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John Fletcher and the Art of Declamation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Eugene M. Waith
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Extract

In a recent note on The Double Marriage I suggested that the plot of this tragedy was derived from two declamations (Numbers 48 and 64) in The Orator (1596), Lazarus Pyott's translation of the Epitomes De Cent Histoires Tragicques (Paris, 1581) by Alexandre van den Busche, called Le Sylvain.11 was even tempted by the notion that the form of this collection of speeches influenced Fletcher's dramatic methods. Each “declamation” begins with a brief summary of the circumstances leading up to some extraordinary situation; then follow the speeches of two characters who present exactly opposite views in a formal debate. The emphasis of the book falls, as the title itself indicates, on these speeches. In a foreword to the reader (Sig. A4) Pyott says of them: “In these thou maiest learne Rhethoricke to inforce a good cause, and art to impugne an ill.” The dazzling improbability of The Orator's situations, the irreconcilable oppositions of the chief characters, and the concern with oratorical eloquence correspond so closely with the dramatic technique of the “Beaumont and Fletcher” plays that it would have been easy to imagine Fletcher and his collaborators discovering here the formula which was to be the basis of their success. There was only one inconvenience—a fatal one—to this theory: I had no evidence that Fletcher was familiar with The Orator when he was working with Beaumont on Philaster, The Maid's Tragedy, and A King and No King, in which the “Beaumont and Fletcher” genre takes its characteristic shape.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 66 , Issue 2 , March 1951 , pp. 226 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1951

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References

1 “The Sources of The Double Marriage by Fletcher and Massinger”, MLN, lxiv (1949), 505–510.

2 Busche apparently followed the Excerpla from Seneca which were widely circulated during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. He often translates almost literally from this abbreviated form of the Controversiae he selected.

3 See “The Sources of The Double Marriage”, p. 508 n.

4 The best edition of the Controversiae is that of Henri Bornecque: Sénèque Le Rhéteur, Controverses et Suasoires, Nouvelle Edition (Paris, 1932). The Latin and a French translation (the only one in a modern language since the 17th century, so far as I am aware) appear on alternate pages. The Controversiae seem never to have been translated into English, though the Suasoriae, or deliberative declamations, were edited and translated by William A. Edward: The Suasoriae of Seneca The Elder (Cambridge, 1928).

5 The first of these stories occurs in the Gesta Romanorum as No. lxvii (p. 306) of the EETS edition (The Early English Versions of the Gesta Romanorum, EETS, Extra Series, xxxiii, London, 1879), and as Declamation 48 in The Orator. The other story is not in the Gesta, but appears as Declamation 64 of The Orator.

6 This story appears as No. xix (p. 440) of the Additional Stories in the EETS edition of the Gesta Romanorum, and as Declamation 61 in The Orator.

7 AU references to the “Beaumont and Fletcher” canon are to the edition of A. Glover and A. R. Waller (Cambridge, 1905–12). Since this edition is based on the Folio of 1679, which rarely makes any scene division, I indicate the volume and page of the Cambridge Edition, hereafter referred to as Cam.

8 References in parentheses to Seneca the Elder are to volume and page in the edition of Henri Bornecque.

9 This story is not in the Gesta Romanorum nor in The Orator.

10 See Charles S. Baldwin, Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic (New York, 1928), Chap. i.

11 See Henri Bornecque, Les Déclamations et les Déclamateurs d'après Sênèque Le Père, Travaux et Mémoires de l'Université dé Lille, Nouvelle Série i, i (1902); René Pichon, “L'Education Romaine au Premier Siècle de Notre Ere”, Revue Universitaire, iv, i (1895), 156–169; Gaston Boissier, “Les Ecoles de Déclamation á Rome”, Revue des Deux Mondes, v, xi (1902), 481–508.

12 See Petronius Arbiter, Satiricon, iii.

13 John Brinsley believed that they should be reserved for the university or for specially qualified students, as he writes in his Ludus Literarius, ed. E. T. Campagnac (Liverpool and London, 1917), p. 185. See also T. W. Baldwin, William Shakspere's Small Latine and Lesse Greek (Urbana, Ill., 1944), ii, 355 fi.

14 Margaret M. Kay, The History of Rivington and Blackrod Grammar School (Manchester, 1931), Appendix ii, p. 187.

15 In this article I can only suggest briefly some of the characteristics which constitute the “Beaumont and Fletcher” genre. In a study of “The Pattern of Tragicomedy in Beaumont and Fletcher” on which I am now engaged I hope to treat the problem in detail.

16 See my “Characterization in John Fletcher's Tragicomedies”, RES, xix (1943), 141164, and “A Tragicomedy of Humors: Fletcher's The Loyal Subject”, MLQ, vi (1945), 299–311.