 
 Also Kirkman's preface to The Wits, or Sport upon Sport 1672. The best 
 account of the period, however, is Wright's Historia Histrionica, published 
 in Dodsley's Old English Plays, Vol. XV. 1876. 
 
 2 Gardiner: History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1897, Vol. 
 II, pp. 11, 12. 
 
26 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 sion to produce his Entertainment at Rutland House, on May 23, 
 1656. 1 He called the piece an "opera," and it was described as 
 "an entertainment by music and declamation after the manner 
 of the ancients. " It was really not "opera" at all, but by means 
 of the new name the opprobrious term "stage-play" was avoided. 
 Davenant was, nevertheless, truly interested in the opera, and, 
 the same year and in the same place, he produced the First Part 
 of the Siege of Rhodes, "made a Representation by the Art of 
 Prospective Scenes, and the Story Sung in Recitative Music." 2 
 This was a novelty on the English stage, as Davenant announces 
 in the preface to the first edition. He says of it that "being reci- 
 tative, " it is "unpractised here, though of great reputation among 
 other nations." Two years later, Davenant produced at The 
 Cockpit in Drury Lane an entertainment similar to The Siege of 
 of Rhodes, The Cruelties of the Spaniards in Peru; and in 1659 he 
 produced The History of Sir Francis Drake* Early in the year 
 1660, a license was obtained for the opening of the theatre at 
 Blackfriars; 4 a number of actors soon formed themselves into a 
 
 1 Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1655-56, p. 396. Account of Sir 
 Wm. Davenant's opera. The bills are entitled " The entertainment by 
 music and declamation after the manner of the ancients." Scene, Athens. 
 They began at the Charter House 23 May 1656 at 5 s. a head; 400 persons 
 expected but only 150 came. The personages were Diogenes, who spoke 
 against, and Aristophanes for, the Opera; then citizens of London and Paris 
 discussing the effects of each other's cities, in buildings, manners, diet, etc. 
 The Londoner has the better of it, and ends with describing a scene in which 
 two crocheteurs of Paris sink down under their heavy burden before they will 
 cease a contest in which each wished to give the other the way. The music 
 was in a covered place and concerted, ending with new songs relating to the 
 Victor (the Protector), the last, deriding Paris, ended — 
 
 And though a ship her scutcheon be 
 Yet Paris hath no ship at sea. 
 
 Henry Lawes and Dr. Coleman composed the songs, Capt. Cook, Ned Cole- 
 man and his wife, and others sang them. It lasted i}4 hours and is to con- 
 tinue 10 days. June 26, 1656." The text of the entertainment is in Maid- 
 ment and Logan's Works of William Davenant: Vol. III. 
 
 2 See The Siege of Rhodes in the Belles-Lettres Series, edited by Jas. W.Tupper. 
 
 3 Ward, Vol. Ill, pp. 282, 283. 
 
 4 John Genest: Some Account of the English Stage from 1660-1832. Vol. 
 I. p. 30. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 27 
 
 company at the Red Bull ; a third began to act at Salisbury Court 
 in Whitef riars j 1 while on July 19, 1660, King Charles II issued a 
 license to "Thomas Killigrew * * * and Sir William Davenant 
 to erect two playhouses in places approved by the Surveyor of 
 Works, to control the charges to be demanded, and the payments 
 to actors, etc., and absolutely suppressing all other playhouses."* 
 These companies came to be The King's (Killigrew's) , and the 
 Duke's (Davenant's). The last clause of the warrant, calling 
 for the suppression of all other playhouses, was afterwards super- 
 seded by a license on December 24, 1660, to a certain George 
 Jolly, "to erect a theatre for performances of such plays as are 
 free from all profanity or obscenity, notwithstanding any former 
 grant to Thos. Killigrew or Sir Wm. Davenant." 3 
 
 During his banishment, Charles's fondness for the stage was 
 gratified, and we are told 4 that his son, afterwards the Duke of 
 Monmouth, took part six times in Paris, in a masque and comedy 
 called " The Nuptials of Peleus and Thetis." The masque was by 
 a French author and was given in French, but it was translated 
 in 1654, by James Howell, the letter writer whose correspondence 
 has afforded so much interesting information concerning the in- 
 fluence of the Precieuses and Platonists upon the English Court 
 at that time. 5 
 
 Meanwhile, the number of plays in English was being augment- 
 ed by translation. During his chequered career as a soldier in 
 Flanders, Christopher Wase translated the Electra of Sophocles, 
 presenting it to the Lady Elizabeth, daughter of Charles I, and 
 wife of the Palatinate in Germany. It was printed at the Hague, 
 
 *Lowe: Betterton. 1888. p. 19. See also Ward: Vol. Ill, pp. 280-285. 
 
 2 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1660-61, p. 124. 
 
 3 Ibid, p. 423. In the Cat. State Papers, p. 188, there is an item for August 
 12, 1660, in which "Attorney-General Palmer writes to the King that he did 
 not object to the warrants for Mr. Killigrew and Sir Wm. Davenant, but 
 thought it is a matter rather for toleration than for a grant under the Great 
 Seal." Lowe in his Life of Betterton, pp. 31-48, gives an account of the op- 
 position to the King's grant and the quarrel which ensued between Killigrew 
 and Davenant and Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels. 
 
 4 Maidment and Logan's Crowne, Vol. I, pp. 223, 224. 
 
 5 J. B. Fletcher: Precieuses at the Court of Charles I, in Journal of Compara- 
 tive Literature, Vol. I. Also A. H. Upham: French Influence in English 
 Literature, 1908, Chapter viii. 
 
28 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 in 1649. Wase was the dramatist whom Evelyn found so excel- 
 lent in learning and so entirely worthy of the kindness which he 
 bestowed upon him. Evelyn tells how he found him "miser- 
 able in Paris," and, paying his expenses back to England, "clad 
 and provided for him till he should find some better conditions." 1 
 In contrast with Wase, another translator, Sir William Lower, 
 "found peace and privacy" in his wanderings from "the heat of 
 Civil Wars." Langbaine 2 says that he "took Sanctuary in Hol- 
 land," there to enjoy the "society of the Muses," and that we 
 are indebted to him for "six plays, " among them, one on a classic 
 subject, the Horatius of Corneille, 1656. 3 Five years before this 
 the Hippolytus of Seneca had been translated by John Priest- 
 wich "in rhyme, with comments on every scene" and recommen- 
 datory verses by Shirley, Cotton and others. 4 Drama was there- 
 fore kept alive by English writers abroad, as well as by enter- 
 tainments with innocuous names at home. Moreover, by the 
 time the theatres were re-opened a new variety, opera, had been 
 introduced. 
 
 The First Part of the Siege of Rhodes, as it was given at Rut- 
 land House in 1656, marks the course which opera was to take 
 in England. In his introduction, Davenant says that the scenes 
 had been designed by Mr. John Web, that the "musick was com- 
 posed, and both the vocal and instrumental exercis'd by the most 
 transcendent of England in the art;" that it is recitative and there- 
 fore "unpractised here;" that the story is "heroicall" and con- 
 vey 'd to advance the characters of vertue in the shapes of valour 
 and conjugal love; and that he has altered the "measures" of 
 his verse in a manner necessary to the recitative music and the 
 airs. The scenery consists of an "ornament to encompass the 
 scenes;" the acts or "Entrees" are introduced by instrumental 
 music; and the chorus concludes each act. The novelties, then, 
 were recitative music, rhyme to fit the music, and heroic love as 
 the subject. Music and the "setting" by an Architect long as- 
 
 1 John Evelyn: Diary and Correspondence. Edited by Wm. Bray, 1906, 
 Vol. II, pp. 35 and 236. 
 
 2 Langbaine, pp. 332~334- 
 
 3 Besides six printed plays, three are extant in MS. See D. N. B. 
 
 4 Hazlitt's Manual, p. 107. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 29 
 
 sociated with Inigo Jones are characteristic of the 16th century 
 masque. The idea of recitative music Davenant found in Italian 
 opera, and he is not altogether accurate in claiming that this is 
 new to England. Years earlier, in 161 7, Nicolo Laniere had set 
 to music Ben Jonson's Lovers Made Men, the entire masque being 
 sung in Stilo recitativo, after the Italian manner. 1 This is, however, 
 an isolated example. The idea of rhyme came from French 
 drama, perhaps; yet the greater part of masques and pastorals, 
 even in the Elizabethan age, had been written in rhymed verse. 
 It was only a step to the shorter lines to suit the airs. 2 As for 
 the * 'story," with its theme of heroic love, that, too, developed 
 naturally enough out of the later romantic drama of the age of 
 Elizabeth. 3 Thus, early English opera was a natural outcome of 
 masque and decadent romantic drama, and when Charles II and 
 his court returned in 1660, they did not bring opera, but found 
 it at home. It was not until April, 1673, that Lulli and Quin- 
 ault produced Cadmus and Hermione, the first true French opera. 4 
 The influence of Lulli and Quinault necessarily reached England, 
 but more in the way of subjects for plays, mechanical devices for 
 amplification of stage scenery, new dances, than in the develop- 
 ment of the music or the theory of the opera. 5 The greatest 
 
 1 Grove: Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1907. 
 
 2 Indeed, many of the masques, as, for example, Jonson's Hue and Cry 
 after Cupid, had contained short lines in rhymed verse. Mr. Gosse goes so 
 far as to say that rhymed dramatic verse "was the only course that it was 
 possible to take, for the blank iambics of the romantic dramatists had become 
 so execrably weak and distended, the whole movement of dramatic verse had 
 grown so flaccid, that a little restraint in the severe limits of rhyme was ab- 
 solutely necessary." Seventeenth Century Studies, 1897, pp. 264, 265. 
 
 3 Schelling: Elizabethan Drama, Vol. II, pp. 348-352 and the notes, es- 
 pecially that on p. 350, referring to the paper of Prof. C. G. Child on the 
 Rise of the Heroic Play, Mod. Lang. Notes, Vol. XIX, pp. 166-173. 
 
 4 Les FStes de V Amour et de Bacchus, with which Lulli opened his "opera" 
 in the rue Vaugirard in the previous November is described as a ballet differ- 
 ing very little from those which had long been popular. (See Lavoix: La 
 Musique Francaise, pp. 99, 100). For the opera in France, see Professor 
 Schelling's chapter on Restoration Drama in the latest volume of the Cam- 
 bridge History of Literature. 
 
 6 See Grove's Dictionary: Lulli. Matthew Locke was the one writer of 
 English opera who modelled his work as closely as possible after Lulli. His 
 most important composition was the music for Shadwell's Tempest. 
 
30 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 musician in 17th Century England, Henry Purcell, was distinctly 
 English in his training and in his art, 1 and it is unfortunate that 
 his Dido and Mneas, written in 1580, should remain an isolated 
 example of truly English opera, "the whole of the libretto being 
 set in recitative, solos, duets, and choruses." 2 Only a few of 
 the musical dramas of the time pretended to be operas. Many 
 of them were translations, with the addition of dances and chorus- 
 es; many were revivals of Elizabethan plays with added "scenes 
 and machines," while masques remained in favor. 
 
 There is very little difference between the opera as Davenant 
 described it in the Siege of Rhodes and Dryden's definition in the 
 introduction to Albion and Albanius, almost thirty years later. 
 He says, in 1685, that opera is "a poetic tale or fiction, repre- 
 sented by vocal and instrumental music, adorned with scenes, 
 machines and dancing. The supposed persons of the musical 
 drama are generally supernatural, as gods and goddesses and 
 heroes. The subject, therefore, being extended beyond the 
 limits of human nature, admits of that sort of marvellous and 
 surprising conduct, which is rejected in other plays. * * * 
 Meaner persons may sometimes be gracefully introduced, 
 especially if they have relation to those first times, which poets 
 call the Golden Age; * * * and, therefore, Shepherds might 
 reasonably be admitted as of all callings the most innocent, 
 the most happy, and who, by the spare time they had, had 
 most leisure to make verses, and to be in love; without some- 
 what of which passion, no opera can possibly subsist." 3 Even 
 here one finds nothing extraneous to the 16th Century masque. 
 
 1 Purcell's earliest teachers had been his father and his uncle, Thomas Pur- 
 cell, two gentlemen of the Chapel Royal, who had sung at the coronation of 
 Charles II. He became one of the children of the Chapel Royal at six years 
 old, where his teachers were Dr. Blow, and Captain Cooke, the famous old 
 "coxcombe, " according to Pepys. Purcell's composition began very early 
 and the list of his works is long, including much of our most beautiful church 
 music. His life and work have been described by Wm. H. Cummings in 
 The Great Musician Series 1881. 
 
 * For an account of this opera, see Cumming's Purcell, pp. 32, 33. The 
 words were written by Nahum Tate. 
 
 * Preface to Albion and Albanius: Works, edited by Scott and Saints- 
 bury, 1 882-1 893, Vol. VII. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 31 
 
 The dancing has become subservient to the "tale" which must 
 be "represented" by music. Thus, instead of a "setting for 
 a dance" we have the development of a heroic story of love by 
 means of music. But the opera, like the masque, is "adorned" 
 with scenes, and the personages, like those of the masque, 
 must be either more than life-sized or artificial. Recitative 
 is not insisted upon and the dancing is incidental. The ele- 
 ments of the masque remain; the emphasis has changed. The 
 change from a setting for a ball to a public performance is a 
 popularization, and yet the audience is not very different, for 
 while the Sixteenth Century Masque was so expensive as to be 
 given only at Court or in private houses, the seventeenth 
 Century opera was attended largely by the nobility. It be- 
 longed, not to the people, but to the fashionable. There was 
 no opera-house, but Davenant made The Duke's Theatre as 
 nearly as possible adapted to operatic performances. This 
 Dryden ridicules in the Prologue spoken at the opening of the 
 New Theatre in Drury Lane on March 26, 1674: 
 
 'Twere folly now a stately pile to raise, 
 
 To build a playhouse, while you throw down plays; 
 
 While scenes, machines, and empty operas reign, 
 
 And for the pencil you the pen disdain! 1 
 
 Yet Dryden himself fell before the temptations offered by the 
 opera. In his Epistle Dedicatory to his King Arthur, 1691, he 
 writes: "There is nothing better, than what I intended, than 
 the Musick; which has since arriv'd to a greater perfection in 
 England, than ever formerly, especially passing through the art- 
 ful hands of Mr. Purcell. * * * But the numbers of poetry and 
 vocal musick, are sometimes so contrary, that in many places I 
 have been obliged to cramp my Verses, and make them rugged to 
 the reader, that they may be harmonious to the hearer; of which 
 I have no reason to repent me, because these sorts of entertain- 
 ments are principally design'd for the ear and the eye, and there- 
 fore, in reason, my art on this occasion ought to be subservient 
 to his." 
 
 Shad well had been a victim long before. In the introduction 
 to his Psyche, produced at the Duke's Theatre in Dorset Gardens 
 in 1674, he writes: " In a thing written in five weeks, as this was, 
 
 1 Works: Vol. X, p. 320. 
 
32 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 there must needs be errours, which I desire true critics to pass by 
 and which, perhaps, I see myself, but having much business, and 
 indulging myself with some pleasure too, I have not had leisure 
 to mend them; nor would it indeed be worth the pains, since 
 there are so many splendid objects in the play, and such variety 
 of diversion, as will not give the audience leave to mind the 
 writing; and I doubt not, but the candid reader will forgive the 
 faults, when he considers that the great design was to entertain 
 the town with variety of music, curious dancing, splendid scenes, 
 and machines; and that I do not, nor ever did intend, to value 
 myself upon the writing of this play." Since these had come to 
 be the methods and ideas of the playwright, no wonder that the 
 critic, John Dennis, should have complained that opera had every- 
 where driven out poetry, 1 or that another writer of the end of the 
 century, Charles Gildon, should have contrasted the audiences 
 he knew with the ancients in no faltering terms: "We are for 
 making," he says, 2 "the Scenes of our Plays, the Field of Battle, 
 a Siege, a Camp, etc., where, whatever we do else, we are sure to 
 keep the Audience awake with our Drums and Trumpets, and 
 make them laugh with our Battles and Rencounters on the Stage, 
 when they ought to be more concern'd. The Ancients never, as 
 I can remember, chose such noisy opportunities of perverting 
 the end they purpos'd in their Tragedies, viz., the moving Terror 
 and Compassion, which can never be touch 'd where such tumul- 
 tuary objects come in view. " 
 
 It is evident that classic myth must have been a favorite sub- 
 ject for musical drama. One need only review the descrip- 
 tion of Dryden 3 to realize that the gods and goddesses, with their 
 
 1 John Dennis: An Essay on the Italian Operas, printed in 1706. See 
 Select Works of Mr. John Dennis 1718, Vol. i, p. 455. 
 
