Thomas Lodge - Rosalynde

T >> Thomas Lodge >> Rosalynde

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12

ROSALYNDE OR, EUPHUES' GOLDEN LEGACY

BY

THOMAS LODGE

EDITED

WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

BY

EDWARD CHAUNCEY BALDWIN, Ph.D.

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

STANDARD
ENGLISH
CLASSICS

GINN AND COMPANY

BOSTON * NEW YORK * CHICAGO * LONDON
ATLANTA * DALLAS * COLUMBUS * SAN FRANCISCO

COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY

EDWARD CHAUNCEY BALDWIN

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The Athenaeum Press

GINN AND COMPANY * PROPRIETORS * BOSTON * U.S.A.

PREFACE

This edition of Lodge's "Rosalynde" has grown out of a need felt by
the editor for an example of Elizabethan prose suitable for use in a
general survey course in English, designed for college freshmen.
"Rosalynde," of all the books that were considered, seemed on the
whole best to fulfill the desired conditions. As a pastoral romance it
belongs to a class of books which, if not peculiar to the Elizabethan
age, is at least thoroughly representative of it. Moreover, the story
is entirely unobjectionable, nothing being found in it that could
offend any reader. The "Rosalynde," being one of the shortest of the
prose romances, is not open to the objections that might be urged
against the more famous, but also more discursive, "Arcadia" of
Sidney. Its close relations with Shakespeare's "As You Like It," which
is also read in the course, and its added interest as one of the
precursors of the modern novel, additionally recommend it. Finally,
its coherent plot, its freedom from digressions, and its happy ending,
make it seem likely to interest students, in spite of the
conventionality of the pastoral form.

The annotation has been confined to giving the meanings of obsolete or
unusual words. There are many mythological allusions that call for
explanation; but this, it is thought, any good dictionary of mythology
will supply. The list of questions is not of course exhaustive, and is
intended to be merely suggestive of the kind of study the college
student in an introductory course in English might well be fitted to
undertake. The text is that of the Hunterian Club edition of Lodge's
"Works." This reprint is of the first edition, that of 1590, except
that (since the only known copy of the first edition of "Rosalynde" is
imperfect) a few pages (121-127 of this edition) were reprinted from
the second edition of 1592. The spelling and punctuation have to some
extent been modernized--the latter having been altered only where
changes serve to make the author's meaning more obvious.

The editor acknowledges his indebtedness to the scholarly edition of
Lodge's "Rosalynde" by W.W. Greg (London and New York, 1907),
particularly to the glossarial index, which has supplied the meanings
of some words about which the editor was in considerable doubt. Thanks
are due, also, to my colleague Mr. Arthur Tietje for his helpful
suggestions in preparing the list of questions.

E.C.B.

URBANA, ILLINOIS

CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION vii

Birth and Education; Early Work; Later Work and Death;
Source of "Rosalynde": "The Tale of Gamelyn"; Form: A
Pastoral Romance; Spanish Influence; Style: Euphuistic; One
of the Last Examples of Euphuism; The Charm of the Book;
Lodge's Skill as a Story-teller; The Lyrical Interludes;
Historical Significance; Shakespeare's Dramatization of
"Rosalynde."

BIBLIOGRAPHY xxi

THE PUBLISHED WORKS OF THOMAS LODGE xxii

AUTHOR'S PREFACE xxv

AUTHOR'S DEDICATION xxvii

TEXT 1

QUESTIONS 131

[Transcriber's Note: The Questions section has been omitted
from this e-book.]

INTRODUCTION

_Birth and Education._ Of the life of Thomas Lodge comparatively
little is definitely known. Yet, though even the year of his birth is
uncertain, we are able from the meager facts that have come down to us
to see that his life was typically Elizabethan. Like Sidney and like
Raleigh, Lodge lived a varied and active life. He was born in either
1557 or 1558 of a rather prominent middle-class London family, both
his father and his mother's father having been lord mayors of the
city. He was sent to Merchant Taylors' School and afterwards to
Trinity College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1577. Of his career at
the university we know almost nothing except that among his fellow
students were John Lyly, destined to exert a powerful influence upon
his style, and George Peele, later to become a dramatist of note, to
whom Lodge may to some extent have owed his subsequent interest in the
drama.

