7CENTREforREFORMATIONandRENAISSANCESTUDIESVICTORIA MUNIVERSITY jfEARLY PLAYSFROM THE ITALIANEDITED, WITH ESSAY, INTRODUCTIONSAND NOTESBYR. WARWICK BOND M.A.EDITOR OF THE OXFORD LYLY AND OTHER WORKSOXFORDAT THE CLARENDON PRESSMDCCCCXIHENRY FKOWDE, M.A.PUDLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORDLONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORKTORONTO AND MELBOURNEPREFACEWHAT I have endeavoured to do in this little bookis something wider than an edition of three plays, andcloser than can well be done in a literaryhistory. I started with the wish to show how ancientGreek and Roman Comedy finds representation in ourown, not only in subject and spirit, but in matters ofform and technique; and to show this not only bystatement and discussion, but by giving therewithactual plays to which the reader might instantly turnfor verification of indicated parallelism or imitation. Iwished to bring under the purely English reader's noticesome facts about ancient comedy for its own sake, factsusually too cursorily dismissed in histories of the moderndrama to leave a very distinct impression on the mind ;and at the same time I wished to show the great impor-tance of Italian Renaissance Comedy in handing on theclassical form and substance to modern Europe, whileintroducing considerable modifications of it.The general influence of Italy has been stated againand again. Critic after critic has raked together theallusions to Italian ...
7
CENTRE
for
REFORMATION
and
RENAISSANCE
STUDIES
VICTORIA M
UNIVERSITY jf
EARLY PLAYS
FROM THE ITALIAN
EDITED, WITH ESSAY, INTRODUCTIONS
AND NOTES
BY
R. WARWICK BOND M.A.
EDITOR OF THE OXFORD LYLY AND OTHER WORKS
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
MDCCCCXI
HENRY FKOWDE, M.A.
PUDLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK
TORONTO AND MELBOURNE
PREFACE
WHAT I have endeavoured to do in this little book
is something wider than an edition of three plays, and
closer than can well be done in a literary
history. I started with the wish to show how ancient
Greek and Roman Comedy finds representation in our
own, not only in subject and spirit, but in matters of
form and technique; and to show this not only by
statement and discussion, but by giving therewith
actual plays to which the reader might instantly turn
for verification of indicated parallelism or imitation. I
wished to bring under the purely English reader's notice
some facts about ancient comedy for its own sake, facts
usually too cursorily dismissed in histories of the modern
drama to leave a very distinct impression on the mind ;
and at the same time I wished to show the great impor-
tance of Italian Renaissance Comedy in handing on the
classical form and substance to modern Europe, while
introducing considerable modifications of it.
The general influence of Italy has been stated again
and again. Critic after critic has raked together the
allusions to Italian fashions, Italian books, Italian acting,
found in English treatises of the first twenty or thirty
years of Elizabeth, or in English plays of the latter half
of her reign. But the illustration offered has been inade-
quate to ensure the due realization of the Latin or Italian
connexion ; and that largely because English exemplars of
classical dramatic form were so few and so inaccessible.
Until quite recently Roister Doister was the only early
a 2
iv PREFACE
Latinized play that the ordinary student had a chance of
making his own ; and the Latin Comedy relations even
of that piece were inadequately stated, the Ennnc/nis
being overlooked. Jack Juggler was, and remains,
buried in the fifteen volumes of Hazlitt's Dodsley. Of
Supposes, so important for Latin and Italian Comedy
alike, the only modern reprints were in large collections,
or in the same editor's expensive and limited edition of
Gascoigne's collected Works. I well remember how
long it was before I had any opportunity of reading the
actual text for myself; and my case must have been
that of countless others. The Bttggbears and Afisogoitus,
admirable examples of Italian and Latin influence, and
of the way these combined with the native spirit, were
never printed before 1897 and 1X98, and then in Ger-
many.
And it may well be questioned whether the failure to
emphasize the Latin connexions of our drama has not
been due to inadequate knowledge of Latin Comedy itself.