 "That poetry is like, from the progress of Musick, to have the same fate 
 in England, that it met with in France and Italy, we have very good reason 
 to believe; when we consider that of late years, they who have had some Talent 
 for writing, have, for the most part still writ worse and worse; and when that 
 which has been well written, has been worse received by our Audiences; when 
 those Audiences will hardly suffer a Play that is not interlarded with Singing 
 and Dancing, whereas these are becoming Theatrical Entertainments with- 
 out anything of the Drama." 
 
 2 Introduction to Phaeton or The Fatal Divorce 1696. 
 
 3 Page 30, above. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 33 
 
 loves and hates and romantic adventures, must have been fitting 
 subjects, inviting, as they did, all the accessories of scenery and 
 dancing, and music. Besides, there was the precedent of classic 
 tragedy. In the years between 1642 and 1700, I find twenty-six 
 plays with classic titles on twenty-one different themes, almost 
 all of them the same as those of the Elizabethan period. Of these 
 plays, nine are translations, with or without the addition of music 
 and dancing; seven are called either operas or masques or "plays 
 set to music;" six are described as tragedies; three as "burles- 
 ques;" 1 one is a comedy, and one, Ariadne or the Marriage of 
 Bacchus, 2 is a miserable, nondescript production, classic only in 
 name. At least half of the twenty-six plays were accompanied 
 by music and most of them were in rhyme. 
 
 Of the nine translations, three 3 were from the Horace of Cor- 
 neille. The first, that of Sir William Lower, 4 has already been 
 mentioned. Langbaine excuses it for "having fallen short" of 
 the other two by its being earlier. Charles Cotton's attempt 5 
 was adorned with songs and choruses; but it was the play of "The 
 Matchless Orinda," Mrs. Katherine Phillips, which gained the 
 applause and enthusiasm of the time. Orinda died before the 
 play was completed, and Sir John Denham 6 demanded the honor 
 of writing the fifth act. Evelyn saw the play "acted before both 
 their Ma ties , 'Twixt each act a masq and antiq daunce." He 
 speaks of the "infinite" and "excessive gallantry" of the ladies, 
 and estimates Lady Castelmaine's finery at £40,ooo. 7 In a 
 delightful essay, 8 Mr. Edmund Gosse has described the career of 
 
 1 The Burlesques are the Mock Thyestes of John Wright (See Baker's Bio- 
 graphia Dramatica, Vol. Ill, p. 337; Venus and Adonis; Psyche Debauch' d 
 by D'Urfey. This is "A mass of low scurrility and abuse, without either wit 
 or humor." (See Biographia Dramatica.) 
 
 2 This was by Perrin, and was sung on Jan. 5, 1673-4, where Evelyn saw it. 
 W. J. Lawrence, in an article in Anglia for 1909, thinks it was at that time 
 sung in French. 
 
 3 Six of these translations are mentioned in the pages following. The re- 
 maining three have been mentioned on pp. 27 and 28, above. 
 
 4 Above, p. 28. 
 
 6 According to the Term Catalogue, the quarto of this play appeared in 1671. 
 
 6 Author of the poem, Cooper's Hill. See D. N. B. 
 
 7 Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, Vol. II, p. 229. 
 
 8 Edmund Gosse: Seventeenth Century Studies, 1897. 
 
34 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 "Orinda, " the woman so celebrated for half a century in England. 
 We are startled to find that her name was once mentioned with 
 Sappho and Corinne, in language "which might have seemed a 
 little fulsome if addressed to the Muse herself," so dark is the 
 oblivion into which she has fallen. Mr. Gosse says that her 
 memory is worthy of a "judicious revival," for, "if she sinned 
 against poetry as we understand it, much may be forgiven her, 
 for she loved it much." 1 
 
 The tragedies of Andromache given, according to Genest, at 
 the Duke's Theatre in 1675, and Achilles or Iphigenia in Aulis, 
 acted at the King's Theatre in 1699, were both translations from 
 Racine. Of the former Genest says, that prose and verse were 
 mingled "in the most ridiculous way in the world." The play, 
 written partly by Crowne, "was evidently patched up in a hurry" 
 and was "a contemptible production." 2 Achilles was written by 
 Abel Boyer, and followed Racine except in the fifth act where 
 Eriphile, contrary to the custom of the French Theatre, kills her- 
 self in the sight of the audience. 3 The revolting tragedy of 
 Thyestes was translated from Seneca by John Wright in 1674, and, 
 except the choruses, was written in heroics. Seven years later 
 the same subject was chosen by Crowne in a play which only par- 
 tially followed the gruesome myth as revealed by Seneca. This 
 was apparently well received by the audience. 4 
 
 The most popular of the operas on classic subject was the 
 Psyche of the much abused Shad well. This was given at the 
 Duke's Theatre in Dorset Gardens. Downes says of it: "In 
 February 1673, 5 the long expected opera of Psyche came forth in 
 all her ornaments; new Scenes, new Machines, new Cloaths, new 
 French Dances. This Opera was splendidly set out, especially 
 in Scenes, the charge of which amounted to above 800I. It had 
 a continuous performance of about 8 days together; it proved 
 very beneficial to the Company. " 6 As to the sources of the play, 
 
 Mbid: p. 255. 
 
 2 Genest: Vol. I, pp. 178, 179. 
 'Ibid: Vol. II, pp. 167, 168. 
 
 4 See Introduction to Maidment and Logan's Works of John Crowne, Vol. 
 II. 
 * 1674 new style. See Genest, Vol. I, p. 163. 
 6 See the Roscius Anglicanus by Downes. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 35 
 
 Shadwell says in the Preface: "That I have borrowed it from the 
 French can only be the objection of those who do not know that 
 it is a Fable written by Apuleius in his Golden Ass, where you 
 will find most things in this play and the French too." Never- 
 theless, most of the situations are from Moliere's Psyche? to which 
 it is, however, very inferior. The greatest "Masters in Musick, 
 Dancing, and Painting were concern'd in it;" 2 yet this is the play 
 of which Swinburne wrote that "nothing more portentous in 
 platitude ever crawled into print." 3 
 
 In 1675, John Crowne's Calisto or the Chaste Nymph was given 
 at Court. This masque was written for the daughters of the 
 Duke of Monmouth, and it was dedicated to the Princess, after- 
 wards Queen Mary, in studied phrases rich in flattery. The 
 production should have fallen to Dryden, but, through the in- 
 fluence of the Earl of Rochester, it was assigned to Crowne. 
 This was his great opportunity and he felt the dignity of the 
 occasion. 4 The Duke of Monmouth, 5 as well as his daughters, 
 took part. In the preface Crowne writes of the "singing, danc- 
 ing, music, of which all were in the highest perfection" and of 
 the "most graceful action, incomparable beauty and splendid 
 habit of the Princesses." He says that the entertainment has 
 been "followed at innumerable rehearsals" and all "the repre- 
 sentations by throngs of people of the greatest quality; and 
 very often graced by their Royal Highnesses." 6 
 
 Not only was Calisto taken originally from Ovid, but the Meta- 
 morphoses furnished the themes for a number of other musical 
 
 1 Given in 1671 before Louis XIV at the Tuileries. 
 
 2 Shadwell says in the Preface: "All the Instrumental Musick was com- 
 posed by the great Master, Signior Gio. Baptista Draghi, Master of Italian 
 Musick to the King. The Dances were made by the most famous Master 
 of France, Monsieur St. Andree. The Scenes were painted by the ingenious 
 Artist, Mr. Stephenson. In those things that concern the Ornament or Deco- 
 ration of the Play, the great Industry of Mr. Betterton ought to be remember- 
 ed." 
 
 3 Swinburne: Age of Shakespeare, pp. 222, 223. 
 
 4 One "who knew the bards and theatres of Charles IPs reign" writes: 
 "We call'd him starch'd little Johnny Crowne from the stiff, unalterable 
 primness of his long cravat." The Gentleman's Magazine, February 1745. 
 
 5 See his acting in Peleus and Thetis, p. 27, above. 
 
 6 Works by Maidment and Logan, Vol. i, p. 236. 
 
36 Classic Myth of the Poetic Drama 
 
 plays of the time. Among these was the Circe of Dr. Charles 
 Davenant, recorded in the Term Catalogue under the date 1677. 
 The author was the son of Sir William Davenant and for a very- 
 short time, he succeeded his father as manager of "the Duke's 
 Company." At its first production the music of the opera was 
 written by John Banister, who was at one time leader of King 
 Charles's band; 1 but at a later production, the music seems to 
 have been furnished by Henry Purcell. 2 There was a Prologue 
 by Dryden and an Epilogue by the Earl of Rochester. Genest 5 
 gives a somewhat full account of the play, pointing out with zest 
 a number of amusing anachronisms. 4 Nevertheless, it was "well 
 performed, and answered the expectations of the Company." 
 Doubtless the "scenes and machines" which gave it a good "title 
 to the species of Dramatic Poetry called an Opera" 5 furnished, 
 together with the music, the necessary assistance to the plot. 
 This, according to Genest, "was a blessed jumble." The opera 
 was but a "tour de force" of the youthful Davenant; he was 
 only nineteen when he wrote it. Later, he became a "Doctor 
 of Physic" and entered politics. 6 So far as we know, he wrote 
 no more plays. The Metamorphoses was also the source of the 
 three masques, Hercules, The Loves of Mars artd Venus, and 
 Cynthia and Endimion, which appeared at the very end of the 
 century, each with music by the most celebrated musicians. 
 Hercules is the third act of The Novelty: Every Act a Play, 
 written by Mr. Motteaux and other hands, and "set to music" 
 by John Eccles. This is a piece of sensational nonsense. The 
 Loves of Mars and Venus by Mr. Motteaux, is equally thin. Of 
 the Cynthia and Endimion of D'Urfey, Genest says, "it has con- 
 siderable merit for the sort of thing," and "if the queen had 
 lived, it was to have been brought out at Court." 7 The sub- 
 ject, the loves of the deities, "gave opportunity for beautiful 
 
 1 See D. N. B. 
 
 2 Cumming's Purcell, pp. 43, 44. 
 
 3 Genest, Vol. i, pp. 208, 209. 
 
 4 He is especially scornful of Circe's allusion to "Churches whom no Here- 
 tics oppose." 
 
 5 Langbaine, p. 116. 
 
 6 D. N. B. 
 
 'Genest, Vol. ii, pp. no, in. 
 
V 
 
 Of the Age of Elizabeth 37 
 
 scenes, and the music was by the younger Purcell. I have not 
 seen the play, but is is difficult to conceive that anything written 
 by D'Urfey could have any literary value. 
 
 Of the six so-called tragedies, Hero and Leander by Sir Robert 
 Stapleton, 1669, was founded upon the poem of Musaeus, but 
 the author was not happy in the "additions" which he was ob- 
 liged to make in following so simple a story. Nevertheless, Lang- 
 baine 1 . assures us that Stapleton's name "rests in the Temple of 
 Immortality." The Destruction of Troy by John Banks was 
 given at the Duke's Theatre and printed in 1679. Genest says 2 
 that "some of the speeches set burlesque at defiance," but Lang- 
 baine is more magnanimous. "How unkind soever the criticks 
 were to it," he says, "I believe they have seen worse tragedies 
 on the stage." 3 Crowne's Thyestes 4 has already been mentioned. 
 Phaeton or the Fatal Divorce by Charles Gildon, 1698, is one of 
 the most audacious productions of the end of the century. The 
 hero of this play is the son of Apollo only in name. He is in reality 
 an effeminate Jason whose love for Medea has grown more or less 
 cold because he loves another lady also; he finds it difficult to 
 choose between the two. Meanwhile his mother, Clymene, and 
 the family friend, Epaphus, advise him to abide by his first love, 
 whose name is not Medea, but Althea. Mother and friend, 
 after a disgraceful quarrel with Phaeton, are suddenly reconciled 
 to his point of view, and the angry Althea, after being visited by 
 the ghost of her father who exhorts her to revenge, succeeds in 
 compassing the death of her rival by means of a poisoned bridal 
 robe. Althea dies in a frenzy of passion as she sees the final 
 tragedy wrought by her power. There are dances, and the music 
 is by the younger Purcell. 5 No stranger degradation of a noble 
 theme can be imagined than this appropriation of the powerful 
 Medea of Euripides to satisfy the vulgar taste of an audience 
 whose pleasure has become unthinking and debased. 
 
 1 Langbaine, p. 491. See also Ward, Vol. iii, pp. 336, 337. 
 
 2 Genest, Vol. ii, p. 241. 
 
 3 Langbaine, p. 7. 
 
 4 See page 34, above. 
 
 6 For Daniel Purcell and his work, see D. N. B. and Cummings' Purcell, pp. 
 98-106. 
 
38 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 Inexpressibly high above these other tragedies, rises the CEdipus 
 of Dryden and Lee. And yet, although the Greek myth has been 
 followed closely and the lines often show power, the play is very 
 terrible because of the bareness of its horrors ; it does not follow 
 the classic tradition. The only play that remains for mention is 
 Dryden's Amphytrion, the single comedy on a classic theme. 
 Here, as in the tragedies of the time, music plays an important 
 r^le. Dryden writes: "What has been wanting on my part has 
 been abundantly supplied by the excellent composition of Mr. 
 Purcell, 1 in whose Person we have at length found an Englishman 
 equal with the best abroad." 2 The lines of Amphytrion are bril- 
 liant, but the play is notoriously licentious. 3 
 
 It has become a commonplace that the literary leader of the 
 age might have changed the history of Restoration Drama if, in- 
 stead of "serving," he had been great enough to prove a worthy 
 poet-laureate. His own confessions tell how he was led to dis- 
 honour poetry to suit the fashion of the hour; and the brilliant 
 comedy, Amphytrion, bears testimony to his stooping to dis- 
 honour a greater than poetry, — morality itself. Thus, when 
 English drama was in saddest need of a leader to call it back "to 
 the traditions of its own past," that leader failed to answer, 
 and joined with the others in inviting foreign example to take 
 possession of an art that had become weakened and warped. 
 Moreover, neither the spirit of French classical tragedy for which 
 Corneille and Racine had fought, nor the wit of Moliere were 
 transferred to England; French drama was merely a storehouse 
 of plots, and scenes, and characters, and a pattern for material 
 devices to hide the intellectual poverty of the age. 
 
 1 Henry Purcell. 
 
 8 Preface to Amphytrion. Works: Vol. viii. 
 
 3 See Brander Matthews: Molihre, 1910, p. 236, for a comparison of 
 Dryden's play with Moliere's comedy on the same theme. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 39 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Myth of (Enone and the Arraignment of Paris, by 
 George Peele. 
 
 The story of (Enone has been made familiar by Tennyson. 
 
 There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier 
 Than all the valleys of Ionian hills. 1 
 
 Here "mournful (Enone" wandering forlorn, came at noon- 
 time to tell how Paris, once "her play-mate on the hills," he who 
 who had "sworn his love a thousand times," had scorned her 
 for Helen, "the fairest and most loving wife in Greece," and 
 (Enone had been left alone. And then one day, as she sat 
 
 Within the cave from out 
 
 Whose ivy-matted mouth she used to gaze 
 
 Down at the Troad, 8 
 
 "her Past became her Present, and she saw 
 
 Him climbing toward her with the golden fruit, 
 Him, happy to be chosen Judge of Gods, 
 Her husband in the flush of youth and dawn, 
 Paris himself as beauteous as a God. 
 
 But he was in agony, for he had been wounded by a poisoned 
 arrow, and had come to her for healing. She could not forgive, 
 and, turning away, left him to die. Then, crazed by remorse, 
 she lept upon the funeral pile that "loving shepherds" had built 
 for his body, and thus "she mixt herself with him and past in 
 fire." 
 
 From the land of Tennyson's Ida, where 
 
 The noonday quiet holds the hill 
 
 and (Enone is so weary of her life, it is a long way back into the 
 
 1 Tennyson : (Enone. 
 'Tennyson: The Death of (Enone. 
 
40 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 far-away dawn of myth where Aurora's fingers were faintly 
 touching the sky with the fair light of imagination. In the dawn 
 who were Paris and (Enone and Helen? And what does the 
 story mean? By Homer's time, (Enone had been forgotten, 
 and Paris and Helen had come to be personages, the dire cause 
 of all the Trojan War. Nevertheless, philology shows that al- 
 though the names of Greek gods and heroes have no meaning in 
 the Greek language, these names appear also in Sanscrit with 
 plain physical meaning. 1 In the Veda, we find Zeus or Jupiter 
 (Dyaus-pitar) meaning the sky, and Sarameis or Hermes, mean- 
 ing the breeze of a summer morning. We find that Athena is 
 the light of day-break; and we are thus enabled to understand 
 why the Greeks described her as sprung from the forehead of Zeus. 
 In the Sanscrit, Helen is the fickle twilight, whom the Panis or 
 night-demons, serving as prototypes of the Hellenic Paris, strive 
 to seduce from her allegiance to the King, the Solar-monarch. 
 Then Paris forsakes (Enone, "the wine-colored one," but meets 
 her again in the twilight, "when she lays herself by his side amid 
 the crimson flames of the funeral pyre." 2 Thus the myth of 
 (Enone is, like all myths, "the explanation of a natural phenom- 
 enon." It is unnecessary and altogether undesirable to enter 
 into the well-trod field of Homeric authorship, or into the be- 
 wildering paths of philology. It is sufficent to remind ourselves 
 that the Iliad myths must have been believed, in widely separated 
 lands, wherever Greek and Teuton wandered, 3 long before the 
 fall of Troy. 
 