_Early Work._ After leaving Oxford, Lodge returned to London and
entered the Society of Lincoln's Inn, in other words took up the study
of the law. Legal studies seem not to have absorbed his attention to
the total exclusion of literary work. The occasion of his first
publication was the death of his mother in 1579. In that year appeared
the "Epitaph of the Lady Anne Lodge." This is not extant, but his
reply to Stephen Gosson's "School of Abuse" has survived. Gosson's
book had been a furious attack upon the contemporary drama. Lodge's
reply was a fair sample of the literary billingsgate of that
controversial age and deserves the oblivion into which it promptly
sank. His next publication was his "Alarum against Usurers" (1584), a
book belonging to a class of tracts popular in that day in which the
characters and customs of the underworld of London were exposed to
popular execration. The impulse to engage in this journalistic kind of
work Lodge may have owed to Robert Greene, the dramatist, with whom he
at this time became intimate, and whose popular books on cony-catching
the "Alarum," in its spirit and purpose, closely resembles. Greene
certainly furnished some of the inspiration for the dramatic attempts
that followed. Lodge's play, "The Wounds of Civil War," though not
printed till 1594, may have been acted in 1587. We know that he
collaborated with Greene in "A Looking Glass for London and England,"
produced in 1592.

_Later Work and Death._ It is not, however, as a dramatist that Lodge
is remembered, but as a writer of pastoral romance. Here the
discursive and idyllic quality of his genius, both in verse and prose,
was to find complete and unhampered expression. Of the pastoral
romances that Lodge produced during the next decade "Rosalynde" is by
far the most important. The author wrote it, he tells us, while he was
on a freebooting expedition to the Azores and the Canaries, "when
every line was wet with a surge, and every humorous passion
counterchecked with a storm." The immediate success of "Rosalynde"
encouraged Lodge to continue the writing of romances. The best known
of those that followed, and one of the prettiest of his stories, is "A
Margarite [i.e. pearl] of America." This was written while Lodge was
engaged in another patriotic raid under Captain Cavendish against the
Spanish colonies of South America. The romance is in no sense
American, and owes its title solely to the fact that it was written,
or, as Lodge claims, translated from the Spanish, while Lodge's ship
was cruising off the coast of Patagonia. Lodge certainly knew Spanish;
and during the month that the expedition lingered at Santos in Brazil,
he spent much of his time in the library of the Jesuit College.
Possibly this was the beginning of his leaning toward Catholicism. At
all events, he later became a Roman Catholic and wrote in support of
that faith at a time when to be other than a Protestant in England was
extremely dangerous. Sometime previous to 1600 he took a degree of
doctor of medicine at Avignon and wrote among other medical treatises
one on the plague. Of this disease, it is said, he died in 1625.

_Source of "Rosalynde": "The Tale of Gamelyn."_ Lodge did not invent
the plot of "Rosalynde." The story is based upon "The Tale of
Gamelyn." This is a narrative in rough ballad form, written in the
fourteenth century and formerly attributed to Chaucer. Indeed all the
copies of it that have been preserved occur in the manuscripts of the
"Canterbury Tales" under the title "The Coke's Tale of Gamelyn." From
the "Tale" Lodge borrowed and adapted the account of the death of old
Sir John of Bordeaux, the subsequent quarrel of his sons, the plot of
the elder against the younger by which the latter was to be killed in
a wrestling bout, the wrestling itself, the flight of the younger
accompanied by the faithful Adam to the Forest of Arden, and their
falling in with a band of outlaws feasting. Yet from the "Tale" Lodge
took hardly more than a suggestion. All the love story was his own.
Original also, so far as we know,[1] was the story of the two kings,
and the pastoral element--for "Rosalynde" is a pastoral romance.

[Footnote 1: It has been conjectured that Lodge drew upon some Italian
novel for the material that he did not find in "The Tale of Gamelyn."
There seems, however, no ground for denying to Lodge credit for some
originality; for the novel, if it ever existed, has been lost.]

_Form: A Pastoral Romance._ As a pastoral romance it belongs to the
class of books of which Sidney's' "Arcadia" is the most famous
representative in English. The "Arcadia" was published in 1590--the
same year as "Rosalynde"--though it had been written some ten years
earlier. The literary genus to which they belong is a very old one.
The prose pastoral romance, that kind of prose romance which
professes to delineate the scenery, sentiments, and incidents of
shepherd life,[1] is, like most other literary forms, Greek in origin.
It goes back at least to the "Daphnis and Chloe" of Longus, the
Byzantine romancer of the fifth century A.D. Longus represents the
romantic spirit in expiring classicism, the longing of a highly
artificial society for primitive simplicity, and the endeavor to
create a corresponding ideal. Indeed the pastoral has always been a
product of a highly artificial age. Naturally, therefore, it has
always been written by men of the city rather than by men of the
country. It is distinctly an urban product. That it was so accounts in
part for the idealized view of life that it presents. Speaking of the
pastoral, Doctor Johnson says in his ponderous way:[2]

