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The Friendship Theme in Orrery's Plays

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

L. J. Mills
L. J. Mills*
Affiliation:
Indiana University
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Extract

When Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, turned in his intervals of gouty leisure to dramatic composition, he made his plays supplement the political manœuvers of his active periods by embodying in them the crescent love-and-honor theme, which, rooted in pre-Commonwealth drama, was being sponsored by the Frenchified Charles II. But while thus pleasing the King and the Court by being alertly à la mode, he remembered the dramatic associations of his Cavalier days and revived after the Puritan depression certain elements of Jacobean and Caroline drama. Among them was the friendship theme, so frequently and significantly employed in plays of those former decades. If he had merely repeated the old situations and rephrased the worn clichés, there would be little point in analyzing his plays for his use of the theme except to show continuity between pre-Commonwealth drama and Restoration drama. But he modified it and made it an aid in his persistent king-worship. And more important still, he used the theme in developing the love-and-honor conflict.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , September 1938 , pp. 795 - 806
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1938

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References

1 William Smith Clark, The Dramatic Works of Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery (Cambridge, Mass., 1937), i, 66.

2 Laurens J. Mills, One Soul in Bodies Twain: Friendship in Tudor Literature and Stuart Drama (Bloomington, 1937), pp. 226 ff.

3 Eduard Siegert refers to the conflict between love and friendship as “ein gewöhnlicher Bestandteil der heroischen Dramen,” Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, und seine Dramen (Wien, 1906), p. 25 (“Wiener Beiträge zur englischen Philologie”). Siegert points out the use of friendship in Orrery's plays but makes no detailed study of its functions, ibid., passim.

4 Act i, 1. 271.—All references to the plays are based on the edition by W. S. Clark.

5 i, 282. Cf. Antonio's similar breaking off of Bassanio's explanation, The Merchant of Venice, i. i. 153 ff.

6 i, 293–297. Cf. Melantius' sorrow at the death of his friend Amintor, in The Maid's Tragedy, v. iv. 264–269. Cf. also Clark, op. cit., i, 85.

7 A somewhat similar situation is found in Faire Em (ca. 1590). See Mills, op. cit., pp. 159–161. But that play is rather exceptional and is not representative of the typical friendship conventions.

8 Cf. Mills, op. cit., pp. 233, 252, 292, 300–304, 327, 351, 352–356.

9 In Richard Brome's The Lovesick Court the twin brothers regard their friendship as more sacred than their kinship. It turns out, however, that they are not brothers at all; thus their relationship is that of friends. But their thinking they are twins establishes the “friends more than brothers” attitude. See Mills, op. cit., pp. 349–352.

10 See Mills, op. cit., pp. 370, 372.

11 Cf. the similar friendship of former foes in Heywood's A Challenge for Beauty. See ibid., pp. 300–304.

12 Quoted by Clark, op. cit., i, 374.

13 See Mills, op. cit., pp. 4, 7, 11, 13–14, 21, 24–25, 32, 98, 103, 105, 112, 118, 119, 134, 136, 144–145, 164, 166, 170, 231, 233–234, 244.

14 “Die beiden Freunde Demetrius und Aretus zeigen dieselben Züge wie das Freundespaar in ‘Mustapha.‘ Der eine ist stürmisch, leicht erregt, in auflodernder Leidenschaft selbst seinen Freund bedrohend, dann doch wieder lenksam, zu Rührung geneigt. Der andere ist bedächtiger, massvoller, weniger vom Temperamente fortgerissen, zu jedem Freundesopfer bereit, kurz, beide repräsentieren den Typus der Freunde, wie sie seit Orestes und Pylades so oft in Leben und Dichtung aufgetreten sind,” Siegert, of. cit., p. 50.

15 See Mills, op. cit., pp. 161, 206, 207, 289, 359.

16 Cf. the behavior of Tudor in Orrery's Henry V, above, p. 796.

17 See Mills, op. cit., pp. 178–179, 327–335, 454, 455. In those earlier plays, however, the two lovers are usually close friends.

18 Ibid., pp. 65–66, 222–223, 246, 252–253, 260–261, 290, 292, 303, 323, 324, 326, 331, 351, 361, 365, 368, 369, 371, 373, 450.

19 i, 91; i, 146–147; i, 161; ii, 145 ff. (the friends are both in love with the same woman); ii, 360 ff. (threatened duel between the rival friends); iv, 1 ff. (the rivalry continued). The outcome of the play does not result from the friendship situation, and therefore the theme is truncated and ineffectual. Indeed it is not stressed much anywhere.

20 Act i, 1. 276. Cf. i, 414 ff.

21 Ll. 461–64. For the use of the idea of 1. 464 see Mills, op. cit., pp. 18, 59, 96, 113, 121, 130, 136, 137, 138, 157, 198, 213, 221, 231, 239, 243, 244, 276, 336, 378.

22 Seleucus, in Tryphon. Aretus, of whom the demand is also made, is not Tryphon's friend.