 Although the myth of (Enone does not appear in the Iliad, we 
 are told that it has a place in the Cypria* a poem no longer ex- 
 tant. The Cypria seemed to form a prelude to the Iliad, yet it 
 showed a philosophical and psychological tendency all out of 
 keeping with so early and simple an age. It was probably written 
 later than Homer's time, later also than the poet Stasius, who was 
 
 1 For this discussion of the early myth, I have followed Sir John Cox's 
 Mythology of the Aryan Nations and John Fiske's Myths and Myth-makers. 
 
 1 John Fiske: Myths and Myth-makers, Chapter VI. 
 
 * For a comparison of the myth of Paris and Helen with other Aryan myths, 
 see Cox's Mythology of the Aryan Nations, (1870), Vol. I, pp. 63-65 and Vol. 
 II, pp. 79-81. 
 
 4 For a good account of this poem, see Larousse's Dictionnaire. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 41 
 
 long supposed to be its author. In the poem, Jupiter was the 
 father of Nemesis and Helen, who together brought evil to men, — 
 Nemesis in sending discord, Helen, because of her fatal beauty; 
 and here, also, as the cause of the Trojan War, we find the story 
 of the promise which Venus made to Paris in return for his favor- 
 able judgment. The myth of QEnone appears also in the works 
 of Parthenius, an older contemporary of Ovid. He apparently 
 taught Greek to Virgil, although his name is associated more 
 closely with the elegiac poet, Cornelius Gallus, for whose pleasure 
 he compiled, from the ancient poets, a collection of stories con- 
 cerning thirty-six unhappy lovers. The fourth story 1 tells how 
 the shepherd son of Priam fell in love with OEnone, daughter of 
 the River God, Kedren, on Mount Ida. But the Shepherd was 
 fickle, and left OEnone for Helen. Then (Enone crept far away, 
 but she had told her unfaithful lover that there was one thing 
 she would do for him, — heal his wounds. One day, he was hurt 
 by a poisoned arrow. He went to seek her; but she could not 
 forgive him until too late, and then, when he had died, she, bro- 
 ken-hearted, killed herself, TroAAa KaTo\o<f>vxafi€VYj, Svexpyvro iavrrjv. 
 Here we have the whole story. 
 
 Ovid, in whose day the Cypria was perhaps not extant, very 
 probably used the story of his contemporary, Parthenius, for the 
 subject of several of the Heroides, a series of letters in which the 
 familiar heroines of Greek tragedy and later Greek romance express 
 themselves in graceful and harmonious verse. One of the most 
 charming of the Heroides 1 is the epistle of (Enone to Paris. Al- 
 most two hundred years after Ovid's time, Lucian wrote his Judg- 
 ment of Paris, the forty-first of his Dialogues. Lucian merely al- 
 ludes to (Enone, and, with his ironical worldliness, takes the 
 story of the rival goddesses far out of the realm of myth. This 
 dialogue of Lucian was translated by Thomas Hey wood in 1637, 
 but the story of (Enone and Paris had already been translated 
 by Sir George Turbeville, English traveller and romanticist. In 
 1567, he published in English, the Her oy call Epistles of the learned 
 
 1 Parthenii Nicceensis Narrationum Amatoriarum. C. G. Heyne, Got- 
 tingae, 1798, pp. 9-1 1. 
 
 2 For possible sources of Ovid's Heroides and for the text, see Arthur 
 Palmer : P. Ovidi Nasonis Heroides. Oxford, 1898. 
 
42 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 Poet, Publius Ovidius Naso. In 1568, the Stationers' Register 
 records a license for the printing of a "ballet entitled the golden 
 apple," — whether or not the fatal "Apple of Discord" we may 
 only surmise. Seven years after Tuberville's translation, 
 George Peek's Arraignment of Paris was given in the presence 
 of the Queen, and was printed during the same year, 1584. It 
 was probably written immediately before this, and was perhaps 
 Peele's first drama. The Heroides of Ovid has been given as the 
 source, but there seems to be no apparent reason why the 
 young Oxford Master of Arts may not have known the other 
 extant sources as well. 
 
 The Arraignment of Paris is not a pageant nor is it altogether 
 a pastoral drama, but it possesses characteristics of both pageant 
 and pastoral. The effect of pageantry appears everywhere. 
 In Act 1, Scene I, as Pan, Faunus, and Silvanus, with their at- 
 tendants, wait to welcome the goddesses, Flora describes the 
 device she has created at the "entrance of the bower" where 
 Phoebe is to entertain them. There are "yellow oxlips, bright 
 as burnished gold" for Juno, "flowers of hue and color red" for 
 Pallas, while for fair Venus, there are "sweet violets in blue," 
 with a wreath of roses and "other flowers infixed for change of 
 hue." Here is a definite suggestion of the pictorial sense, with 
 an especial delight in color. The same quality pervades the 
 three "shows" by which the rival goddesses endeavor to en- 
 thrall the reluctant Paris, and it appears again in the last act, 
 where the three Fates enter, and, crossing the stage, address 
 the Queen, as they reverently lay at her feet the symbols of their 
 office, while Diana places the ball of gold in the Queen's own 
 hands. Because of his gift for pageantry, it is not strange that 
 Peele should have been chosen to provide plays for the enter- 
 tainment of the Polish Prince Palatine, Albertus Alasco, upon 
 the occasion of his visit to Oxford in 1583, or that for a time, he 
 should have held the office of "City Poet," with its duty of pro- 
 viding pageants at the annual election of the Lord Mayor. 
 Peele's pageant for the year 1585, is the first printed description 
 of a Lord Mayor's pageant known to exist. The manuscript, 
 which belongs to the Bodleian Library, bears the words: "Donne 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 43 
 
 by George Peele, Maister of Artes in Oxford." 1 "It contains 
 only the speeches spoken by the characters in the pageant, and 
 no description of the pageant itself, or of the procession in gen- 
 eral, as was customary in after years." 2 Peele also wrote the 
 pageant for the year 1591. 3 
 
 The Arraignment of Paris is in the pastoral mode. It con- 
 tains a description of life upon Mount Ida, and a Lay (Act III, 
 Scene 2) sung by the Shepherds as they lament, in artificial 
 pastoral fashion, the fatal love of Colin and the disdain of 
 cruel Thestylus. Hobbinol, Digon, and Thenot also discourse 
 together upon love in the pastoral manner (Act III, Scene I). 
 Yet pageantry and pastoral are mere elements in a drama of 
 considerable merit. Peele strengthened his plot by balancing 
 with the story of (Enone's unfortunate love, the tale of Colin's 
 grief, while the characters of the main actors in the drama are 
 drawn with variety and originality. In more ways than one, 
 Peele was an innovator in " this his first increase, " 4 just as a few 
 years later, he was an innovator in The Old Wives Tale. More- 
 over, the beauty of his lyrics and the facility of his blank verse 
 are remarkable for one who wrote at least four years before 
 Marlowe's Tamburlaine was acted. Shakespeare's Venus and 
 Adonis did not appear until 1593. 
 
 As to the interpretation of the myth, we find (Enone as lovely 
 and as steadfast as in the old Greek story, and Paris as fickle; 
 and they appear before us in the atmosphere of foreboding which 
 is as truly one of the elements of the earlier age, in which myth 
 developed, as of the modern world. CEnone sings while Paris 
 pipes : 
 
 My love is fair, my love is gay, 
 
 As fresh as bin the flowers in May, 
 
 And of my love my roundelay, 
 
 My merry merry merry roundelay, 
 
 Concludes with Cupid's curse, 
 
 1 Percy Society Publications, Vol. X, p. 24. 
 1 Ibid. 
 
 3 Discensus Astrceae, written for the mayoral solemnity of Sir Wm. Webbe, 
 29 Oct., 1 59 1. MS. in the Guildhall. 
 
 4 The play was thus described by Nash in 1589. 
 
44 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 They that do change old love for new, 
 Pray gods they change for worse! 1 
 
 And then (Enone begs: 
 
 Sweet Shepherd, for (Enone's sake be cunning in this song, 
 And keep thy love and love thy choice, or else thou dost her wrong. 
 
 Paris promises: 
 
 My vow is made and witnessed, the poplar will not start, 
 Nor shall the Nymph (Enone's love from forth my breathing heart. 
 
 The pathos of (Enone's foreboding is apparent later in the play 
 when Venus says to Paris, 
 
 Sweet Shepherd, did thou ever love? 
 Paris. Lady, a little once. 
 Venus. And art thou changed? 
 Paris. Fair Queen of Love, I loved not all attonce. 2 
 
 (Enone reveals her loveliness in two lyrics of exquisite beauty, 
 — the " Fair and fair and twice as fair " from which quotation 
 has just been made and "(Enone's Complaint," 3 with its sweet 
 dignity and sense of pain and patience. There is one lyric on 
 unrequited love, not (Enone's, which is beautiful, — that of Colin, 
 beginning, "O gentle Love, ungentle for thy deed." Besides 
 lyric beauty, the play contains graceful and flexible blank verse, 
 notably that in Paris's "Oration to the Council of the Gods," 
 beginning, 
 
 Sacred and just, thou great and dreadful Jove, 4 
 
 and in Diana's description of the " Nymph Eliza," with its in- 
 tense spirit of national pride. 
 
 The place £lysuim hight and of the place 
 
 Her name that governs there Eliza is; 
 
 A Kingdom that may well compare with mine, 
 
 An ancient seat of Kings, a second Troy, 
 
 Y-compassed round with a commodious sea; 
 
 Her people are y-cleped Angeli, 
 
 Or if I miss, a letter is the most. 
 
 She giveth laws of justice and of peace; 5 
 
 1 The Temple Dramatists — The Arraignment of Paris. Act I, Scene 2. 
 
 5 Act III, Scene 2. 
 
 3 Act III, Scene I. 
 
 4 Act IV, Scene 1. 
 
 6 Compare with John of Gaunt's eulogy of England in Shakespeare's 
 Rich. II, Act II, Scene 1. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 45 
 
 The lyric beauty, and the facility and dignity of the blank verse 
 form a distinct contrast to the tumbling " fourteeners " in which 
 much of the verse is written; for, lovely as it is, the play is un- 
 even. 
 
 As has been mentioned, especial interest is aroused by the 
 manner in which Peele uses the myth, not as the occasion for 
 allegory, but in order to pay a graceful compliment to the queen. 
 "The germ of this fine piece of flattery," is to be found in George 
 Gascoigne's Grief of Joy, a poem which ends as follows: 
 
 This Queen it is, who had she sat in field 
 When Paris judged that Venus bore the bell, 
 The prize were hers, for she deserves it well. 
 
 Using the earlier compliment to Queen Elizabeth as his model, 
 Peele allows Paris to be "arraigned" before the gods because he 
 has awarded to Venus the apple which, according to the decree 
 of the Fates, should have gone to 
 
 Our fair Eliza, our Zabeta fair. 
 
 The beauty of the play Is heightened by descriptions that show 
 delight in nature. A notable example is Flora's exuberent ex- 
 clamation in Act I: 
 
 Not Iris in her pride and bravery 
 
 Adorns her arch with such variety; 
 
 Nor doth the milk-white way, in frosty night, 
 
 Appear so fair and beautiful in sight 
 
 As done these fields, and groves, and sweetest bowers, 
 
 Where 
 
 Round about the valley as ye pass, 
 
 Ye may not see for peeping flowers the grass. 
 
 The Arraignment of Paris is interesting as an entertainment, 
 with its pageantry, its novelty, its wealth of mythology, but it is 
 especially significant as the earliest example in Elizabethan 
 Drama of a distinctly poetic play. 2 
 
 1 See Felix E. Schelling: The Life and Writings of George Gascoigne, pp. 80, 
 81. 
 
 2 Peele also wrote The Hunting of Cupid, a lost pastoral drama licensed 
 26 July, 1591, (S. R. II, p. 278) which, from a manuscript statement of Drum- 
 
46 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 The Paris story was used as the theme of two later entertain- 
 ments, — The Triumph of Beauty by Shirley, and The Judgment of 
 Paris by Congreve. The former was given in 1640, and published 
 in 1646, the title of the old copy being, "The Triumph of Beautie. 
 As it was performed by some young gentlemen for whom it was 
 intended, at a private Recreation." The first part of the play 
 is an imitation of the mechanics in The Midsummer Night's 
 Dream. A group of Shepherds, distressed at the melancholy of 
 their "Prince Paris" plan a "device" by which to entertain him. 
 Bottle, the master of ceremonies, is Bottom, the Weaver, in shep- 
 herd dress. Fleay thinks that Thomas Heywood's Love's Mistress, 
 acted on the King's Birthday, November 19, probably in 1634, 
 alludes to Shirley's Arcadia, presented at Court on a King's 
 Birthday, November 19, probably in the year 1632, 1 and that 
 The Triumph of Beauty was written in retaliation, a burlesque 
 upon Heywood. "The whole," he adds, "owls, ships, fiery 
 dragons, Jason, Hercules, and the choice of Paris, all occur in 
 Heywood's Pageants." This conjecture seems not impossible, 
 as far as Heywood's pageants are concerned. But the absurd 
 discussion of the practicability of the various episodes of the 
 Trojan War for the shepherd's device in The Triumph of Beauty 
 is suggestive of the same theme in Love's Mistress, not in ridicule 
 of Heywood, but in the identical burlesque vein which he uses; 
 it is imitation rather than ridicule. In Shirley's story of the 
 Judgment of Paris, (Enone does not appear, nor is there any hint 
 of the Trojan War. The entire scene is pervaded by present 
 beauty, and there is no real interpretation of the myth. Past 
 and Future are forgotten, and when the decision has been made, 
 Juno and Pallas do not threaten; they merely turn away in dis- 
 gust. Paris, in his joy, avers "their anger frights not me," and 
 Cupid, who, "though blind" has never lost his way to beauty, 
 flies to his mother, while Hymen and Delight, the Graces, and 
 the "feather-footed Hours" come to join in the play. There is 
 no sense of deeper truth to shadow the joy in love and beauty. 
 
 mond of Hawthornden, seen by Dyce, apparently was printed before 1607. 
 See Bullen's Peek. 
 
 1 Fleay: Chronicle of the English Drama, Vol. ii, p. 239. Also pp. 244 
 
 245. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 47 
 
 There is exuberant and lovely poetry in all the persuasive speeches 
 of the rival goddesses, although the loveliest lines are those in 
 which Venus says: 
 
 It shall be ever spring and ever summer 
 Where Paris shall inhabit; all rude airs, 
 The killing dews, tempest and lightning, shall 
 Be strangers to thy walks, which the west winds 
 Shall with their soft and gentle gales perfume. 
 The laurel and the myrtle shall compose 
 Thy arbours interwoven with the rose, 
 And honey-dropping woodbine. 
 
 The Elizabethan atmosphere of the speeches of Juno and Pallas 
 is interesting. The glory in adventure and in trade in the East 
 are reflected in Juno's plea, while Pallas, in her conception of 
 wisdom, suggests the point of view of the new age. 
 
 Congreve's masque, The Judgment of Paris, published in 1701, 
 is full of grace and charm. It was written for a competition in 
 music in which "several persons of quality" offered two hundred 
 guineas to be divided between four successful competitors. The 
 successful compositions were all played during the year 1700. 1 
 In this masque, the myth has become a mere thread of plot. 2 
 In English poetry, the myth has been interpreted a number of 
 times. In his edition of Warton's History of English Poetry, 
 Hazlitt says, concerning Peele's play, that he has seen "a little 
 novel on the subject with the same compliment to the queen, by 
 Dickenson in his Greene in Concept, etc." 3 Apparently, this is 
 an error. Hazlitt must have referred to Dickenson's poem on 
 The Strife of Love and Beauty, in which Love crowns Beauty as 
 "one of three," the third being Virtue. Possibly a compliment 
 to the Queen is here intended, but it is not particularly evident; 
 certainly the "Judgment" is not given by Paris. The Cupid 
 
 ^ee D. N. B. Finger. Mr. Gosse, in his Life of Congreve, pp. 142-144 1 
 says that Eccles was the most successful competitor and gained the first 
 prize but he is assigned second place both in the D. N. B. and in Grove's 
 Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 
 
 1 In her book, English Pastoral Drama (London, 1908) Miss Jeannette Marks 
 gives an account of a Pastoral Opera on the Judgment of Paris, called Love 
 Triumphant or the Rival Goddesses by Mrs. Bellamy. 
 