Our inclination to stillness and tranquillity is seldom much
lessened by long knowledge of the busy and tumultuary part
of the world. In childhood we turn our thoughts to the
country, as to the region of pleasure; we recur to it in old
age as a port of rest, and perhaps with that secondary and
adventitious gladness, which every man feels on reviewing
those places, or recollecting those occurrences, that
contributed to his youthful enjoyments, and bring him back
to the prime of life, when the world was gay with the bloom
of novelty, when mirth wantoned at his side, and hope
sparkled before him.

[Footnote 1: Dr. Johnson defines a pastoral as "the representation of
an action or passion by its effects upon a country life." See _The
Rambler_, Nos. 36 and 37.]

[Footnote 2: _The Rambler_, No. 36. See also Steele's essays on the
pastoral in _The Guardian_, Nos. 22, 23, 28, 30, 32. No. 22 is
particularly interesting, because in it Steele assigns three causes
for the popularity of the pastoral form,--man's love of ease, his love
of simplicity, and his love of the country. Pope's remarks on the
pastoral, which may be found in _The Guardian_, No. 40, are also worth
referring to in this connection.]

Probably Doctor Johnson was entirely right about the perennial charm
of the pastoral and in his theory that its charm is potent in the
direct ratio to the square of the distance that separates the writer
and reader from rural life itself. It is not strange, therefore, that
in the newly awakened interest in the classics that characterized the
Renaissance, when literature was so largely a product of city
culture, the revival of the pastoral should have been one of the first
manifestations of the earlier Renaissance humanism.

_Spanish Influence._ Even when all due credit has been given to the
charm of the pastoral romance, it still remains doubtful whether the
influence of the Greek and Latin classics alone is sufficient to
explain its vogue in the Elizabethan age. Their influence, though
undoubtedly great, was scarcely sufficient to account for the
naturalization in England of so exotic a form as the pastoral. Indeed
the pastoral never was thoroughly naturalized, remaining to the end
somewhat alien to its English surroundings. Shepherds with their oaten
pipes were never quite at home in the English climate, which is ill
suited to life in the open, to loose tunics, and bare limbs.[1] It is
doubtful whether the pastoral would have become popular in England
without the stimulus furnished by contemporary European literature.
Most influential of these contemporary influences was the "Diana
Enamorada," published about 1558, a Spanish pastoral romance written
by Jorge de Montemayor, a Portuguese by birth, a Spaniard by adoption.
Although the English translation of the "Diana" did not appear until
1598[2] it was well known to Sidney, who translated parts of it, and
imitated it in his "Arcadia" (1590), and to Greene, whose "Menaphon,"
also an imitation of the "Diana," had appeared in 1589, the year
before "Rosalynde." Though it is entirely possible that Lodge may have
imitated Greene, it is probable that he, like Greene, had read the
"Diana," for it is certain that he knew Spanish,[3] as well as French
and Italian, and the "Diana" was already, it is said,[4] the most
popular book in Europe.

[Footnote 1: Steele, speaking of the pastoral (_The Guardian_, No.
30), says, "The difference of the climate is also to be considered,
for what is proper in Arcadia, or even in Italy, might be quite absurd
in a colder country."]

[Footnote 2: Though not published till 1598, Bartholomew Young's
translation of the "Diana" was made in 1583.]

[Footnote 3: In the epistle To the Gentlemen Readers, prefixed to "A
Margarite of America," he tells us that he read the original of that
story "in the Library of the Jesuits in Sanctum ... in the Spanish
tongue."]

[Footnote 4: Jusserand, "The English Novel in the Time of
Shakespeare," p. 236.]

_Style: Euphuistic._ Nor was Lodge more original in his manner than in
his matter. His style is that of the euphuists. John Lyly's "Euphues,
or the Anatomy of Wit" (1579), and its sequel "Euphues and His
England" (1580), had set a fashion that was destined for the next two
decades to enjoy a tremendous vogue. Lyly's was the first conspicuous
example in English of the attempt to achieve an ornate and rather
fantastic style. The result became known as euphuism, and those who
employed it as euphuists. In its essential features it consists of
three distinct mannerisms: a balance of phrases, an elaborate system
of alliteration, and a profusion of similes taken from fabulous
natural history. Regarding the euphuistic use of balance, Dr. Landmann
says of Lyly's prose:[1] "We have here the most elaborate antithesis
not only of well balanced clauses, but also of words, often even of
sentences.... Even when he uses a single sentence he opposes the words
within the clause to each other."

