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work of Caxton and More. It had also much influence on our historical literature, as seen in the work of Fabyan, Hall, and Holinshed. Among other things translated by Berners was Guevara's Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius (1532). It will be remembered that the style known as Euphuism was probably derived from Guevara.1

In 1567 there appeared a complete translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, by Arthur Golding. He used the fourteen-syllable metre, and his work has a Translation high poetical merit. It was well known to of Ovid, Shakespeare; Prospero's speech in The Tempest, beginning "Ye elves of hills" (v. 1. 33), seems to have been suggested to him by a passage in Golding's Ovid.

In 1579 Sir Thomas North published his translation of Plutarch's Lives. He did not, however, take it direct from the Greek, but from the French of Plutarch, version, by Amyot. North's Plutarch furnished Shakespeare with the materials for his Roman history plays.

of Ariosto,

In 1591 appeared Sir John Harington's (15611612) translation of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. The eight-lined stanza of the original, with its three rimes (a ba ba b c c), is preserved, but the line consists of five iambic feet. Harington was intimately connected with the court life of the time. The queen, to whom he dedicated his translation, was his godmother, and was accustomed to speak of him as "that saucy poet, my godson". He accompanied Essex on his ill-fated expedition to Ireland.

Edward Fairfax (died 1635)2 produced in 1600 the first complete translation of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, using the same metre and stanza as of Tasso, Harington. No better translation of Tasso's

great poem has ever been made; Fairfax has well preserved the music and poetry of the original.

The essays of Montaigne (1533-1592) were translated.

1Cp. p. 156.

2 The uncle of the Fairfax who became so famous in the Civil Wars.

into English by John Florio (1553?-1625) in 1603; the book was well known to Shakespeare.

of Homer.

But by far the most celebrated of the Elizabethan translators was George Chapman (1559?-1634). In 1598 he published a translation in the fourteensyllable measure of seven books of Homer's Iliad, dedicated to the Earl of Essex. A complete edition of the Iliad appeared about 1609. It is dedicated to Prince Henry in a poetical epistle in heroic couplets, much admired by Coleridge. Chapman sings the fame

of Homer's poetry,

Which all the world yet none enough has praised,

and of Homer himself who

tasting, living, reigning,

Proves how firm truth builds in poet's feigning.

The translators of the classics held then almost as high a place as original poets, and Chapman's Homer is reckoned one of the great achievements of Elizabethan literature, and by many one of the greatest treasures of the English language. It is a magnificent translation, combining all the fire and passion that distinguished Elizabethan poetry with the grandeur and beauty of Homer. Charles Lamb is enthusiastic about "the earnestness and passion" of Chapman's rendering, while Keats, who himself possessed more of the old Greek spirit than any other of our English poets, gave utterance in a fine sonnet to his wonder and delight on first reading Chapman. In this sonnet (“On first looking into Chapman's Homer") he says:

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow'd Homer rules as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold.

In our own day, Mr. Swinburne, who has written a very fine essay on Chapman, declares that "while anything of English poetry shall endure the sonnet of Keats will be

the final word of comment, the final note of verdict on Chapman's Homer".

The Odyssey, translated into ten-syllable verse, was published about 1614, and an edition of the Iliad and Odyssey together appeared in 1616.

Materials of

tists.

Thus the dramatists found ready to hand a large store of material on which to draw for the plots of their plays. There were collections of tales, translations of the classics, translations of modern poets like the dramaAriosto and Tasso, or of prose writers like Montaigne; these, with the books about the history of their own country mentioned above, furnished endless subjects and ideas for the pens and the imaginations of the playwrights.

The Life of Hooker, by Izaak Walton, should be read. A useful edition of the first book of the Ecclesiastical Polity is published at the Clarendon Press, Oxford. The best modern edition of Hooker's

works was edited by Keble, in 3 vols.

For further information about the Elizabethan romance-writers older students should read Jusserand's English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare (Fisher Unwin, 1890). Fox Bourne's Life of Sidney in the Heroes of the Nations series (Putnam) might be consulted, and Sidney's Apology for Poetry is issued in Arber's Reprints (Constable).