 3 Warton's History of English Poetry: W. Carew Hazlitt (1871), p. 298 
 
48 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 and Psyche myth is, however, suggested. In the argument as to 
 which is greater, Beauty or Love, Beauty pleads in her own de- 
 fence : 
 
 Psyche was more faire than any; 
 
 Lovde of lew, though lik'de of many. 
 
 Yet so lik'de that not affected: 
 
 Sisters sped, but she rejected. 
 
 Yet, quoth Beautie, Psyche gainde 
 
 Cupid's heart to her enchande, 
 
 Where was then his wonted might? 
 
 Vanquishde by a woman's sight? 1 
 
 This poem of over a hundred lines is graceful and musical, 
 and a close imitation of Dickenson's beloved Greene, whose 
 songs in Menaphon entitled, "Sephestia's Song to her Child" 
 and the lyric beginning, 
 
 Some say Love 
 
 Foolish Love 
 
 Doth rule and govern all the gods, 
 
 are reflected in Dickenson's poem. 
 
 Tennyson's lyrics to (Enone have already been mentioned. 
 The Death of Paris has been told very beautifully by Walter 
 Savage Landor, and by William Morris in The Earthly Paradise^ 
 while Landor added the Story of Corythos, the son, according to 
 a later myth, of (Enone and Paris. 
 
 Prose and Verse by J. D., edited by A. B. Grosart. 
 
 / 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 49 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Cupid and Psyche Myth, and Thomas Heywood's Love's 
 Mistress or The Queen's Masque. 
 
 Of the Greek myths, none is more beautiful than that of 
 Cupid and Psyche. Life, and Love, and Death are the mysteries 
 of all time, and it is only another evidence of the beneficence of 
 Truth that in this ancient story, the Soul should be awakened by 
 Love at the end of the strange journey into the deep unknown 
 and that from their union Joy should be born. The Greeks 
 loved to tell the story on their monuments, but, from the ancients, 
 the only version that has come down to us is in The Golden Ass of 
 Apuleius. Little is known of Apuleius except the facts he gives 
 in his works. He lived in the second century, about the time of 
 Antoninus Pius, and was a native of Madaura, a Roman colony 
 in Africa. His family was of considerable rank. He studied 
 first at Carthage, then at Athens, where he appears to have been 
 well instructed in the literature of the Greeks. His chief work 
 is the Metamorphoses or the Golden Ass, a fantastic and satiric 
 romance in the Latin tongue. It tells of the adventures of one 
 Lucius, many of whose characteristics have been attributed to 
 Apuleius. It is possible that the romance is, to a degree, auto- 
 biographical, although it is not safe to carry the comparison too 
 far. The surname Lucius is often given to Apuleius, but it does 
 not necessarily belong to him. In the disguise of an ass, Lucius 
 was able to satisfy his desire to know the mysteries of life by ob- 
 serving the preposterous doings of mankind. He was made wise 
 through experience, and at last the ass's shape was removed by 
 a priest of Isis. 
 
 Bayle, in his Dictionary, says of the Golden Ass: "There is 
 reason to take the Book for a perpetual Satyr on the Disorders 
 which the Magicians, Priests, Panders, Thieves, etc. fill'd the 
 World with at the Time. "* Whether or not the book be taken as 
 
 1 Bayle's Dictionary (1734), p. 396. 
 
50 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 a satire, it is so entertaining and the adventures follow so rapidly 
 as to suggest that the name "Aureus" or Golden, was given to 
 it because it afforded so much pleasure. Into it there have 
 been woven the threads of many a delightful old tale, of which 
 Cupid and Psyche is the loveliest. Apuleius represents the story as 
 told to a beautiful maiden who has been taken captive by robbers, 
 and carried to their cave. She is so disconsolate that even the 
 banditti become compassionate, and induce an old woman, an 
 inmate of the cave, to tell a story to comfort her. 
 
 The earliest interpretation of the myth of which we have record 
 occurs in the works of Fulgentius, 1 the Latin Grammarian. He 
 was a native of Carthage, and wrote towards the end of the fifth 
 century. His work includes, among others, an allegorical inter- 
 pretation of ancient mythology called Mithologiarum, libri III; 
 in this work the spiritual interpretation of Psyche, the Soul, 
 is dwelt upon. The Editio Princepsof the Golden Ass appeared 
 in 1469, the Editio Princeps of the Mithologiarum, in 1487. 
 
 The myth was used first and most frequently in the literature 
 of Italy, 2 appearing there once at the end of the fifteenth century, 
 four times in the sixteenth, and eight times between 1600 and 1650. 
 It was used in a variety of forms, not only in drama, in heroic 
 poetry, in opera, but once in the form of a letter, and again in 
 an elaborate interlude. An apparently close familiarity with 
 Apuleius is exhibited, especially in the earlier works. The most 
 notable Italian production seems to be the long epic poem of 
 Ercole Udine, Awenimenti amorosi di Psichc, is 99 > The in- 
 fluence of this work is seen repeatedly in the later poetry. In 
 Spain, the myth was used first about the middle of the sixteenth 
 century, in the still unpublished work of Don Juan de Mai Lara. 3 
 This most original epic poem in twelve cantos has been studied 
 by Antoine de Latour in his Psyche en Espagne, 1879. De 
 Latour writes also of the very beautiful Autos Sacramentales of 
 Calderon, which followed about one hundred years later, and in 
 which appear "quelque chose enfin de cette interpretation as- 
 
 1 Smith's Dictionary of Mythology and Biography. 
 
 2 See Balthazar Stumfall: Das Mdrchen von Amor und Psyche. Leipzig, 
 1907. 
 
 3 The basis for this account of the myth in Italy, Spain, and France is in 
 Dr. Stumfall's thesis. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 51 
 
 cetique et subtile que l'eveque africain, Fulgence, avait faite au 
 VP siecle, de la fable d'Apulee." 1 The brilliant comedy of Cal- 
 deron and that of de Solis, with its splendid spectacular features, 
 belong to the later half of the seventeenth century, the period 
 in which all of the French interpretations of the myth appear. 
 
 In French literature, we first find the myth in 1656. All the 
 French versions show the influence of the Italian and Spanish 
 work that had gone before rather than that of the Latin original. 
 It was in the opportunity which the story gave for scenic acces- 
 sories and for clever analysis of the feminine mind that it appeal- 
 ed especially to the French of the time of Louis XIV. The Psyche 
 of Moliere was given in 1671, in the presence of the king at the 
 Tuileries. The music was by Lulli, and Corneille, then an old 
 man, assisted Moliere. 2 As Voltaire said of it, the play is not 
 great and the last scenes are dull; but the beauty of the subject, 
 the ornaments with which it was embelished, the royal wealth 
 which was lavished upon it, went far to cover the defects. 3 It 
 was acted during the carnival of the year 1671, by La Troupe 
 du Roi, and given to the public in the Theatre de la Salle du Palais 
 Royal on the 24th of July, 1671 . Moliere took the part of Zephyr, 
 Mile. Moliere that of Psyche, and it is possible that the five or 
 six year old daughter of Moliere appeared, dressed as a Cupid. 
 "During the remaining two years of Moliere's life, Psyche was 
 acted more than eighty times to nightly receipts that did not 
 vary greatly from a thousand livres, more than twice the average 
 of those taken at the performance of the Misanthrope." 4 
 
 The first English translation of Apuleius by William Adlington 
 in 1566, has already been mentioned. The first extant play, 
 Love's Mistress, by Thomas Heywood, was licensed September 
 30, 1635. The first quarto bears the date 1636 and a second 
 quarto apparently followed in 1640. 5 Heywood writes enthu- 
 
 1 De Latour: Psyche en Espange. Introduction pp. xiv and xv. 
 
 2 Despois et Mesnard: CEuvres de Moliere, p. 268. 
 
 3 Ibid. 
 
 4 Brander Matthews: Moliere, p. 274 ff. 
 
 5 There is a good deal of confusion in the reprints of this play, those pur- 
 porting to follow the 1840 quarto varying in spelling especially. In the 
 Modern Language Quarterly, Vol. VII, 1904, W. W. Greg makes the follow- 
 ing note: "Another undecided point is the sequence of the editions of Love's 
 
52 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 siastically of the play, saying that it was "three times presented 
 before both their Majesties within the space of eight days, in the 
 presence of sundry foreign Ambassadors," and in his dedication 
 to the Lord Chamberlain, the Earl of Dorset, he speaks of its 
 having pleased her most excellent majesty to grace "the poem" 
 often with "her royal presence." The first presentation seems 
 to have been given by the Queen's players at the Phoenix (former- 
 ly the Cockpit) in Drury Lane. Cupid, in the Prologue, de- 
 scribes the play as "both fresh and new," and welcomes the 
 Queen "as ent'ring hither at our public gate." It was given the 
 second time at Denmark (or Somerset) House in honor of the 
 King's birthday on November 19, 1 as the second prologue an- 
 nounces. After this the play was called The Queen's Masque. 
 It was at this performance that the elaborate stage setting ar- 
 ranged by Inigo Jones was added, in which "he, in every act, 
 nay, almost to every scene, by his excellent inventions, gave such 
 an extraordinary lustre; upon every occasion changing the stage, 
 to the admiration of all the Spectators." A third Prologue was 
 given at the second performance during the same week, this time 
 probably at the Phoenix, as Fleay 2 and Collier 3 both seem to 
 think probable. Fleay says that the first performance was in 
 1633, the second on 19 November, 1634, and there is no apparent 
 reason why these conjectures should not hold. For his further 
 surmises, however, that the part of Apuleius was taken by Hey- 
 wood, and that of Midas by Christopher Beeston, with William 
 Beeston as Corydon, as well as for his conjecture as to the rela- 
 tion of Love's Mistress to the lost play of Chettle, Day and Dek- 
 ker, there seems to be no real ground. 4 Nor is there definite 
 foundation for his suggestion that of the Five Plays in One, given 
 as a new play of Hey wood in 1597, the last play was perhaps 
 
 Mistress. The first edition appeared in 1636, and was followed by two bear- 
 ing the date 1640, namely '40 A (Mistresse) B. M. 644 e. 42 and '40 B. (Mis- 
 trese) J3. M. 644 e. 43. Now '36 and '40 A agree, as against 40. B, while '40 
 A and '40 B agree as against '36; from which it follows, provided there are no 
 lost editions, that '40 A was printed from '36 and '40 B from '40 A. 
 
 1 To the Reader. 
 
 2 Fleay: Chronicle of the English Drama, Vol. I, pp. 298 and 299. 
 
 3 Collier: Annals of the Stage, Vol. II, p. 76. 
 
 4 Fleay: Chronicle, Vol. I, pp. 299, 300. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 
 
 53 
 
 Cupid and Psyche, the original form of Love's Mistress without 
 the Clown, etc." 
 
 As to the sources of the play, Heywood says "To the Reader, " 
 "The argument is taken from Apuleius, an excellent Morrall, if 
 truly understood, and may be called a Golden Truth, contained 
 in a leaden fable, which though it be not altogether conspicuous 
 to the Vulgar, yet to those of Learning and judgment, no less 
 apprehended in the Paraphrase than approved in the originall; 
 of which if the perusers thereof were all Apuleians, and never a 
 Midas amongst them I should make no question." 
 
 The play is fundamentally a masque, with every opportunity 
 for splendor of scenery; but there is a definite plot, worked out 
 with dramatic skill, and the addition of a clown element with 
 buffoonery and burlesque. The play not only lends itself to the 
 spectacular, but it appeals to the audience in clever comedy, in 
 fun and frolic, in satire, in charm of story, in pathos and poetry. 
 The Masque opens with a prologue spoken by Cupid, who de- 
 scends in a cloud, and the dramatis persona are the gods and god- 
 desses of Olympus — Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, Venus, Pan, Vulcan, 
 and the family of Admetus, King of Arcadia. There are scenes 
 in Arcadia, on Olympus, and in Hades. At Delphos, "the air's 
 light wings" fan "through all our ears immortal tunes," and 
 there before Apollo and his Sibyls come the royal family to learn 
 of Psyche's fate. The oracle proclaims that she must be clothed 
 "in a mourning weed" and left upon a hill, there to wed a hus- 
 band not human. Climbing the hill with difficulty, she goes to 
 meet "the pale Hagg," Death, and is gently borne away on the 
 wings of Zephyrus. The scenes that follow afford opportunity 
 for variety, — Psyche's castle with the banquet set out by Zephy- 
 rus, while Echoes and invisible servants wait upon her, to the 
 sound of music; Cupid asleep while Psyche comes with lamp and 
 razor; Vulcan's smithy, with his Cyclops, while runaway Cupid, 
 the fetters on his heels, takes refuge there; Hades, with Minos, 
 Eacus, and Rhadamont in council, and Persephone on her throne; 
 Psyche's journey back to earth with the help of Charon and 
 Cerberus; and the final assembly of the gods and goddesses, 
 Admetus and the forgiven sisters, with the dance that followed, 
 while the gods circle Psyche "in a fairy ring" and grace her with 
 a crown. 
 
54 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 The antimasque consists in the dances and dumb shows which 
 Apuleius provides for the entertainment of Midas, — the dance of 
 the asses whom Apuleius knew so well, the Prodigal, the Drunken 
 Ass, the Usurper, the Young Gentlewoman who is a Mother's 
 Darling, and the Ignorant Ass, brother to Midas himself. The 
 second act closes with the dance of Pan and the Clown, Swains 
 and Country Wenches, and the third with an elaborate " conceit" 
 to counteract the effect of Psyche's sadness. The fourth act 
 closes with the dance of Vulcan and his Cyclops. 
 
 The employment of classical material is marked. The mytho- 
 logy is, for the most part, familiar, and the unfamiliar features 
 are almost all to be found in the Golden Ass except the burlesque 
 of the gods and the story of Midas. Heywood indulges in the 
 familiarity of a long acquaintance with the Olympians. Full 
 forty years before he had begun the writing of the Ages, in which 
 he had disclosed their weaknesses in no respectful fashion. The 
 scene between Venus and her teasing son, Cupid; the bustling 
 impatience of Vulcan with his orders that came too fast to be 
 filled and his threat to make Venus turn "she-smith" and help 
 him if it would not cost him too much to keep her supplied with 
 cosmetics to counteract the effect of the smoke; the clown's pun- 
 ning parody on the Trojan War, — all this is spirited and clever, 
 and would be entertaining to any audience. Apuleius and 
 Midas, in their ass's ears, are the chorus. They comment upon 
 the play, and act out the contest between the enthusiastic poet, 
 whose wit is "aim'd at inscrutable things beyond the moon, " and 
 Midas, the conceited fool, who, making everything he touches 
 commonplace, prefers Pan's fool to Apollo's chorus and drives 
 away the angry god of Light. 
 
 The clown element is in Heywood 's characteristic vein. He 
 is truly English in his development of this national contribution 
 to drama. In Love's Mistress, the appeal to the audience is in- 
 genuous; the clown is conscious of his audience, and not only 
 performs for it, but sometimes addresses it directly. He is full 
 of rollicking fun, and his ready wit shows itself in puns and paro- 
 dies, and in a boastful alliteration that is amusing. The clown- 
 age is worked into the plot with the insight of a skillful play- 
 wright. If the substitution of the chorus and the clown for 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 55 
 
 Apollo and Pan in the contest in which Midas is judge, and the 
 counterfeit box of beauty with which the clown decorates him- 
 self are not subtle inventions, they are, nevertheless, humorous 
 and effective. There is coarseness, at times, and, although two 
 of the songs are amusing, with their puns and bad Latin, there is 
 a third song that is exceedingly vulgar. One notices a certain 
 familiarity and lack of dignity throughout the play, as if the man- 
 ners of the clown and his swains had touched, with harmful in- 
 fluence, the great personages themselves. 
 
 In his use of the Cupid and Psyche myth, Heywood has shown 
 dramatic instinct in his omissions, as well as in his additions. 
 He does not suggest that the sisters were dissatisfied with their 
 own husbands or that they were in love with Cupid, and they do 
 not die tragically as in the Golden Ass. Psyche is chosen as their 
 judge and she forgives them, making them her humble hand- 
 maids. The sisters are differentiated not only by their names 
 but by their characters; Astioche is the leader. The husbands 
 are characters in the play and take dignified parts. Psyche does 
 not try to kill herself as in the Golden Ass, nor are her wanderings 
 so long. She is very lovely in the play, — natural, and simple, 
 and sweet ; far more sinned against than in the Latin story. Her 
 disobedience is more tragic than in the older version. Cupid 
 warns her once; that is all. He does not dwell upon her danger. 
 Her sisters terrify her, and their evil counsel destroys her self- 
 possession; she wavers between the advice of the sisters she 
 thinks she knows, and that of her unseen husband. Her mental 
 suffering expresses itself physically. Boreas has been ordered to 
 
 Breathe winter's stormes upon the blushing cheekes 
 Of beautious Psiche; with thy boisterous breath, 
 Rend off her silks, and cloathe her in torn rags; 
 Hang on her loath 'd looks base deformity, 
 And bear her to her father. 1 
 
 She is so changed that her father does not recognize her. The 
 sisters scorn her; Venus beats her. She is alone and loveless. 
 No wonder that, as she bears the box from Persephone she longs 
 for the beauty it contains. 
 