[Footnote 1: In "Shakspere and Euphuism," _Transactions of the New
Shakspere Society_, 1880-1882.]

Of this balance Lodge's "Rosalynde" affords abundant illustration.
Such a succession of sentences as that on page 7, where each sentence
is composed of balanced clauses, is a striking but by no means unique
example. Usually the contrasted words begin with the same letter or
sound, as in the sentences just cited, where the alliteration appears
to be employed to emphasize the contrast. Often the alliteration
serves merely for ornament, as in the sentence: "It is she, O gentle
swain, it is she, that saint it is whom I serve, that goddess at whose
shrine I do bend all my devotions; the most fairest of all fairs, the
phoenix of all that sex, and the purity of all earthly perfection."

The euphuistic similes were of three kinds. First, there were those
drawn from familiar natural objects, such as, "Happily she resembleth
the rose, that is sweet but full of prickles." Secondly, there are
those taken from classical history and mythology, like these: "Is she
some nymph that waits upon Diana's train, ... or is she some
shepherdess ... whose name thou shadowest in covert under the figure
of Rosalynde, as Ovid did Julia under the name of Corinna?" Thirdly,
there are those similes most characteristic of euphuism, though less
commonly found than the two kinds just mentioned, namely, those drawn
from "unnatural natural history." Such are the comparisons to "the
serpent Regius that hath scales as glorious as the sun and a breath as
infectious as aconitum is deadly," to "the hyena, most guileful when
she mourns," to "the colors of a polype which changes at the sight of
every object," and to "the Sethin leaf that never wags but with a
southeast wind."

_One of the Last Examples of Euphuism._ When Lodge wrote "Rosalynde,"
euphuism was already on the wane. Even among Lodge's contemporaries
the fashion was becoming an object of frequent ridicule. Thus Warner,
in his "Albion's England" (1589), complains in the preface, which, by
the way, is written wholly in the euphuistic manner: "Onely this error
may be thought hatching in our English, that to runne on the letter we
often runne from the matter: and being over prodigall in similes we
become less profitable in sentences and more prolixious to sense."

By 1627 euphuism had become an obsolete fashion. In that year Drayton
wrote of Sidney that he

did first reduce
Our tongue from Lillies writing then in use:
Talking of Stones, Stars, Plants, of Fishes, Flyes,
Playing with words and idle Similies
As th' English Apes and very Zanies be
Of everything that they doe heare and see,
So imitating his ridiculous tricks,
They spake and writ like meere lunatiques.

"Rosalynde" marks the end of the unquestioned supremacy of euphuism as
a literary mode. It was the last book of any importance to employ the
style that Lyly had made so popular.

_The Charm of the Book._ In spite of the conventionality inseparable
from the pastoral form, and the obvious artificiality of the style in
which it is written, "Rosalynde" is really charming. Its charm is much
like that of Watteau's landscapes. Like them, it is an idyll in court
dress, a _fete elegante_, a kind of elegant picnic. Yet, like
Watteau's pictures it is of more than merely historic interest, for it
is far more than simply a reminder of the fopperies of a vanished
time. There is in it, as in the paintings, a lightness and daintiness
of coloring, and an indescribable air of freshness that have made the
romance appeal to poets as the work of Watteau has appealed to
painters. Shakespeare felt its charm so much that he made it the basis
of the plot of "As You Like It." That it became one of his "sources"
has injured it incalculably in the popular estimation. It has become a
commonplace of criticism to declare that "Rosalynde's" chief title to
be remembered is its having furnished a hint to Shakespeare. As a
matter of fact, however, it had, to use Johnson's phrase, "enough wit
to keep it sweet," even without Shakespeare's play "to preserve it
from putrefaction." Lodge really had a pretty story to tell, and he
tells it, if not with gusto, at least with grace and with some degree
of skill. Exquisitely graceful are some of the narrative passages,
where the very words seem to possess a clear and pellucid quality like
the water of the spring that Rosalynde and Aliena found in Arden, "so
crystalline and clear, that it seemed Diana and her Dryades and
Hamadryades had that spring, as the secret of all their bathings."[1]
Such, for instance, is the account of the night and morning succeeding
the first meeting of Rosalynde and Rosader in the Forest of Arden.[2]
Graceful, too, are the descriptions of the landscapes in Arden, such
as that of the "fair valley" where Rosalynde and Aliena found Montanus
and Corydon "seeing their sheep feed, playing on their pipes many
pleasant tunes, and from music and melody falling into much amorous
chat." So charmingly graceful are these descriptions that, together
with Shakespeare, Lodge has made the Forest of Arden almost as much
the accepted home of the pastoral as Sicily and Arcadia[3] had been
hitherto.