CHAPTER VIII.

THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH DRAMA.

I. Miracle Plays and Moralities.

In England as in Greece the beginnings of the national drama are to be found in close connection with the nation's religion. The service of the Roman The origin of Catholic Church is in itself more or less drama in dramatic: it includes music and singing, de- England. corations pleasant to the eye, recitative reading, processions. When the greater number of the people could not read it was found that the stories of the Bible could

best be brought home to them in a rough dramatic representation, and thus as long ago as the twelfth century there was a sort of drama in Latin springing from the church. But in order to ensure that these performances should help people to religious knowledge, it was necessary to give them in English, and about the beginning of Miracle the reign of Edward III. the miracle plays, as plays. they were called, began to be acted in English. The subjects of the plays were those parts of the Old Testament which contained prophecies afterwards fulfilled in the New, the events of the Gospel, and incidents from the legends of the saints of the church. Thus the origin

of the plays is both religious and literary: the first, as they grew out of the liturgy of the church; the second, since they were founded on the Bible. The earliest representations took place in the churches themselves.

Though the clergy had the chief hand in their composition, the plays soon lost their strictly ecclesiastical character, and came to be acted by the trade guilds of the chief cities on the occasion of the great church festivals of Christmas and Easter. About 1311, however, Corpus Christi Day (the Thursday after Whit Sunday) became the epoch of the great dramatic pageants or plays. In the towns movable stages on wheels visited in turn all the chief places of the city, and the spectator, sitting in one spot, would see the scenes of the play pass in order before him. In the country where there was more open space, a long fixed scaffolding made the stage, divided into divisions for the different scenes, and the spectators passed along in front of it. The Latin name for these erections was pagina, from which we derive our word pageant. As a matter of fact the miracle plays were grand spectacles and little besides. Notwithstanding their seri

ous subjects, the plays contained humorous passages, for which the Bible gave them no warrant. A comic effect would be produced, for instance, by the unwillingness of Noah's wife to enter the ark. The devil usually supplied a comic, and Herod a melodramatic element. Such episodes developed later into comedy. There were actors

in the streets as well as on the stage; messengers would ride up on horseback, and the devil would jump from the stage, and rush about among the people. The performances generally began on a Sunday at six in the morning, and lasted, with intervals, for three days.

Collections of these dramas seem to have been made, since three of them, those of Chester, Coventry, and Wakefield,1 have come down to us. The sacrifice of Isaac was a very favourite subject. The treatment of the story is poetical and pathetic, and must have brought home to the hearts of the people Abraham's faith in God, and Isaac's trusting obedience to his father's will. Thus the people became acquainted with the greater part of the Bible. Between the Old and New Testaments was a shepherds' play that led up to the birth of Christ. The shepherds were talking, joking, indulging in country sports, when suddenly they heard the song of the angels. In their first impulse they mocked at it, but gradually realizing its significance, they knelt in reverence in the stable where lay the new-born infant.2

Moralities.

As time went forward, abstract characters, such as Contemplation, Justice, Truth, Peace, began to creep into the miracle play, and helped to prepare the way for the next development in the English drama-the morality. But it must not be thought that the morality, in which the characters were vices and virtues personified, was entirely the outcome of the miracle play. It owes its origin also to the allegorical poetry that, as we have seen, prevailed so largely during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Their titles, such as The Castle of Perseverance, The Trial of Treasure, Every-Man, remind us of the favourite poetry of the period. When people were able to read the Bible

1 The last are generally known as the Towneley plays, because the MS. belonged to the library of Towneley Hall, Lancashire. They were probably the work of the friars of Woodkirk, and were acted by the guilds of Wakefield. Both places are in Yorkshire.

2 The Passion Play performed in our own day by the villagers of Oberammergau, in Germany, is in reality a survival of the old miracle play, and gives a very fair notion of what it was like.

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