 1 Love's Mistress, III, I, 70-74. 
 
56 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 There has always been more or less inconsistency in the con- 
 ception of Cupid. In earliest Greek art, Eros seems to have 
 typified the embodiment of floating desire. He was worshipped 
 not as the light and sensuous love god of later days, but as the 
 mysterious impulse that brings about the union of human beings, 
 and ensures the continuance of life. Later, the Romans gave a 
 more serious and symbolic interpretation to the gay spirit of 
 Greek imagination. In medieval times the atmosphere of 
 gayety clung to him. Dante says: 
 
 And then I saw Love come from far away, 
 But soon I knew him for his joyous air. 
 'Honor to me,' he said, 'think now to pay.' 
 And all his words with smiles compassioned were. 1 
 
 And Chaucer, — 
 
 Y-clothed was this mighty god of love 
 In silke, embrouded ful of grene greves. 
 In — with a fret of rede rose-leves, 
 The freshest sin the world was first bigonne; 
 His gilte heer was corouned with a sonne, 
 In-sted of gold, for hevinesse and wighte; 
 Therewith me thoughte his face shoon so brighte 
 That wel unnethes might I him beholde. 2 
 
 Heywood's characterization of Cupid is confused. He is neither 
 the royal youth of classic Greek and of Medieval times, nor the 
 little winged boy of late Greek art. The author seems to have 
 both Cupids in mind and he does not discriminate. Sometimes 
 Cupid is the naughty boy of Olympus, more often he is a digni- 
 fied lover. At the end he is compassionate and loving, although 
 not over gallant to womankind. He says, 
 
 But foolish girle; alas why blame I thee 
 When all thy sex is guilty of like pride, 
 And ever was? 3 
 
 Love's Mistress is not a great play; probably a great play on 
 the subject cannot be written. The myth lends itself to opera, 
 to masque and pageant ; but the dramatic quality of the story must 
 
 1 The Vita Nuova: Charles Eliot Norton (1867), p. 59. 
 * The Prologue to The Legend of Good Women. 
 3 Love's Mistress, V, II. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 57 
 
 ever be blurred by the allegory. If Heywood's play lacks a 
 fusion of all the elements into perfect harmony, the author was 
 almost always conscious of the poetry of his subject. 
 
 Pepys mentions seeing the play of Love's Mistress five times. 1 
 On March 2, 1661, he writes enthusiastically of the new play, 
 "The Queen's Maske" which he saw at the theatre in Salisbury 
 Court. He especially delighted in the "good jeer to the old 
 story of the Siege of Troy, making it to be a common country 
 tale." He saw the play again on March 11, at The Theatre, but 
 he is not as well pleased as with the company at Salisbury Court. 
 He mentions the mere fact of having seen it on March 25 of the 
 same year. Twice again , in 1 665 , and in 1 668 , he saw the play at the 
 King's House, and each time he writes of the "variety and diver- 
 tisement" and of the "pretty things" in it. The play, then, 
 was one of the first to be given at the opening of the theatres, 
 and one of the most popular during the earlier years of the Res- 
 toration. The opportunity for "pretty" scenes and for music 
 and dancing, as well as its variety recommended it to the new 
 age, and there is something wholesome in the fact that this play, 
 with its vigorous Elizabethan atmosphere, its healthy fun, its 
 spiritual interpretation of a beautiful myth, should have held 
 its own so long. After the splendid scenery of Moliere's Psyche 
 and its imitation in England by Shad well, we hear of Thomas 
 Heywood's play no longer. 
 
 The story of the myth in English Literature is, however, by 
 no means finished. It abounds in translation, in paraphrase, 
 and in poetry. After Adlington's work, there seems to be no 
 English translation until that of the Platonist, Thomas Taylor, 
 in 1795, Apuleius Mzdiurensis, The Fable of Cupid and Psyche; 
 to which are added a Poetical Paraphrase on the Speech of Dio- 
 tima in the Banquet of Plato; four Hymns, with an Introduction, 
 in which the meaning of the Fable is unfolded. The Fable is the 
 Cupid and Psyche myth, and the interpretation is published 
 again in the later work of Thomas Taylor, The Metamorphosis or 
 Golden Ass and Philosophical Works of Apuleius, 1822, and by 
 Bohn in the translation of Apuleius which he published in 1853. 
 
 1 The Diary of Samuel Pepys: edited by Wheatley, Vol. I, pp. 355, 359, 
 365; Vol. IV, p. 412 and Vol. VIII, p. 82. 
 
58 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 In 1842, an English translation was made by G. F. Hildebrand, 
 and in 1851 another by Sir George Head. The most beautiful 
 of the English translations, however, is that of Walter Pater, in 
 his Marius the Epicurean, the chapter on The Golden Book. Pater 
 writes of the beauty of that "book of books" of the day, of the 
 "archaisms and curious felicities in which that age delighted, 
 quaint terms and images, picked fresh from the early dramatists, 
 the life-like phrases of some lost poem preserved by an old gram- 
 marian, racy morsels of the vernacular and studied prettinesses ; — 
 all alike merely playthings for the genuine power, and natural 
 eloquence of the erudite artist, unsuppressed by his erudition." 1 
 Into his translation of Cupid and Psyche, Pater has woven some- 
 thing of the "aurum intextum," the "gold fibre" which he found 
 in the Golden Book. 
 
 There have been two unsuccessful attempts at metrical ver- 
 sions of the story of Cupid and Psyche, one by Hudson Gurney, 
 Esq., appearing anonymously in 1799, 2 the other, a long poem in 
 Spenserian stanza by Mrs. Henry Tighe in 1805. Mrs. Brown- 
 ing, however, has translated fragments of the story in charming 
 verse. The myth has fared better in prose version. In 1744, 
 it was retold in quaint and pleasing fashion by "Mr. Lockman" 
 in his book called The Loves of Cupid and Psyche in Verse and 
 Prose from the French of La Fontaine, to which was prefixed a 
 Version of the same story from the Latin of Apuleius. z Recently, 
 the story has been told delightfully by Paul Carus, 1900, and 
 by Rouse, 1907, in his Cupid and Psyche and other Tales from 
 the Golden Ass. 
 
 In English poetry, the myth has been variously interpreted. 
 Milton, towards the close of Comus, describes very beautifully 
 the Eternal union of Love and Spiritual Beauty. Two poems be- 
 long to the seventeenth century, The Legend of Cupid and Psyche 
 by Shakerley Marmion, and the epic poem Psyche by Joseph 
 Beaumont. In each, the myth has been taken out of its atmos- 
 phere of simplicity and romance and has been treated with an 
 elaborateness and learning characteristic of the period. Mar- 
 
 1 Marius the Epicurean (1885), p. 60. 
 
 2 Cf. D. N. B. Hudson Gurney. 
 
 3 Both versions appear in The Bohn Library, (1853). 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 59 
 
 mion 1 is verbose, proud of his learning and of his worldly wis- 
 dom; he uses countless metaphors and far-fetched figures which 
 sometimes become conceits. There are absurdities, and the 
 verse, though fluent, depends too much upon the rhymes which 
 are often bad. Yet the poem is very pleasing. It is conceived 
 in the spirit of sincere enthusiasm, and the story remains simple 
 and sweet in the midst of its doubtful ornamentation. Beau- 
 mont's Psyche, 2 published in 1648, is probably the longest poem 
 in the English language, although its author modestly calls it his 
 "dedicated mite." The Cupid and Psyche myth is all but lost 
 in the religious significance. In the earlier cantos, there are 
 traces of Cupid in the Love which woos Psyche: he has "golden 
 locks," bears a quiver of "Innumerable Shafts," and is the son 
 of one whom "the Graces follow," but even here the mystical 
 meaning stifles all but the suggestion of the myth. The poem 
 shows wonderful imaginative power, and the twenty-four huge 
 cantos contain passages of rare beauty, but the poem as a whole, 
 is like a vast forest, whose paths, some leading to mighty shadows 
 and fantastic forms, others bright in the sunshine, are never- 
 ending and numberless. 
 
 It is natural that in the eighteenth century the myth almost 
 fails to appear. Towards the close of the century, however, 
 Erasmus Darwin, the portly and vigorous physician, grand- 
 father of Charles Darwin, wrote his Botanic Garden? The second 
 part of this poem tells of the Loves of the Plants, and from out 
 the scientific didacticism with its forced personification and stiff 
 rhetoric,the Cupid and Psyche story appears in charming relief. 
 
 So pure, so soft, with sweet attraction shone, 
 Fair Psyche, kneeling at the etherial throne; 
 Won with coy smile the admiring court of Jove, 
 And, warm'd the bosom of unconquer'd Love. 
 
 In the nineteenth century, there are many allusions to the 
 myth, and several long poems. Moore speaks of the story in 
 his youthful outburst in praise of Mrs. Tighe's verses and later, 
 
 1 Minor Poets of the Caroline Period: Saintsbury: Vol. II, The Legend 
 of Cupid and Psyche. 
 a Joseph Beaumont, edited by Grosart: Psyche. 
 3 Erasmus Darwin : The Poetical Works, 1806. 
 
60 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 in his Summer Fete The Ode to Psyche of Keats and the less 
 notable Psyche of Lewis Morris in the Epic of Hades, 1876, are 
 representative of different phases of thought, while the poem of 
 William Morris, in 1868, and that of Robert Bridges, in 1885, 
 give the story of Apuleius in its fulness, the former in the wealth 
 of romantic loveliness, the latter in the repose of classic beauty. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 6i 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Myth of Phaeton, and The Sun's Darlings by Ford 
 
 and Dekker 
 
 In Greek mythology, Phaeton, "the shining one," was some- 
 times another name for Helios, the sun god, sometimes it referred 
 to his son. In Homer, 1 he is simply Helios, but in Hesiod, in a 
 portion of the story which no longer exists, he was the son of 
 Helios. The myth of Phaeton will always be a true nature myth. 
 If the sun destroyed the fruits and flowers, which his warmth 
 had called into being, it was natural to imagine that the destruc- 
 tion came about because some one else less skillful than he, held 
 the reins of the sun-chariot. The thunderstorm which ended 
 the drought and heat was the death blow dealt to Phaeton, and 
 the tears of the Heliades, his sisters, were the downpouring rain 
 which followed the lightning. This is the story Ovid knew, and 
 Book II of the Metamorphoses is devoted to the history of Phaeton. 
 Ovid tells also, how Phaeton appeared before his father, demand- 
 ing proof of his glorious birth and the father, proud of the beauty 
 of his son, promised to grant him anything he might ask. The 
 rash youth demanded the chariot and steeds for one day's jour- 
 ney from east to west, and no persuasions of the father could 
 avail. 2 
 
 In English poetry, there have been countless allusions to the 
 myth; indeed, the very name, Phaeton, has come to mean a rash 
 and audacious youth, ready to undertake any enterprise. Mil- 
 man, in his Samor, alludes to the story: 
 
 x The Iliad: Book XI, 735, cvre yap rjekios <f>ai8u)v wcpeo-xeSe yatiys, and 
 The Odyssey: Book V, 479, ovre ttot ^e\ios ^aeSwv aKrlaiv efiaXXev. 
 
 * Golding's moralizing in regard to Phaeton in his Epistle to the Earl of 
 Leicester is very amusing. See Golding's Ovid's Metamorphoses. Ed. by 
 Rouse. 
 
62 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 Him the thunderer hurled 
 From the Empyrean headlong to the gulf 
 Of the half-parched Eridamus where weep 
 Even now the sister-trees their amber tears 
 O'er Phaeton untimely dead. 
 
 Landor describes the palace and chariot of the son in Gebir, Book 
 I, while George Meredith's Phaethon has called forth unstinted 
 praise, not only as an achievement in the galliambic measure, 
 but as poetry pure and simple. 1 As to allusions, Chaucer, in 
 his House of Fame, 2 wrote of 
 
 The sone's sonne, the rede 
 That highte Pheton, 
 
 Spenser tells the story in the Faerie Queene, 3 and Shakespeare re- 
 peatedly alludes to the myth. 4 In Romeo and Juliet, Act III, 
 Sc. II, Juliet cries in her impatience: 
 
 Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, 
 Toward Phoebus' lodging, such a waggoner 
 As Phaeton would whip you to the west, 
 And bring in cloudy night immediately. 
 
 In France, in the seventeenth century, Phaeton, the tragedy 
 in lyric verse by Quinault, made a tremendous sensation. The 
 play was in five acts, with a prologue, and the music was by 
 Lulli. It had for its subject the return of the age of gold, and 
 for its principal object, the eulogy of Louis XIV. It was given 
 at court on the sixth of January, 1663. The subject offers a 
 great opportunity for pageantry. Several amusing parodies 
 followed the play, among them the Chute de Phaethon, 1690, 
 and Phaethon, Comedie, by Palaprat, 1692. 5 The manner in 
 which the vogue of Quinault's Phaeton reached England has al- 
 ready been told. 9 
 
 In English drama, there were certainly two plays founded 
 upon the myth, one of which, written by Dekker, has been lost. 
 
 *See The Athenceum for June II, 1887. 
 
 2 Book II, 11. 430-451. 
 
 3 Faerie Queene 1. 4: 9. 
 
 4 Richard II, III: 39. Two Gentlemen of Verona, III, 1; 3 Hen. VI, I, 4. 
 6 Larousse Dictionnaire: Phaethon. 
 
 6 See the account of Charles Gildon's Phaeton, p. 37 above. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 63 
 
 In Henslowe's Diary, we find the following entry: "lent unto the 
 company [Lord Admiral's], the 15 of Janewary 1597 to a bye a 
 booke of m r dicker called fayeton fower pownde." 1 In March, 
 1598, in the inventory of apparel for the Lord Admiral's men, 
 among those "leaft above in the tier house in the cheast, " we 
 find: "Item 1 1 leather antickes cottes with basses for Fayeton," 2 
 while on Jan. 15, 1598, there is a list of properties for "Phaeton 
 by Dekker." This lost play was apparently acted at court in 
 1600, for the following entry appears in the Diary: "lent unto 
 Wm. Bird the 2 of Janewary 1600 for divers thinges about the 
 playe of fayeton for the corte. " 8 Fleay 4 thinks this was probably 
 presented at court in December, and he finds it mentioned among 
 "new plays for the Admiral's men at the Rose on January 15, 
 1598. " 5 This is unquestionably the original form of The Sun's 
 Darling, licensed for the Cockpit the third of May, 1624, as by 
 Dekker and Ford, and printed in 1656. 
 
 Raybright, The Sun's Darling, 6 is no longer young. He has 
 worn "rich habits," yet they are to him merely "Ass-trappings;" 
 he has been sent out into strange lands, 
 
 Seen courts of foreign kings, by them been grac'd, 
 
 but he claims to have found in life only bitterness and disillu- 
 sionment. To him it seems 
 
 As comfortable 
 
 To die upon the embroiderie of the grass, 
 
 Unmmded, as to set a world at gaze. 
 
 Yet he is not truly disillusioned ; he is one of the dreamers, whose 
 longings no new experience can stifle. He learns from the Priest 
 of the Sun, that he is to be honored by a visit from his "great 
 Progenitor," who will descend from heaven to gratify his long- 
 ings. Raybright begs that he may be acknowledged as the son 
 of heaven, and that the proof of this may be his enjoyment of 
 the pleasures which each season "in its Kind" provides. His 
 
 1 Greg's Henslowe's Diary: Part I, p. 83. 
 8 Ibid, p. 116. 
 
 3 Ibid, p. 125. 
 
 4 Chronicle of the English Drama. Vol. I, p. 127. 
 6 Ibid, p. 122. 
 
 6 The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker: Pearson (1873), Vol. IV. 
 
64 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 wish is granted. Youth, Delight, and Health lay their offerings 
 at the Darling's feet, while he, Folly-led, spurns Spring for Sum- 
 mer's Bounty, and Summer for Autumn's maturity, and Autumn 
 for Winter's full appetite, realizing what he is losing too late. 
 Masques and Bacchantes dance, and Cupid flits in old Time's 
 court, and Phoebus leads them on. Here is a new interpretation 
 of the myth; Phaeton is no inexperienced youth, but an unwearied 
 worldling. He desires from his father an opportunity, not for 
 display of power but for selfish enjoyment of life. In the end, 
 he causes no destruction to the earth below him ; his punishment 
 is the realization of his own folly. That realization is not very 
 conspicuous, however; one is almost certain that, given the op- 
 portunity, he would spend another year much as before, and the 
 moral in this "Moral Masque," as its authors call it, is not op- 
 pressive. Nor is it truly a Masque. It possesses Masque ele- 
 ments in the dancing and the music; there is the spectacular 
 element in the Scenes where Folly whips Time across the stage, 
 where Antonio and Bacchanalian, Conceit and Detraction, 
 Virtue and Vice, Humor and Folly appear; there is a suggestion 
 of antimasque in the entrance of the clowns at the beginning of 
 Act III; but the play possesses a fairly well-constructed plot, 
 and the interest centres, not in the Masque features, which are 
 merely accessory, but in the plot and the poetry. 
 