[Footnote 1: P. 31.]

[Footnote 2: Pp. 58 and 60.]

[Footnote 3: Theocritus (283-263 B.C.) localized his "Idyls" in
Sicily; Vergil (70-19 B.C.), his "Eclogues" in Arcadia.]

_Lodge's Skill as a Story-teller._ To say that Lodge is a skillful as
well as a graceful story-teller is, of course, to make an indefensible
assertion. In the sixteenth century English fiction was still in its
infancy, and English prose was still undeveloped. Yet we do find in
Lodge certain qualities of style that show clearly an advance over the
formlessness of some of the stories that had preceded. Though the
sentence and paragraph structure is loose and amorphous, the
transitions from one subject to another are almost invariably well
made, or at least are clearly marked. Phrases such as, "But leaving
him so desirous of the journey, to Torismond"[1]; "Leaving her to her
new entertained fancies, again to Rosader"[2]; "where we leave them,
and return again to Torismond"[3]; show clearly a growing regard for
the value of clear arrangement, to which the earlier romancers had
been indifferent. In the avoidance of digressions, too, Lodge's style
is an improvement upon that of his predecessors, and even upon that of
most of his contemporaries.[4] The story moves along, if not rapidly,
at least continuously from start to finish. There is a gratifying lack
of such preposterous complications and tortuous windings as we meet
with in the plot of Greene's "Menaphon," for example, where it
sometimes seems doubtful whether the characters ever will emerge from
so mazy a labyrinth of plot, and where the reader is bewildered by the
almost complete lack of unity in the story.

[Footnote 1: P. 12.]

[Footnote 2: P. 17.]

[Footnote 3: P. 50. See, also, pp. 19, 41, 51, 59, 73, 97, 104.]

[Footnote 4: On page 72 Lodge accuses himself of digressing; but the
four lines in which he here anticipates the conclusion of the story
seem not to warrant the charge.]

_The Lyrical Interludes._ Lodge's spirit is essentially poetical. One
feels that his way of looking at things is that of a true poet; of
one, that is, who sees beneath the shows of things. Lodge saw as
clearly as Shakespeare did that only love can untie the knot that
selfishness has tied. And not only is Lodge a poet in his outlook on
life, but also in the narrower sense of the word, for he is one of the
sweetest singers of all that band of choristers that filled the
spacious times of great Elizabeth with sounds that echo still. The
voices of some were more resonant or more impassioned; few, if any,
were sweeter. Such a song as _Rosalynde's Madrigal_, beginning,

Love in my bosom, like a bee
Doth suck his sweet:

is as fluent, as graceful, and as mellifluous as anything that
appeared in that marvelously productive time. Lodge's poetic
interludes impress one not only by their easy grace and sweetness, but
by their melody as well. They possess that truly lyric quality that
Burns's songs exhibit to such a marked degree. They seem to sing
themselves. It is almost impossible to read aloud the best of them,
such as,

Like to the clear in highest sphere
Where all imperial glory shines,
Of selfsame color is her hair,
Whether unfolded or in twines:
Heigh ho, fair Rosalynde!

without setting them unconsciously to a kind of tune, so essentially
musical are the lines. In their wonderful harmony these lyrics remind
one of Burns, but in the radiant and ethereal quality of their
phrasing they inevitably recall Shelley. Furthermore, these songs
illustrate the fact that the Elizabethan lyric had its origin in
culture, not among the people, and that the chief sources of its
inspiration were Italian and French. In a series of lyrics inserted
into the text of "A Margarite of America,"[1] Lodge avowedly imitates
the Italian poets Dolce, Pascale, and Mantelli, while in another
passage in the same book[2] he expresses his unbounded admiration for
the French poet Desportes, and his belief "that few men are able to
second the sweet conceits of Philippe Desportes." His "sweet conceits"
are imitated, we are told, in Montanus's song on page 29, and again in
_Rosader's Sonnet_, on page 62. In his borrowings Lodge merely
followed a prevalent fashion. The early English Elizabethan lyric was
wholly experimental and imitative--the product of foreign influences,
predominantly Italian and French; and in this respect Lodge's are
entirely typical.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12