English Literature
Footnote 56: It is often alleged that in this romance we have a very
poetical foundation for the Order of the Garter, which was instituted by
Edward III, in 1349; but the history of the order makes this extremely
doubtful. The reader will be chiefly interested in comparing this romance
with _Beowulf_, for instance, to see what new ideals have taken root in
England.
Footnote 57: Originally Cockaygne (variously spelled) was intended to
ridicule the mythical country of Avalon, somewhat as Cervantes' _Don
Quixote_ later ridicules the romances of chivalry. In Luxury Land
everything was good to eat; houses were built of dainties and shingled with
cakes; buttered larks fell instead of rain; the streams ran with good wine;
and roast geese passed slowly down the streets, turning themselves as they
went.
Footnote 58: Child's _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_ is the most
scholarly and complete collection in our language. Gummere's _Old English
Ballads_ is a good short work. Professor Kittredge's Introduction to the
Cambridge edition of Child's _Ballads_ is the best summary of a very
difficult subject. For an extended discussion of the literary character of
the ballad, see Gummere's _The Popular Ballad_.
Footnote 59: little bird.
Footnote 60: in her language.
Footnote 61: I live
Footnote 62: fairest
Footnote 63: I am
Footnote 64: power, bondage.
Footnote 65: a pleasant fate I have attained.
Footnote 66: I know
Footnote 67: gone
Footnote 68: lit, alighted
Footnote 69: For titles and publishers of reference books see General
Bibliography at the end of this book.
Footnote 70: The reader may perhaps be more interested in these final
letters, which are sometimes sounded and again silent, if he remembers that
they represent the decaying inflections of our old Anglo-Saxon speech.
Footnote 71: _House of Fame_, II, 652 ff. The passage is more or less
autobiographical.
Footnote 72: _Legend of Good Women_, Prologue, ll. 29 ff.
Footnote 73: wealth.
Footnote 74: the crowd.
Footnote 75: success.
Footnote 76: blinds.
Footnote 77: act.
Footnote 78: trouble.
Footnote 79: i.e. the goddess Fortune.
Footnote 80: kick.
Footnote 81: awl.
Footnote 82: judge.
Footnote 83: For the typography of titles the author has adopted the plan
of putting the titles of all books, and of all important works generally
regarded as single books, in italics. Individual poems, essays, etc., are
in Roman letters with quotation marks. Thus we have the "Knight's Tale," or
the story of "Palamon and Arcite," in the _Canterbury Tales_. This system
seems on the whole the best, though it may result in some inconsistencies.
Footnote 84: _Troilus and Criseyde_, III.
Footnote 85: See p. 107.
Footnote 86: For a summary of Chaucer's work and place in our literature,
see the Comparison with Spenser, p. 111.
Footnote 87: clad.
Footnote 88: wonder.
Footnote 89: brook.
Footnote 90: sounded.
Footnote 91: theirs
Footnote 92: rule
Footnote 93: righteousness
Footnote 94: called
Footnote 95: theirs
Footnote 96: yield
Footnote 97: say
Footnote 98: them
Footnote 99: hate
Footnote 100: persecute
Footnote 101: slander
Footnote 102: rains
Footnote 103: In its English form the alleged Mandeville describes the
lands and customs he has seen, and brings in all the wonders he has heard
about. Many things he has seen himself, he tells us, and these are
certainly true; but others he has heard in his travels, and of these the
reader must judge for himself. Then he incidentally mentions a desert where
he saw devils as thick as grasshoppers. As for things that he has been told
by devout travelers, here are the dog-faced men, and birds that carry off
elephants, and giants twenty-eight feet tall, and dangerous women who have
bright jewels in their heads instead of eyes, "and if they behold any man
in wrath, they slay him with a look, as doth the basilisk." Here also are
the folk of Ethiopia, who have only one leg, but who hop about with
extraordinary rapidity. Their one foot is so big that, when they lie in the
sun, they raise it to shade their bodies; in rainy weather it is as good as
an umbrella. At the close of this interesting book of travel, which is a
guide for pilgrims, the author promises to all those who say a prayer for
him a share in whatever heavenly grace he may himself obtain for all his
holy pilgrimages.
Footnote 104: For titles and publishers of reference works see General
Bibliography at the end of this book.
Footnote 105: _Constitutional History of England_.
Footnote 106: Symonds, _Revival of Learning_.
Footnote 107: Sismondi attributes this to two causes: first, the lack of
general culture; and second, the absorption of the schools in the new study
of antiquity. See _Literature of the South of Europe_, II, 400 ff.
Footnote 108: Erasmus, the greatest scholar of the Renaissance, was not
an Englishman, but seems to belong to every nation. He was born at
Rotterdam (_c_. 1466), but lived the greater part of his life in France,
Switzerland, England, and Italy. His _Encomium Moriae_ was sketched on a
journey from Italy (1509) and written while he was the guest of Sir Thomas
More in London.
Footnote 109: Unless, perchance, the reader finds some points of
resemblance in Plato's "Republic."
Footnote 110: See Wordsworth's sonnet, _On the Sonnet_. For a detailed
study of this most perfect verse form, see Tomlinson's _The Sonnet, Its
Origin, Structure, and Place in Poetry_.