 An especial interest attaches itself to this play in the question 
 of authorship. How much of it was Dekker's? What part was 
 Ford's? And did Dekker borrow his song, "What bird so sings, 
 yet so does wail" 1 from Lyly? 
 
 It has been fairly well agreed upon that the foundation of the 
 play is Dekker's older Phaeton. It has also been stated that 
 doubtless Ford wrote the last two acts. This seems not so likely 
 as that the play is really Dekker's revised by Ford. 2 One finds 
 the hand of Dekker throughout the play. In Dekker's Old 
 Fortunatus, we find the same kind of poetic drama. The theme 
 is the old story of the Wishing Cap and the Magic Purse. Old 
 Fortunatus, poor and very patient, hungry and weary, but a 
 philosopher still, despite his empty stomach, lies down under a 
 
 *Act II. 
 
 *Schelling: The Elizabethan Drama, Vol. I, p. 396. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 65 
 
 tree in the forest and falls asleep. There Fortune, Queen of 
 Chance, spies him and bids the old beggar arise and be her 
 minion. He may choose one of the six gifts she bestows upon 
 humanity, — Wisdom, Strength, Health, Beauty, Long Life, and 
 Riches. He chooses Riches, — the magic purse that shall never 
 be empty, and, although Fortune warns him that he has chosen 
 to "go dwell with Care," he cries, "Fie to Care and Death! 
 If I die tomorrow, I'll be merry today!" Fortunatus, like 
 Raybright, makes an unwise choice, is led by Folly and dis- 
 covers his mistake too late. But it is not in plot alone that the 
 two plays are alike. They share the same atmosphere of poetry, 
 and their attitude toward life is the same. In each there is, 
 to use Charles Lamb's phrase, "poetry enough for anything." 
 In vividness and beauty of details, Dekker gives delight. In 
 Old Fortunatus he says: 
 
 With weary sorrow have I wandered, 
 
 And three times seen the sweating sun take rest, 
 
 And three times frantic Cynthia naked ride 
 
 About the rusty highways of the skies 
 
 Stuck full of burning stars, which lent her light 
 
 To court her negro paramour grim Night. 1 
 
 In the Sun's Darling, Plenty says of Summer: 
 
 When she was born, the Sun for joy did rise 
 Before his time, only to kiss those eies, 
 Which having touch'd, he stole from them such store 
 Of light, she shone more bright than e're before: 
 At which he vow'd, when ever she did die, 
 Hee'd snatch them up, and in his sisters sphere 
 Place them, since he had no two stars so clear. 2 
 
 One could go straight from the Wishing Cap Country into the 
 land of Raybright's journey, without leaving Dekker's domain. 
 
 In regard to Fleay's conjecture that the songs in Lyly's Cam- 
 paspe were written by Dekker, W. W. Greg 3 reminds us that it 
 was not until 1632, in the Blount edition of Lyly's Six Court 
 Comedies that certain songs appeared. Where did Blount find 
 
 *Act I, sc. I. 
 
 2 Act III. 
 
 3 See Modern Language Review, 1905-1906, the Authorship of the songs 
 in Lyly's Plays: W. W. Greg. Also Bond: John Lyly. Vol. II, pp. 264, 265. 
 
66 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 these? They did not exist in the quartos from which the text 
 was taken. Mr. Greg says that "there is one sentence in his 
 epistle To the Reader, which may conceivably bear upon the 
 point." Blount explains, "These papers lay like dead Lawrells 
 in a church-yard ; But I have gathered the scattered branches up, 
 and by a charme (gotten from Apollo) made them greene againe, 
 and set them up as Epitaphs to his Memory. " May the "charme 
 gotten from Apollo" have been the employment of Thomas 
 Dekker, fallen, as had so often happened before, upon evil days? 
 There is neither internal nor external evidence to prove that 
 Lyly was a song-writer, and there is a good deal of proof that 
 certain of the songs in the Six Court Comedies could not have been 
 written as early as his day. As to the particular song in question, 
 "What bird so sings, yet so does wail," which appears in both 
 Campaspe and the Sun's Darling with certain variations, Mr. 
 Greg thinks that the song in the latter play was written before 
 that of Campaspe, which appeared in the Blout edition of 1632, 
 and that both belong to Dekker. 
 
 One question persists throughout the study of Classic Myth as 
 it appears in the Drama of the Age of Elizabeth, — why do we find 
 no truly great plays? Is it that Classic Myth lends itself to al- 
 legory, to poetry, to masque, to the dramatic, and not to great 
 drama? Myth reveals the spirit at the heart of the material 
 world ; it is full of spontaneity ; it is universal in its depth and its 
 sympathy. These are the qualities of great poetry, and yet we 
 do not find the great Elizabethan play. Coleridge said of Greek 
 drama that "tragedy carried the thoughts into the mythologic 
 world in order to raise the emotions, the fears, and the hopes 
 which convince the inmost heart that their final cause is not to 
 be discovered in the limits of mere mortal life, and force us into 
 a presentiment, however dim, of a state in which those struggles 
 of inward free will with outward necessity, which form the true 
 subject of the tragedian, shall be reconciled and solved." To 
 Sophocles and Euripides, and to the audiences who listened to 
 their dramas, the mythologic world was real. The Elizabethan 
 dramatist, on the other hand, did not believe in myth; he played 
 with it. And thus, because he did not believe, he failed to create 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 67 
 
 that sense of the world outside our mortal life, in which the 
 "struggle between inward free will and outward necessity .... 
 shall be reconciled." Strong in his growing individualism and 
 his patriotism, he carried his tragedy back into ancient Rome or 
 into the early days of Britain. In Lear we find the same "pre- 
 sentiment" of a reconciling world which we find in the (Edipus 
 Tyrannus. Here is the great Elizabethan tragedy, and Shakes- 
 peare has given us Puck and Ariel; he knew fairyland, but the 
 world of Phaeton and Psyche was unreal to him. William 
 Blake knew that myths have much to teach us; he lamented 
 that "man has closed himself up till he sees all things through 
 narrow chinks of his cavern." Shelley knew; but, in Prometheus 
 Unbound, Shelley forgot the dramatic in his lyrical ecstasy. If 
 Shelley had lived longer, who can tell what he might have done? 
 There are men today who are realizing more and more how true 
 myths are. May we not hope that, lyrical and contemplative 
 as the myth-making instinct is, nevertheless, the great drama on 
 Classic Myth may yet be written? 
 
68 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 LIST OF PLAYS 
 
 Plays on Classic Story before 1642 
 
 The following is compiled largely from material suggested by the Btblio- 
 iraphical Essay and List of Plays in The Elizabethan Drama: Felix E. Schel- 
 ling, Vol. II, and from W. W. Greg's list: 
 
 1. Actceon and Diana: with a Pastoral Story of the Nymph CEnone. Act- 
 
 ed c. 1640. Cf. Schelling, The Elizabethan Drama: Vol. II, pp. 
 170, 171. 
 
 2. Agamemnon. 
 
 Agamemnon: Translation by J. Studley, 1566. Seneca his Tennt 
 
 Tragedies Translated into English, 1581. Reprinted in Spenser 
 
 Society Publications, 1887. 
 Agamemnon: Tragedy. Chettle and Dekker, 1599. See Greg's 
 
 Henslowe Papers, Vol. II, p. 202. 
 Agamemnon and Ulysses. 1584, Revels Account. New Shakespeare 
 
 Society Publications, 1842, p. 188. 
 
 3. Ajax. 
 
 Ajax Flagellifer. Latin Translation of Sophocles. Cambridge 1564. 
 
 See Nichols' Elizabeth, Vol. I, p. 179. 
 Ajax and Ulisses, showen on New Years daie at nighte by the children 
 
 of Wynsor, 1572. Revels Account, p. 13. 
 Contention of Ajax and Ulysses. Shirley, 1659. Presented 1640. 
 
 4. Alcmceon, 1573. Revels Account, p. 51. 
 
 5. Antigone. 
 
 Antigone. Latin Verse. Translated from Sophocles, 1581, by 
 
 Thomas Watson. 
 Antigone. Thomas May, 1631. Dodsley's Old Plays. 
 
 6. Apollo and Daphne. Pleasant Dialogues and Drammas. Thomas Hey- 
 
 wood, 1637. See Greg's Henslowe, Vol. II, p. 183. 
 
 7. Atalanta. 
 
 Atalanta. 1611-1615. (Brit. Mus. MS. Hasl. 6924.) See Greg's 
 
 Pastoral Drama, p. 235. 
 Meleager. Gager, 1581, Latin. Hazlitt's Manual, p. 154. See also 
 
 Schelling: Elizabethan Drama: Vol. II, p. 588. 
 Meleager. MS. Fragment, 1570-90. See Schelling: Elizabethan 
 
 Drama: Vol. II, p. 588. 
 
 8. Cupid and Psyche. 
 
 The Golden Ass and Cupid and Psyche, Chettle, Day, and Dekker. 
 
 See Greg's Henslowe, Vol. II, p. 202. 
 Love's Mistress or the Queen's Masque. Thomas Hey wood, 1636. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 69 
 
 Cupid and Psyche performed at St. Paul's. Before 1582. See Stephen 
 Gosson in Plays Confuted, quoted by J. Payne Collier in Annals 
 of the Stage, Vol. Ill, p. 274. 
 9. Dido. 
 
 Dido and Aeneas: Henslowe, Vol. II, p. 189 and Schelling: Elizabethan 
 Drama. Vol. II, p. 18, note. 
 Dido and Mneas: Hazlitt's Manual, p. 64. 
 
 Dido. Latin Tragedy (acted at Cambridge, 1564). Nichols' Eliza- 
 beth, Vol. I, p. 186. 
 
 Dido: Gager, Oxford, 1583. Reprinted in Dyce's Marlowe. Appen- 
 dix. 
 
 Dido: Queen of Carthage. Marlowe and Nash, 1594. Acted, 1591. 
 
 10. Hercules. 
 
 Hercules Fur ens. Trans. Jasper Hey wood, 1561. 
 Hercules CEtceus. Trans. J. Studley. 
 
 Both plays in Seneca his Tenne Tragedies Translated into English, 
 
 1 58 1. Repr. Spenser Society, 1887. 
 The Silver Age: Thomas Heywood, 1613. 
 The Brazen Age. Thomas Heywood. 
 
 Both acted at The Rose, 1595. 
 The Birth of Hercules. Edited by M. W. Wallace, 1903. Tr. Plautu«' 
 
 Amphitruo, 1610. 
 The Twelve Labours of Hercules: 1592. See Grosart's Robert Greene, 
 
 Vol. XII, pp. 131, 132. 
 
 11. Hippolytus: Tr. J. Studley. Seneca his Tenne Tragedies Translated into 
 
 English, 1581. Spenser Society, 1887. 
 
 12. The Hunting of Cupid. Peele. Fragment. Stationers' Registers, July 
 
 1 591. Also Bullen's Peele, Vol. I, p. xxviii. 
 
 13. Iphigenia. 
 
 Iphigenia in Aulis. 1576-77, Tr. Lady J. Lumley. Brit. Museum MS. 
 
 Royal 15a, IX, f. 63. See Schelling: Elizabethan Drama, Vol, 
 
 II, p. 576. 
 Iphigenia. Trag. 1571. Revels Account, p. 13. 
 Iphigenia. Trans. Peele at Oxford, c. 1576. Schelling: Elizabethan 
 
 Drama, Vol. II, p. 576. 
 
 14. The Judgment of Paris. 
 
 The Arraignment of Paris: George Peele, 1584. 
 The Triumph of Beauty. J. Shirley, 1646. Presented 1640. 
 Deorum Judicium: Thomas Heywood, 1637. Pleasant Dialogues and 
 Drammas. Possibly one of Five Plays in One, 1597. 
 
 15. Jupiter and Io. 
 
 Pleasant Dialogues and Drammas: Thomas Heywood, 1637. See 
 Henslowe II, p. 183. 
 
 16. Juno and Diana: Calendar Slate Papers, Spanish, 1558-1567, p. 404. 
 
 17. Leander: Latin. Acted at Cambridge, 1598, MS. copies in the Univers- 
 
 ity and Emmanuel College libraries at Cambridge and at the 
 
70 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 British Museum. MS. Sloane, 1762. Also in the Bodleian. 
 See Schelling: The Elizabethan Drama, Vol. II, p. 581. 
 
 18. Orestes. 
 
 Orestes: Thomas Goffe, 1623. 
 
 Orestes Furies: Thomas Dekker, 1599. Henslowe, Vol. II, p. 202. 
 Horestes: J. Pickering, 1567. Printed by Brandt, 1898. 
 Orestes: 1567, Harleian MS., 146. See Schelling: Elizabethan Drama, 
 Vol. I, p. 118 n. (Perhaps the same as Horestes.) 
 
 19. Perseus and Andromeda. Acted at Court by the Merchant Taylor's 
 
 boys, 1574. Hazlitt's Manual. 
 
 20. Phaeton. 
 
 Phaeton, 1598. Henslowe, Vol. II, p. 190 and Fleay, Vol. I, p. 122. 
 The Sun's Darling: Ford and Dekker, 1656. Licensed 1624. 
 
 21. Rape of Lucrece: Thomas Heywood, c. 1605. See Fleay, Vol. I, p. 292. 
 
 22. Thebes. 
 
 Thebais. Tr. Newton. Seneca his Tenne Tragedies, 1581. Spenser 
 
 Society, 1887. 
 Timoclea at the Siege of Thebes. Alexander. "Showen at Hampton 
 
 Coorte before her Majestie" by the boys of the Merchant Taylor's 
 
 School. Hazlitt's Manual, p. 229. 
 
 23. The Lives of Jupiter and Saturn, with the Deifying of the Heathen Gods. 
 
 The Golden Age: Thomas Heywood, 161 1. Acted 1595. Henslowe 
 II, p. 175. 
 
 24. Medea. 
 
 Medea: Trans. J. Studley. Seneca his Tenne Tragedies, 1581. Spen- 
 ser Society, 1887. 
 
 Medea. Tr. of Euripides into Latin. George Buchanan, c. 1540. 
 See Schelling: Elizabethan Drama, Vol. I, p. 34. 
 
 25. Narcissus: a Twelfth Night Merriment. Oxford, 1602. Ed. M. L. 
 
 Lee, 1893. 
 
 26. (Edipus. 
 
 CEdipus. Tr. Neville, 1560. Seneca his Tenne Tragedies, 158 1. 
 
 Spenser Society, 1887. 
 CEdipus. Tr. Gager. Oxford, 1580. Brit. Museum, MS. See 
 
 Schelling, Elizabethan Drama: Vol. II, p. 594. 
 
 27. Thyestes: Trans. Jasper Heywood, 1560. Seneca his Tenne Tragedies, 
 
 1 58 1. Spenser Society, 1887. 
 
 28. Troy. 
 
 Troas: Trans. Jasper Heywood. Seneca his Tenne Tragedies, 1581. 
 Spenser Society, 1887. 
 
 Troy's Revenge with the Tragedy of Polyphemus: Chettle, 1599. Hen- 
 slowe, Vol. II, p. 201. 
 
 Troy. 1596, Henslowe, Vol. II, p. 180. Probably Hey wood's Iron 
 Age, Parts I and II. 
 
 29. Ulysses Redux: Gager. Tragedy. Jahrbuch, XXXIV, p. 238. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 71 
 
 Plays With Classic Titles Between 1642 and 1700. 
 
 1. Achilles, or Iphigenia in Aulis. Acted 1699. Translation from Racine. 
 
 4° 1700. Abel Boyer. 
 
 2. Amphytrion or the Two Sosias: John Dryden. 4 1690. Music by 
 
 H. Purcell. 
 
 3. Andromache. Trans, from Racine. 1675. (Term Catalogue) Partly 
 
 by Crowne. 
 
 4. Ariadne or the Marriage of Bacchus. 1674. Trans, from the French by 
 
 Monsieur Grabut, "Master of his Majesty's Musicke. " 
 
 5. Calisto; or the Chaste Nymph. Masque. J. Crowne. 4 1675. 
 
 6. Circe; A Tragedy. 1677. (Term Catalogue) Mr. Charles Davenant. 
 
 Music of the first performance by J. Banister; later, music by H. 
 Purcell. 
 
 7. Cynthia and Endimion or the Love of the Deities. T. D'Urfey. 4 1697. 
 
 Songs by Daniel Purcell. 
 
 8. Electra: A Tragedy by Christopher Wase. Translation of the Greek of 
 
 Sophocles. 1649. See Lowndes' Bibliographers' Manual. 
 
