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“According to the Decorum of These Daies”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

David Klein
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Extract

In the winter of 1567–8 five gentlemen of the Inner Temple presented befor the queen a tragedy entitled Gismond of Salerne. In 1591–2 Robert Wilmot, author of the fifth act, publisht a revision of the entire work under the name Tancred and Gismund. This was reprinted by Dodsley. The erlier version has cum down to us in two ms. copies, both in the British Museum: Hargrave 205, knoen as H, and Landsdowne 786, knoen as L, the former dating from the third quarter of the sixteenth century, the latter from the end of the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century. L has been reprinted by Brandl in volume LXXX of Quellen und Forschungen and by Cunliffe in his Early English Classical Tragedies. Renewed study of the work finds a stimulus in the recent publication of a fotografic reproduction of H in Farmer's facsimile edition of The Old English Drama.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , 1918 , pp. 244 - 268
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1918

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References

1 To be referd to in this paper as G. of S.

2 To be referd to in this paper as T. and G.

3 Kyd himself was an admirer at hart of the strictly Senecan type, as proved by his subsequent association with the Countess of Pembroke's coterie, and his translation of Garnier's Cornélie.

4 The same influence is suggested by four lines in Cupid's speech (iii, i) in T. and G.:

Thus love shall make worldlings to know his might

thus love shall force great princes to obey;

Thus love shall daunt each proud rebelling sprite,

thus love shall wreake his wrath on their decay.

5 In having Tancred put out his eyes befor killing himself, Wilmot imitated Frederigo Asinari, who, in 1576, had ritten a tragedy on the same subject.

6 In G. of S., i, iii. In T. and G., i, iii; ii, ii; iv, iii, iv; v, ii, iii.

7 One example of stichomythia in genuin Senecan style is found in Shakspere: 1 Henry VI, iv, v, 34–43.

8 Two scenes, according to the division in L.

9 It may not be amis to call attention to the fact that Shakspere, too, was confronted by a similar difficulty in Julius Cæscr, iii, i. Apparently he met it with no mor skil than the author of T. and G.

10 The fact that he retaind the classical machinery in the figures of Cupid and the furies strengthens rather than weakens the point.

11 On this subject, see the present riter's Literary Criticism from the Elizabethan Dramatists, pp. 3 ff.

12 Tottel's Miscellany, 1557; Spenser's translations from Petrarch and DuBellay, 1569; Watson's Hekatompathia, 1582. The English sonnetteering vogue began with the publication of Sidney's Astrophel and Stella, 1591. For a fuller treatment of this matter see the present riter's “Foreign Influence on Shakespeare's Sonnets” in the Sewanee Rev., vol. xiii.