Footnote 111: William Caxton (_c_. 1422-1491) was the first English
printer. He learned the art abroad, probably at Cologne or Bruges, and
about the year 1476 set up the first wooden printing press in England. His
influence in fixing a national language to supersede the various dialects,
and in preparing the way for the literary renaissance of the Elizabethan
age, is beyond calculation.
Footnote 112: Malory has, in our own day, been identified with an English
country gentleman and soldier, who was member of Parliament for
Warwickshire in 1445.
Footnote 113: For titles and publishers of general works see General
Bibliography at the end of this book.
Footnote 114: _Eastward Ho!_ a play given in Blackfriars Theater about
1603. The play was written by Marston and two collaborators.
Footnote 115: Lie so faint.
Footnote 116: The _View_ was not published till 1633.
Footnote 117: clad.
Footnote 118: handsome.
Footnote 119: jousts, tournaments.
Footnote 120: countenance.
Footnote 121: dreaded.
Footnote 122: took off.
Footnote 123: pity.
Footnote 124: know.
Footnote 125: In the nineteenth century men learned again to appreciate
Chaucer.
Footnote 126: The most dramatic part of the early ritual centered about
Christ's death and resurrection, on Good Fridays and Easter days. An
exquisite account of this most impressive service is preserved in St.
Ethelwold's Latin manual of church services, written about 965. The Latin
and English versions are found in Chambers's _Mediaeval Stage_, Vol. II.
For a brief, interesting description, see Gayley, _Plays of Our
Forefathers_, pp. 14 ff.
Footnote 127: How much we are indebted to the Norman love of pageantry
for the development of the drama in England is an unanswered question.
During the Middle Ages it was customary, in welcoming a monarch or in
celebrating a royal wedding, to represent allegorical and mythological
scenes, like the combat of St. George and the dragon, for instance, on a
stage constructed for the purpose. These pageants were popular all over
Europe and developed during the Renaissance into the dramatic form known as
the Masque. Though the drama was of religious origin, we must not overlook
these secular pageants as an important factor in the development of
dramatic art.
Footnote 128: Miracles were acted on the Continent earlier than this. The
Normans undoubtedly brought religious plays with them, but it is probable
that they began in England before the Conquest (1066). See Manly,
_Specimens of the Pre-Shaksperean Drama_, I, xix.
Footnote 129: See Jusserand, _A Literary History of the English People_,
I, iii, vi. For our earliest plays and their authors see Gayley, _Plays of
Our Forefathers_.
Footnote 130: These three periods are not historically accurate. The
author uses them to emphasize three different views of our earliest plays
rather than to suggest that there was any orderly or chronological
development from Miracle to Morality and thence to the Interludes. The
latter is a prevalent opinion, but it seems hardly warranted by the facts.
Thus, though the Miracles precede the Moralities by two centuries (the
first known Morality, "The Play of the Lord's Prayer," mentioned by Wyclif,
was given probably about 1375), some of the best known Moralities, like
"Pride of Life," precede many of the later York Miracles. And the term
Interlude, which is often used as symbolical of the transition from the
moral to the artistic period of the drama, was occasionally used in England
(fourteenth century) as synonymous with Miracle and again (sixteenth
century) as synonymous with Comedy. That the drama had these three stages
seems reasonably certain; but it is impossible to fix the limits of any one
of them, and all three are sometimes seen together in one of the later
Miracles of the Wakefield cycle.
Footnote 131: In fact, Heywood "cribbed" from Chaucer's _Tales_ in
another Interlude called "The Pardoner and the Frere."
Footnote 132: Schelling, _Elizabethan Drama_, I, 86.
Footnote 133: That these gallants were an unmitigated nuisance, and had
frequently to be silenced by the common people who came to enjoy the play,
seems certain. Dekker's _Gull's Hornbook_ (1609) has an interesting chapter
on "How a Gallant should behave Himself in a Playhouse."
Footnote 134: The first actors were classed with thieves and vagabonds;
but they speedily raised their profession to an art and won a reputation
which extended far abroad. Thus a contemporary, Fynes Moryson, writes in
his _Itinerary:_ "So I remember that when some of our cast despised stage
players came ... into Germany and played at Franckford ... having nether a
complete number of actors, nor any good aparell, nor any ornament of the
stage, yet the Germans, not understanding a worde they sayde, both men and
wemen, flocked wonderfully to see their gesture and action."
Footnote 135: Schelling, _Elizabethan Drama_.
Footnote 136: Baker, in his _Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist_,
pp. 57-62, takes a different view, and shows how carefully many of the boy
actors were trained. It would require, however, a vigorous use of the
imagination to be satisfied with a boy's presentation of Portia, Juliet,
Cordelia, Rosalind, or any other of Shakespeare's wonderful women.
Footnote 137: These choir masters had royal permits to take boys of good
voice, wherever found, and train them as singers and actors. The boys were
taken from their parents and were often half starved and most brutally
treated. The abuse of this unnatural privilege led to the final withdrawal
of all such permits.
Footnote 138: So called from Euphues, the hero of Lyly's two prose works,
_Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit_ (1579), and _Euphues and his England_ (1580).
The style is affected and over-elegant, abounds in odd conceits, and uses
hopelessly involved sentences. It is found in nearly all Elizabethan prose
writers, and partially accounts for their general tendency to
artificiality. Shakespeare satirizes euphuism in the character of Don
Adriano of _Love's Labour's Lost_, but is himself tiresomely euphuistic at