 9. Hippolytus. Trans, of Seneca in rhyme. John Priestwich. 165 1. 
 
 10. Hercules. A Masque set to music by Mr. John Eccles. The Third Act 
 of The Novelty: Every Act a Play, written by Mr. Motteux and 
 other hands. 4° 1697. 
 
 n. Hero and Leander ; their Tragedy. Robert Stapleton. Nov. 1668. Term 
 Catalogue. 
 
 12. Horace. 
 
 Hor alius: A Tragedy by Sir William Lower, Knight. 4 1656. 
 Horace: A Tragedy by Charles Cotton. 4 1671. Term Catalogue. 
 
 Translation of Corneille with additional songs and choruses. 
 Horace: Trans, from Corneille by the "Matchless Orinda, " Mrs. 
 
 Katharine Phillips. Fifth act by Sir John Denham, 1668. 
 
 13. Iphigenia. John Dennis. 1699. See Genest: History of the English 
 
 Stage, Vol. II, pp. 173, 174, 
 
 14. Loves of Mars and Venus: A play set to music in three acts. P. Mot- 
 
 teux. 4 1696. Music by Godfrey Finger and J. Eccles. 
 
 15. CEdipus, King of Thebes: Dryden and Nathaniel Lee. 4 1696. Mu ic 
 
 by H. Purcell. 
 
 16. Nuptials of Peleus and Th tis. Masque Trans, by James Howell. 1654. 
 
 See Crowne 1 s Works: Maidment and Logan, Vol. I, p. 223. 
 
 17. Medea and Jason. 
 
 Phaeton or the Fatal Divorce: Charles Gildon, a Tragedy. 4 1696. 
 Songs by Daniel Purcell. 
 
 18. Psyche. 
 
 Psyche: Shadwell. 4 1675. Opera. Music by Matthew Locke 
 
 and Gio. Baptista Draghi. 
 Psyche Debauch' d. Thomas D'Urfey. 
 
72 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 19. Thyestes. A Tragedy. J. Crowne. 4 1681. 
 
 Thyestes. A Tragedy translated from Seneca to which is added Mock 
 Thystes, a Burlesque. 1674. John Wright. See Dramatic 
 Works of J. Crowne, Vol. II, Preface, p. 89; also Biographia Dra- 
 matical Baker. Vol. Ill, p. 337. 
 
 20. Troy. The Destruction of Troy. A Tragedy acted by the Duke's Ser- 
 
 vants. Written by John Banks. 4 1679. Term Catalogue. 
 
 21. Venus and Adonis. A burlesque masque by Samuel Holland. Included 
 
 in his volume entitled "Don Zara del Fogo. " 1656. Hazlitt's 
 Manual. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 73 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 The following list aims to give the full titles of the books quoted in the pre- 
 ceding pages. The place of publication is London, unless otherwise indi- 
 cated. 
 
 I. Texts 
 
 Adlington, William. The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche. Reprint of 1566 
 
 Edition. With a Discourse on the Fable, by Andrew Lang. Oxford, 1887. 
 Apuleius Madaurensis. The Fable of Cupid and Psyche; to which are added 
 
 a Poetical Paraphrase on the Speech of Diotima in the Banquet of Plato. 
 
 Translation by Thomas Taylor, 1795. 
 Apuleius. The Works of Apuleius. Containing a New Translation, to 
 
 which are added a Metrical Version of Cupid and Psyche and Mrs. Tighe's 
 
 Psyche. Bohn edition. 1853. 
 Beaumont, Joseph. The Complete Poems of Dr. Joseph Beaumont. For 
 
 the first time collected and edited with memorial-introduction, notes, etc., 
 
 by A. B. Grosart. 1880. 
 Bridges, Robert. Eros and Psyche. 1894. 
 Congreve, William. The Works of Mr. William Congreve in Two Volumes, 
 
 consisting of his Plays and Poems. The Third Edition. Revis'd by the 
 
 Author. Printed for Jacob Tonson. 1719-20. 
 Crowne, John. The Dramatic Works of John Crowne, with prefatory Mem- 
 oir and Notes. James Maidment and W. H. Logan. 1873. 
 Cupid and Psyche. The Loves of Cupid and Psyche. Verse and Prose 
 
 from the French of La Fontaine by Mr. Lockman. Amsterdam. 1744. 
 Cupid and Psyche. Cupid and Psyche and other Tales from the Golden Ass 
 
 of Apuleius by W. H. D. Rouse. 1904. 
 Cupid and Psyche. The Story of Cupid and Psyche, done into English from 
 
 the Latin of Lucius Apuleius by Walter Pater. Illustrated with drawings 
 
 by Raphael. New York, 1901. 
 Darwin, Erasmus. The Poetical Works of Erasmus Darwin. 1806. 
 Davenant, Sir William. Dramatic Works, with prefatory memoir and 
 
 notes: Maidment and Logan. 1872-74. 
 Davenant, Sir William. Love and Honour and The Siege of Rhodes. Edited 
 
 by J. W. Tupper. Belles-Lettres Series. Boston. 1909. 
 Dekker, Thomas. The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker. Edited by 
 
 Pearson. 1873. 
 Dennis, John. Select Works of Mr. John Dennis. 1721. 
 
74 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 Dickenson, John. Prose and Verse by J. D. The Shepherd's Complaint, 
 Arisbas, etc. 1594, Greene in Conceipt, etc. 1598. Edited with an intro- 
 duction, notes, etc., by A. B. Grosart. Manchester, 1878. 
 
 Dryden, John. Essays of John Dry den. Edited by W. P. Ker. Oxford, 
 1900. 
 
 Dryden, John. Works of John Dryden. Edited by Sir Walter Scott. Re- 
 vised and corrected by George Saintsbury. Edinburgh, 1 882-1 893. 
 
 Dryden, John. Dramatick works. Edited by William Congreve. 1725. 
 
 Eros and Psyche. Paul Carus. 1900. 
 
 Evelyn, John. The Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn. Edited 
 from the original MSS. by William Bray, with a life of the author and a 
 new preface by Henry B. Wheatley. 1906. 
 
 Ford, John. The Works of John Ford. Notes by Wm. Gifford. Edited 
 by Dyce. 1869. 
 
 Gildon, Charles. Phaeton; or the Fatal Divorce. A Tragedy. 4 1698. 
 
 Golding, Arthur. A Tragedie of Abraham's Sacrifice, written in the French 
 by Theodore Beza and translated into English by Arthur Golding. Edited 
 by Malcolm W. Wallace. University of Toronto Studies. 1906. 
 
 Golding, Arthur. Shakespeare's Ovid, being Arthur Golding's Translation 
 of the Metamorphoses. Edited by W. H. D. Rouse. 1904. 
 
 Greene, Robert. Complete Works in Prose and Verse. Huth Library, 
 edited by A. B. Grosart. 1881-83. 
 
 Haslewood, Joseph. Ancient Critical Essays upon English Poets and Poesy. 
 1815. 
 
 Henslowe's Diary edited by W. W. Greg. 1904-1908. 
 
 Heroides. P. Ovidi Nasonis Heroides, with the Greek translation of Planu- 
 des, edited by Arthur Palmer. Oxford. 1898. 
 
 Heywood, Thomas. An Apology for Actors. Reprinted for the Shakespeare 
 Society. 1841. 
 
 Heywood, Thomas. Love's Mistress or The Queen's Masque. 4 1636 and 
 1640. 
 
 Heywood, Thomas. The Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood. Edited 
 by Pearson. 1874. 
 
 Iphigenia at Aulus. Translated by Lady Lumley. Malone Society Re- 
 prints. 1909. Vol. 2. 
 
 Lord Mayors' Pageants. Frederick W. Fairholt. A collection towards a 
 history of these annual celebrations with specimens of the Descriptive 
 Pamphlets published by the City Poets. Printed for the Percy Society. 
 1893. 
 
 Lucian. The Works of Lucian from the Greek by Thomas Francklin. 1781. 
 
 Lyly. The Complete Works. Now for the first time collected and edited 
 from the earliest quartos, with Life, Bibliography, Essays, Notes, and 
 Index by R. Warwick Bond. Oxford. 1902. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 75 
 
 Moliere. CEuvres Completes. Eugene Despois et Paul Mesnard. Paris. 
 1873-1900. 
 
 Morris, Lewis. The Epic of Hades. Boston. 1882. 
 
 Morris, William. The Earthly Paradise. 1905. 
 
 Motteux. The Loves of Mars and Venus. A Play set to music, written by- 
 Mr. Motteux. 4 1697. 
 
 Motteux. Novelty. Every Act a Play, being a short pastoral Comedy, 
 Masque, Tragedy, and Farce, after the Italian manner, as it is acted at 
 the New Theatre in Little Lincolns Inns Fields by his Majesty's Servants. 
 Written by Mr. Motteux and other hands. 4 1697. 
 
 Narcissus. A Twelfe Night Merriment played by Youths of the Parish at 
 the college of S. John the Baptist in Oxford, A. D. 1602. Now first edited 
 from a Bodleian MS. by Margaret L. Lee. Oxford. 1893. 
 
 Nash, Thomas. The Complete Works of Thomas Nash. Huth Library. Ed- 
 ited by A. B. Grosart. 1885. 
 
 Parthenii Nicaeensis. Narrationum Amatoriarum Libellus. Chr. G. Hayne. 
 Gottingen. 1798. 
 
 Peele, George. The Arraignment of Paris. Edited by H. O. Smeaton. 1905. 
 Temple Dramatists. 
 
 Peele, George. Arraignment of Paris. Ed. Harold H. Child. Malone Society 
 Reprints. 19 10. 
 
 Peele, George. Plays and Poems. Morley's Universal Library. Ed. by Henry 
 Morley. 1887. 
 
 Peele, George. The Works of George Peele. Ed. by A. H. Bullen. 1888. 
 
 Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Ed. by Henry B. Wheatley. 
 1899. 
 
 Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth. J. Nicholas. 1823. 
 
 Puttenham, George. The Art of English Poesy (1589). Reprinted by Arber. 
 1869. Printed also in Haslewood, Ancient Critical Essays, 1815. 
 
 Register of the Company of Stationers of London. 1554-1640. Transcript 
 by Arber. 1875-94. 
 
 Revels at Court. Extracts from the accounts of Revels at Court in the Reigns 
 of Elizabeth and King James I. Ed. by P. Cunningham. Shakespeare 
 Society. 1842. 
 
 Sandys, George. Ovid's Metamorphosis EnglisVd, Mythologiz'd and Rep- 
 resented in Figures. Oxford. 1632. 
 
 Shadwell, Thomas. Psyche: a Tragedy, acted at the Duke's Theatre. 4 
 1720. 
 
 Shakespeare, William. The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare and an 
 Enlarged History of the Stage. Edward Malone. 1821. 
 
 Shirley, James. Dramatic Works and Poems, with notes by William Gifford. 
 Edited by Alexander Dyce. 1833. 
 
76 Classic Myth in the Poetic Drama 
 
 Term Catalogue. 1668-1709, with a number for Easter Term, 171 1 A. D. 
 A Contemporary Bibliography of English Literature in the reigns of Charles 
 II, James II, William and Mary, and Anne, from the Quarterly Lists of 
 New Books and Reprints issued by the Book-sellers, etc., of London. 
 Edited by Arber. 1903. 
 
 Webbe, William. A Discourse of English Poetry. 1586. Reprinted by 
 Arber. 1870. 
 
 Wright, James. Historia Histrionica. Dodsley's Old Plays. Vol. XV. 
 1876. 
 
 II. General Works and Special Studies 
 
 Baker. Biographia Dramatica. David Erskine Baker and David Reed. 
 1812. 
 
 Baker, George Pierce. The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist. 1907. 
 
 Bartsche, Karl. Albrecht von Halberstadt und Ovid im Mittelalter. Leipzig 
 1849. 
 
 Bayle, Peter. The Dictionary, Historical and Critical. Second Edition. 
 1734. 
 
 Brown, F. C. Elkanah Settle: his Life and Works. Chicago. 1910. 
 
 Charlanne, L. V Influence Frangaise en Angleterre au XVII e Siecle. Paris. 
 1906. 
 
 Chase, Nathaniel Lewis. The English Heroic Play. New York. 1903. 
 
 demons, W. H. The Sources of Timon of Athens. Princeton University 
 Bulletin. Vol. XV. 
 
 Collier, J. P. The History of English Dramatic Poetry to the Time of Shakes- 
 peare: and Annals of the Stage to the Restoration. 1831. New Edition. 
 1879. 
 
 Collins, J. Churton. Studies in Shakespeare. New York. 1904. 
 
 Cox, Sir George W. The Mythology of the Aryan Nations. 1870. 
 
 Cummings, William H. Purcell. The Great Musicians. Edited by Fran- 
 cis Hueffer. 1881. 
 
 Cunliffe, John W. The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy. 1893. 
 
 Downes, John. Roscius Anglicanus or an Historical Review of the Stage 
 from 1660 to 1706. 1886. 
 
 Fiske, John. Myths and Myth-Makers. Boston. 1873. 
 
 Fleay, F. G. A Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama. 2 Vols. 1891. 
 
 Fleay, F. G. A Chronicle History of the London Stage (1559- 1642). 1890. 
 
 Fleay, F. G. On the Authorship of Timon of Athens, followed by an edition 
 of the Life of Timon of Athens. Shakespeare Society. 1874. 
 
 Fletcher, J. B. Precieuses at the Court of Charles I in Journal of Compara- 
 tive Literature. Vol. I, pp. 120-153. New York. 1903. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 77 
 
 Genest, John. Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in 
 
 1660 to 1832. Bath. 1832. 
 Gosse, Edmund. Life of William Congreve. 1888. 
 Gosse, Edmund. Seventeenth Century Studies. 2nd edition. New York. 
 
 1897. 
 Greg, W. W. A List of Masques, Pageants, etc. supplementary to a List of 
 
 English Plays. 1902. 
 Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Edited by J. A. Fullmer Mait- 
 
 land. 1907. 
 Halliwell, James O. Dictionary of Old English Plays from the earliest times 
 
 to the close of the seventeenth century, i860. 
 Hazlitt, William Carew. A Manual for the Collector and Amatuer of Old 
 
 English Plays. 1892. 
 Jacob, Franz. Die Fabel von Atreus und Thyestes in den Wichtigsten Trag- 
 
 odien der Englischen, Franzosischen und Italienischen Literatur. Leip- 
 zig. 1907. 
 Koeppel, Emil. Quellen Studien zu den Dramen George Chapman's, Philip 
 
 Massinger's and John Ford's. 1897. 
 Langbaine, Gerard. Some Account of English Dramatick Poets. Oxford. 
 
 1691. 
 Lavaix, H. La Musique frangaise. Paris. 1891. 
 Lowe: The Life and Times of the Excellent and Renowned Actor, Thomas 
 
 Betterton. With such Notices of the Stage and English History before 
 
 and after the Restoration, as serve generally to illustrate the subject. 1888. 
 Miles, Dudley Howe. The Influence of Molilre on Restoration Comedy. New 
 
 York. 1 9 10. 
 Muller, Adolf. Uber die Quellen aus denen Shakespeare Timon von A then 
 
 entnommen hat. Jena Dissertation. 1873. 
 Parry, C. Hubert H. The Oxford History of Music. 1902. 
 Renan, Ernest. Histoire General des Langues Semitiques. Paris. 1863. 
 Schelling, Felix E. Elizabethan Drama (1558-1642). A History of the 
 
 Drama in England from the Accession of Queen Elizabeth to the Closing 
 
 of the Theatres, to which is prefix'd a Resume of the Earlier Drama from 
 
 its beginning. Boston. 1908. 
 Schelling, Felix E. The Life and Writings of George Gascoigne. 1893. 
 Schelling, Felix E. Restoration Drama in The Cambridge History of English 
 
 Literature. Vol. VIII. 
 Stumfall, Balthasar. Das Mdrchen von Amor und Psyche in seinem Fortle- 
 
 ben in der Franzosischen, Italienischen und Spanischen Literatur bis sum 
 
 18 Jahrenhundert. Leipzig. 1907. 
 Tschischwitz, Benno. Timon von A then ein Kritische Versuch, in the Jahr- 
 
 buch. Vol. IV. 
 
78 Classic Myth of the Poetic Drama 
 
 Tupper, James W. The Relation of the Heroic Play to the Romance of Beau- 
 mont and Fletcher in Publications of the Modern Language Association. 
 XX. Baltimore. 1905. 
 
 Upham, Alfred Horatio. The French Influence in English Literature, from the 
 accession of Elizabeth to the Restoration. New York. 1908. 
 
 Ward, A. W. A History of English Dramatic Literature to the Death of Queen 
 Anne. London and New York. 1899. 
 
 Warton, Thomas. The History of English Poetry from the 12th to the close 
 of the 1 6th Century. Edited by W. Carew Hazlitt. 1871. 
 
 Wright Ernest Hunter. The Authorship of Timon of Athens. New York. 
 1910. 
 