Terence has fared better than Plautus, in modern as in
mediaeval days : he has always seemed more possible as
an educational subject, whether on philological or moral
grounds. With the twenty surviving plays of his more
vigorous and original predecessor it is permissible to
doubt the existence among us of any very full acquain-
tance, even in the case of professed scholars. Plautus,
abounding in good things, is very seldom quoted; and
outside histories of Roman literature, of the existence of
which the average student of English is quite unconscious,
there is but little to be found about his work and influ-
ence. Admirable service to Plautine literary study was
done by the Spdtere Bearbeitungen plautinischer Lust-
spiele of Dr. Karl von Reinhardstottner (Leipzig, 1886):
but for the English reader there was nothing of similar
PREFACE v
kind before Professor M. VV. Wallace's capital Introduc-
tion to his edition of The Birtlie of Hercules published
at Chicago, 1903, which discussed his influence on
our sixteenth-century drama, whether direct, or filtered
through Germany or Italy. His subject is very similar to
that of the present book ; though our lines are different,
approximating most nearly, perhaps, on the Education-
drama, where we had to sketch the same plays. But the
particularity of Professor Wallace's title will probably
limit the merited diffusion of his essay; while of actual
Italian work he says but little, though he enumerates,
after Messrs. Churchill and Keller (Shakespeare-Jakrbuc/i,
xxxiv), some prominent Latin university-plays of the last
decade of the century, which show Latin influence strained
through Italian work.
Of Italian Comedy, it is safe to say, our ignorance is
greater than of Roman. The two volumes dealing with
Italian Literature in Symonds' Renaissance in Italy con-
stituted the sole source in England whence anything could
be gleaned until Dr. Garnett's brief and general chapter
on the subject in his Italian Literature of 1898. Mr. Lewis
Einstein in his Italian Renaissance in England (Columbia
University Press, New York, 1902, pp. 365-7) dismisses
Italian drama as almost without direct influence on ours ;
while admitting that it assisted the transition from morality
to comedy, that dumb shows and the play within the play
were of Italian origin, that Supposes began the refinement
of dialogue, and that Italian influence ' contributed to
bring to life the ancient forms of tragedy and teach the
canons of Aristotle as interpreted in Italy'. This is, indeed,
the general attitude; adequately represented before by
Dr. Ward (English Dramatic Literature, ch. \\passim),
and as much, no doubt, as should be expected in a work
of scope so large as his. Yet if Italian drama did all
vi PREFACE
this, it surely demands our closer consideration. Gosson
assures us that, not only novclle, but Italian ' comedies'
were ransacked to furnish our playhouses; we have the
undoubted fact of Italian actors travelling in France,
Spain, Germany, and England in the latter half of the
century; and John Wolfe thought it worth while to pub-
lish four of Aretino's comedies (all except // Filosofo]
in Italian in London, 15^8. His attention and that of
Petruccio Ubaldini, perhaps his partner, would have been
better devoted to the dramatic output of Ariosto, Cecchi,
or Grazzini; but what they neglected has remained in
neglect. There is no modern English edition, still less
translation, of any Renaissance comic playwright-nothing
beyond the elegant verse-rendering of Tasso's pastoral
by Leigh Hunt (1820), which had predecessors and has
one recent successor, and T. L. Peacock's abbreviated
prose-version of Gl Ingannati in 1862: while the only
critical work which comes to really close quarters with any
branch of Italian drama is Dr. W. VV. Greg's recent book
on Pastoral, 1906. While believing as firmly as any one
in the substantial originality of our English drama, I have
long felt that we were doing something less than justice
to Italian precedence; that a comedy so enormously
prolific as theirs must needs be more than prurience and
barren husks and was worth attention for its own sake -, and
that until that attention was given something of the truth
about our own would still remain hidden. In Germany
the work of Klein, Gaspary, and Creizenach has done
full justice to the commedia entdita: I hope English
critics will be patient of an attempt to bring the
student a little nearer to it, and to that ancient comedy
on which it is based.
Only now at the last moment have I met with Professor
G. Saintsbury s The Earlier Renaissance (1901) in the