Of the Age of Elizabeth 79 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Actceon and Diana, 9, 68 
 
 Achilles or Iphigenia in Aulis, description of, 34; mentioned, 71 
 
 Adlington, William, his translation of Cupid and Psyche, 18; first English 
 
 trans, of Apuleius, 51 
 Agamemnon, tragedies, of 9, 68; trans, of Seneca's Agamemnon, 19 
 Ajax, plays on, 9, 68 
 Alcceon, 68 
 
 Allegory, in England, 5; distinction between allegory and mythology, 6 
 Amphitruo, of Plautus, 8 
 Amphytrion, Dryden and Lee, 71 
 
 Andromache, tragedy of, translation from Racine, 34, 71 
 Antigone, tragedies of, 9, 68 
 Apollo and Daphne, 9; 68 
 Apuleius, the sources of his Golden Ass, 17; Shadwell's allusion to, 35; his 
 
 life and work, 49, 50; first English trans., 51; part taken by Heywood, 
 
 according to Fleay, 52; the source of Love's Mistress, 53-54; Taylor's 
 
 translations, 57; Bohn's translation, 57; the most beautiful, that of 
 
 Pater, 58 
 Antigone, plays on, 9, 68 
 
 Ariadne, 10; Ariadne or the Marriage of Bacchus, a miserable play, 33; 71 
 Arraignment of Paris, The, poetic drama, 6; 45; 39; description of, 42-45; 69 
 Atalanta, plays on, 9, 68 
 Bayle, Peter, His Dictionary 49 
 Calderon, his Autos Sacramentales, 50, 51 
 Chapel Royal, Children of, The, 6, 13 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 66 
 Comu ', myth of Cupid and Psyche there, 58 
 Congreve, William, his Judgment of Paris described, 46, 47. 
 Corneille, three translations of his Horace in English, 28, 33; mentioned, 
 
 38; his part in Moliere's Psyche, 51 
 Crowne, John, his Calisto or the Chaste Nymph, 35, 71; description of him, 
 
 35; his Andromache, 34, 71; his Thyestes, 34, 37, 72. 
 Cupid, in Love's Mistress, 53, 55; in Beaumont's Psyche, 59; inconsistency in 
 
 conception of, 56; Heywood's conception of, 56; in The Sun's Darling, 
 
 64 
 Cupid and Psyche, theme for Elizabethan plays, 9; Heywood's use of sources, 
 
 17; Adlington's translation, Cupid and Psyche played at Paul's, 18; 
 
80 Index 
 
 lost play, 18-19; perhaps in Heywood's Five Plays in One, 19; the myth 
 traced, 49-60; myth in Italy and Spain, 50-51; in France, 51; in Eng 
 land, 51; Heywood's use of, 55-56; translations of, 57-58; interpreta- 
 tions of, 58-60; plays on, 68, 69 
 
 Cypria, The, no longer extant, 40; description of, 40, 41 
 
 Daniel, Samuel, his entertainments, 5; his poem on Ulysses and the Syrens, 
 11 
 
 Darwin, Erasmus, the Cupid and Psyche myth in his Botanic Garden, 59 
 
 Davenant, Dr. Charles, his Circe, 36, 71; manager of the Duke's Company, 
 son of Sir William Davenant, 36 
 
 Davenant, Sir William, poet-laureate, 25; his Entertainment at Rutland 
 House, 25, 26; his Siege of Rhodes, 26, 28-29; ms Cruelties of the Spaniards 
 in Peru and History of Sir Frances Drake, 26; license to open a play house, 
 27; description of opera compared with Dryden's, 30; and the Duke's 
 Theatre, 31 
 
 Dekker, Thomas, author of The Sun's Darling, 7; a lost play of, 18; lost 
 play on Phaeton myth, 62, 63; The Sun's Darling described, 61-66; his 
 Old Fortunatus, 64, 65; his part in the songs of Lyly's plays, 65-66; his 
 Orestes Furies, 70 
 
 Dennis, John, his criticism of musical drama, 32; his Iphigenia, 71 
 
 Dickenson, John, author of Prose and Verse, 15; his Greene in Conceipt, 47, 
 48; his Strife of Love and Beauty, 47-48 
 
 Dido, plays on 8, 69; Wm. Gager's, 13; Queen of Carthage, 13; and JEneas, 
 by Purcell, an isolated example of true English opera, 30 
 
 Dryden, John, his definition of music drama, 30; his Prologue at opening of 
 New Theatre, 31; his King Arthur, music drama, 31; should have been 
 chosen for masque, 35; Prologue for Circe, 36; his Amphytrion, 38, 70; 
 his Oedipus, 38, 71 
 
 D'Urfey, Thomas, his Cynthia and Endimion, 36, 37, 71; his Psyche 
 Debauch' d, 33, 71 
 
 Electa, Wase's translation, 27-28, 71 
 
 Epic Story, source of plays on classic themes, 12; source of Dico plays, 13 
 
 Euripides, 37, 66 
 
 Evelyn, John, his kindness to Wase, 28; his description of Orinda's Horace, 
 
 33 
 Faerie Queene, The, 5, 62 
 Fleay, F. G., his conjecture about Dido and JEneas, 8, 9; about Dido, Queen 
 
 of Carthage, 13; about Cupid and Psyche, 19; about Love's Mistress, 
 
 52; about Dekker's lost Phaeton, 63 
 Ford, John, his part in the Sun's Darling, 7, 61, 64 
 Gager, William, his Latin Tragedy, 8; his Meleager, 12; his Ulysses Redux, 
 
 11, 70 
 Genesst, John, his Account of the English Stage, 26, 34, 36, 37 
 Gildon, Charles, his criticism of opera, 32; his Phaeton or the Fatal Divorce , 
 
 32, 37-38, 71 
 Golden Ass, The, of Apuleuis, 17, 18, 49-50; or Cupid and Psyche a lost play, 18, 
 
Index 8i 
 
 68 ; the Metamorphoses of Ovid a greater influence upon drama than The 
 Golden Ass, 19; Shadwell's allusion to, 35; source of the mythology in 
 Love's Mistress, 54; variations from, in Love's Mistress, 55; Rouse's 
 Cupid and Psyche and other Tales from, 58 
 
 Golding, Arthur, first translator of Ovid's Metamorphoses, his translation 
 of A Tragedie of Abraham's Sacrifice, 19; his friends, translations of 
 Caesar and Seneca, 20; his original work, 20; description of his transla- 
 tion, his Puritanism, 21; influence of his Metamorphoses, 22-24 
 
 Gosse, Edmund, his theory concerning dramatic verse, 29; his description 
 of Orinda, 33~34 
 
 Gosson, Stephen, his Plays Confuted, 18 
 
 Gower, his Confessio Amantis, 11 
 
 Greene, Robert, his Groatsworth of Wit, 8; his use of myth, 10; Dickenson's 
 debt to him, 15, 16, 48; his Menaphon mentioned, 19 
 
 Hazlitt, William Carew, 11; 47 
 
 Henslowe, Phillip, 8 
 
 Hercules, plays on, 8, 69; or The Loves of Mars and Venus, 36; Masque set to 
 Music, 71 
 
 Hey wood, Jasper, his Theystes, his Troas, 70 
 
 Hey wood, Thomas, his Silver and Bronze Ages, 8, 69; his allusion to the 
 Golden Fleece, 9; his Iron Age, 9; his use of classic myth, 10; his Pleas- 
 ant Dialogues and Drammas, 14; his King Ed. I., 14; his relation to 
 Lucian, 13-14; 15; his interest in Apuleius, 17; his Five Plays in One, 
 I9» 5 2 » 53; translation of Lucian, 41; his Love's Mistress and Shirley's 
 Triumph of Beauty, 46; his Love's Mistress described, 51-57; his treat- 
 ment of myth, 54; conception of Cupid, 56; his Apollo and Daphne, 68; 
 his Love's Mistress, 68; his Deorum Judicium, his Jupiter and Io, 69; 
 his Golden Age, his Rape of Lucrece, 70 
 
 Hickes, Francis, his translation of Lucian, 14-15 
 
 Hippolytus, of Seneca, translated by Priestwich, 28, 71; translated by Stud- 
 ley, 69 
 
 Holinshed, Ralph, his Chronicle, 10 
 
 Horace, Corneille's, 33; plays on, 71 
 
 Howell, James, 27 
 
 Iliad, The, 40 
 
 Iphigenia, tragedies of, 9, 69; by John Dennis, 71; Achilles or Iphigenia in 
 Aulis, 71 
 
 Jason, as subject for pageants, 5; mentioned, 9, 10, 37, 46; "the story of" 
 mentioned in Stationers' Register, 21 
 
 Jones, Inigo, 29, 52 
 
 Jonson, Ben, his masque, 5; his possible connection with Dido and /Eneas, 
 9; his use of history, 11 ; influence of Seneca upon him, 12; poet-laureate, 
 25 ; his Lovers Made Men set to music by Nicolo Laniere, 29 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage, 48, 62; his Death of Paris and Story of Corythos, 48; 
 his Gebir, 62 
 
82 Index 
 
 Laniere, Nicolo, his musical setting for Jonson's masque, 29 
 
 Leander, Robert Stapleton's play, 37, 71; plays on, 69, 70 
 
 Love's Mistress, 49; described, 51-57; its sources, 53; seen by Samuel Pepys, 
 
 57 
 
 Lower, Sir William, translator, 28, 33 
 
 Lucian, Heyvvood's interest in him, 14; the Friendship of, 14; Dickenson's 
 knowledge of, his Timon, 15-16, his Lovkios tj "Ovos, 17; his Judg- 
 ment of Paris, 41 
 
 Lulli, Les Fetes de V Amour et de Bacchus, 29; his Cadmus and Hermione, 
 the first true French opera, 29; music for Psyche, 51 
 
 Lyly, John, his Court plays, 5, 6; the songs in his Campaspe, 65; the Blount 
 edition of his works, 65, 66 
 
 Marlowe, Christopher, Dyce's edition of, 8; his Dido, Queen of Carthage, 8, 
 13, 69; his Tamburlaine, 43 
 
 Marmion, Shakerly, verses to Heywood, 17; his Cupid and Psyche, 58-59 
 
 Masque, 5, 6, 7; Browne's Inner Temple Masque, 10-11 ; Masque given at the 
 middle Temple, 25; The Nuptials of Peleus and Thebis, 27, 71; 16th cen- 
 tury masque, 29; comparison with opera, 30-31; of Calisto or the Chaste 
 Nymph, 35, 71; Hercules, The Loves of Mars and Venus, Cynthia and 
 Endimion, 36, 71; the Queen's, 52-53, 68; the Sun's Darling, 64, 70; 
 the Burlesque, Venus and Adonis, 72 
 
 Mayne, Jasper, his translation of Lucian, 15 
 
 Medea, plays on, 9, 70; allusion to, 37 
 
 Meredith, George, his Phaeton, 62 
 
 Meres, Francis, 10, 19 
 
 Metamorphoses, the, of Apuleius, 49; of Lucius of Patras, 17; of Ovid, 9, 10, 
 19, 20, 23, 35-36, 61; George Sandy's translation of Ovid's, 21-22 
 
 Moliere, his Psyche, 35, 51, 57; his wit not transferred to England, 38; his 
 Misanthrope, 51 
 
 Morris, Lewis, The Epic of Hades, 60 
 
 Morris, William, The Earthly Paradise, 48 
 
 Myth, Classic, 5, 32; definition of, 6; its popularity in Elizabethan times, 
 6; and Story, 7; classic, Thomas Heywood's use of it, 10, 54; of Cupid 
 and Psyche, 17, 48, 50, 51, 56, 57-60; a favorite subject for musical 
 drama, 32, 33; of (Enone, 39, 40 41, 48; Iliad, 40; of the Judgment of 
 Paris, 6, 45, 46; of Phaeton, 61, 62, 64; classic, as a subject for plays, 
 66, 67 
 
 Narcissus, 9; the Fable of, 20, 21; the Twelfth Night Entertainment, 22-23, 
 70 
 
 Nash, Thomas, in Dido, Queen of Carthage, 8, 9, 13; his criticism of Stany- 
 hurst's Vergil, 13-14; criticism of translations, 18 
 
 Newton, Thomas, 8, 12 
 
 (Edipus, tragedies of, 9, 70; by Dryden and Lee, 71; (Edipus Tyrannus, 67 
 
 (Enone, Mentioned by Greene, 10; Tennyson's, 39, 48; tracing of the myth 
 of> 39-42; in The Arraignment of Paris, 43-44; does not appear in Triumph 
 
Index 83 
 
 of Beauty, 46; Action and Diana, with the Pastoral Story of the Nymph 
 (Enone, 68 
 Opera, Davenant's use of term, 26; its course in England, 28, 29; Z?*do a«d 
 Mneas, the one example of true English opera, 30; Dryden's definition, 
 
 30, 31; between 1642 and 1700, seven operas, 33; of Circe, 36 
 Orestes, plays on, 9, 70 
 
 Ovid, his Metamorphoses, 9, 10, 19, 61; a poem of, 16; translation of de Arte 
 Amandi, 20; The Pleasant Fable of Hermaphroditus, 20; of Narcissus, 
 20; of Jason, 21; of the Heroides, 21, 41; the Metamorphoses of Sandys, 
 21; Caxton's translation, 20; source of Calisto and other plays, 35-36; 
 Parthenius, his contemporary, 41; his Heroides, source of Arraignment 
 of Paris, 42; the Phaeton story told by Ovid, 61 
 Pageants, 6, 7; Lord Mayors', 5, 9; Peele's for 1585, 42-43 
 Paris, 6, 10, 43, 46, 47, 48; The Arraignment of, 39, 43, 69; -as he appears 
 in the Vedas, 40; (Enone and, 41 ; Shirley's, Judgment of, 47; Congreve's 
 Judgment of, 47; the Death of, 48; Mrs. Bellamy's Judgment of, 47 
 Peele, George, his Arraignment of Paris, 6, 42-45, 69; his Turkish Mahomet 
 and Hiren the Fair Greek, 10; as city Poet, 42, 43; his Old Wives' Tale, 
 43; his Hunting of Cupid, 45, 46, 69; his Iphigenia, 69 
 Phaer, Thomas, his translation, 13, 14; Puttenham's mention of, 19 
 Phaeton, or the Fatal Divorce, 37, 71 ; myth of, 61-63,67; play by Quinault, 62; 
 
 The Sun's Darling founded on, 70 
 Phillips, Mrs. Katharine, the Matchless Orinda, 33-34; 71 
 Psyche, Shadwell's, 34-35; 71; the myth, 47, 48-49-50; mentioned, 53, 54, 
 55. 67; described by Beaumont, 59; by Keats, 60; by other English 
 poets, 60 
 Purcell, Henry, great 17th century musician, 30; Dryden's tributes to him, 
 
 31, 38; music for Circe, 36 
 
 Racine, his Andromache translated, 34, 71; mentioned, 38 
 Rich, Barnabie, 14 
 
 Sandys, George,, his translation of Ovid, 21-22 
 
 Seneca, the great source of classic tragedy, 12-13; influence upon Elizabethan 
 dramatists, 12; his Agamemnon, 19; his de Beneficiis, 20; his Thyestes, 
 
 34 
 
 Shadwell, Thomas, his Psyche, 31-32, 34-35, 57 
 
 Shakespeare, William, 10, 11, 12; his Timon, 15-17; as a classical scholar, 
 16, 17, 23, 24; his Venus and Adonis, 23, 43; his Midsummer Night's 
 Dream, 62 
 
 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, his Prometheus Unbound, 67 
 
 Shirley, John, his Arcadia, 46; his Triumph of Beauty, 46-47 
 
 Sophocles, 17, 66; his Electra, 27; his CEdipus Tyrannus, 67 
 
 Stanyhurst, Richard, his translation, 13, 14, 24 
 
 Sun's Darling, The, example of poetic drama, 6; description of, 63-65; com- 
 pared with Old Fortunatus, 65; same song in Campaspe, 66; listed, 70 
 
 Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 35 
 
84 Index 
 
 Theatres, The King's, 27, 34; The Red Bull, 25, 27; the Cockpit, 26, 63; 
 Blackfriars, 26; Whitefriars, 27; Salisbury Court, 27; The New Theatre, 
 31; The Duke's, 31, 34; The Phoenix, 52 
 
 Theystes, translation of John Wright, 34; Crowne's, 37; plays on, 72 
 
 Timon of Athens, Lucian's, 15; Shakespeare's, 15-16 
 
 Troilus and Cressida, 11 
 
 Troy, tragedies of, 9, 70; the Roman de Troyes, 11 ; The Sege of Troye appear- 
 ing in an Oxford manuscript, 14; The Destruction of Troy, 37, 72 
 
 Turberville, George, translator, 21, 41-42 
 
 Udine, Ercole, his interpretation of the Psyche myth, 50 
 
 Ulysses, and the Syrens, 5; and Circe, 10-11; plays on, 70 
 
 Wase, Christopher, translator of the Electra of Sophocles, 27-28 
 
 Webbe, William, his Discourse of English Poetry, 19 
 
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