Mr. Warton is of opinion that Fenton's compilation "in point of selection and size" is "perhaps the most capital miscellany of this kind."[542:B] In size, however, it is certainly inferior to Painter's work, and from a survey of its contents with which we have been indulged, exhibits, in our conception, no superiority to its predecessor even with regard to selection; it merits, however, the same honour which is now paying to its rival, that of a re-print.
In 1571 a series of tales, somewhat similar to Fenton's, was published under the title of "The Forest or collection of Historyes no lesse profitable, than pleasant and necessary, doone out of Frenche into English by Thomas Fortescue." This production, which forms a quarto in black letter, and underwent a second, and a third edition, in 1576 and 1596, includes many stories manifestly of Italian birth and structure, though the work is said to have been originally written in the Spanish language.
On the authority of Bishop Tanner, as reported by Warton[543:A], we have to ascribe to the year 1580, a prose version of the Novelle of Bandello, next to Boccacio the most celebrated, at that period, among the Italian novellists; and more chaste perhaps than any of them in his sentiments, and more easy and natural in the construction of his incidents. The translation is said to be by W. W. initials which Mr. Warton is inclined to appropriate, either to William Warner or William Webbe.
Another collection of tales, several of which are from Giraldi Cinthio and other Italian fabulists, was given to the public by George Whetstone, in 1582, under the appellation of Heptameron, a term which had been rendered fashionable by the popularity of a suite of tales published at Paris in 1560, and entitled, "Heptameron des Nouvelles de la Royne de Navarre." Whetstone possessed no inconsiderable reputation in his day; he has been praised as a poet by Meres and Webbe, and his Heptameron, though written in prose, with only the occasional interspersion of poetry, had its share of contemporary fame, and the still greater celebrity of furnishing some portion of a plot to our great dramatic bard.[543:B]
The first volume of a large collection of Italian tales made its appearance at Paris in 1583, under the title of Cent Histoires Tragiques. This work, the compilation of Francis de Belleforrest and Boisteau, was ultimately extended to seven volumes, and a part of it, if not the whole, appears, on the authority of the Stationers' Register, to have been translated into English, in 1596.[544:A] The edition, however, to which Warton alludes, must have been posthumous; for Belleforrest died on January 1st, 1583, and that he had printed selections from the Italian novellists long anterior, is evident from Painter's reference to them in the second volume of his Palace of Pleasure, dated 1567. Probably what the historian terms the "grand repository" commenced with the copy of 1583.[544:B]
Independent of these large prose collections of Italian tales, a vast variety of separate stories was in circulation from the same source; and many of our poets, such as Gascoigne, Turberville, &c.[544:C] amused themselves by giving them a metrical and sometimes a semi-metrical, form. By these means the more rugged features of the Anglo-Norman romance, were softened down, and a style of fiction introduced more varied and more consonant to nature.
The taste, however, for the wild beauties of Gothic fabling, though polished and refined by the elegant imagination of the Italians, was still cultivated with ardour, and, towards the close of Elizabeth's reign, was further stimulated, by a fresh infusion of similar imagery, through the medium of the Spanish and Portuguese Romances.
These elaborate, and sometimes very interesting productions, are evidently constructed on the model of the Anglo-Norman romance, though with greater unity of design, and with more attention to morality. There is reason to believe, with Mr. Tyrwhitt, that neither Spain nor Portugal can produce a romance of this species older than the era of printing[545:A]; for the manuscript of Amadis of Gaul, which has been satisfactorily proved by Mr. Southey to have been the production of Vasco Lobeira, and written in the Portuguese language, during the close of the fourteenth century[545:B], was never printed, and is supposed to be no longer in existence; while the Spanish version of Garciordonez de Montalvo, the oldest extant, and which has, in general, passed for the original, did not issue from the press before the year 1510, the date of its publication at Salamanca.
This romance, beyond all doubt the most interesting of its [545:C]class, is well known as one of the very few in Don Quixote's library which escaped the merciless fury of the Licentiate and the Barber. "The first that master Nicholas put into his hands was Amadis de Gaul in four parts; and the priest said, 'There seems to be some mystery in this; for, as I have heard say, this was the first book of chivalry printed in Spain, and all the rest have had their foundation and rise from it; and, therefore, I think, as head of so pernicious a sect, we ought to condemn him to the fire without mercy.'—'Not so, sir,' said the barber; 'for I have heard also, that it is the best of all the books of this kind; and therefore, as being singular in his art, he ought to be spared.'—'It is true,' said the priest, 'and for that reason his life is granted him.'"[546:A] Nor is the description which Sir Philip Sidney has given of the effects of Amadis on its readers less important than the encomium of Cervantes on its literary merit; "Truly," says the knight, "I have known men, that even with reading Amadis de Gaul, have found their hearts moved to the exercise of courtesy, liberality, and especially courage."[546:B]
The introduction of Amadis into the English language took place in the year 1592, when the first four or five books were translated from the French version and printed by Wolfe.[546:C] It experienced the same popularity here which had attended its naturalisation in France, Italy, and Spain, and seems to have been in the zenith of its reputation among us at the close of the Shakspearean era; for Fynes Moryson, who published his Itinerary in 1617, in his directions to a traveller how to acquire languages, says, "I think no book better for his discourse than Amadis of Gaul; for the knights errant, and the ladies of courts, doe therein exchange courtly speeches, and these books are in all languages translated by the masters of eloquence;" and Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy, written about the same period, mentions Amadis along with Huon of Bourdeaux, as one of the most fashionable volumes of his day. Such, indeed, is the merit of this romance, that the lapse of four hundred years has not greatly diminished its attractions, and the admirable version of Mr. Southey, which, by rejecting or veiling the occasional indelicacy of the original, has removed the weightiest objections of Ascham, most deservedly finds admirers even in the nineteenth century.
Another specimen of this class of romances of nearly equal popularity with the preceding, though inferior in point of merit, may be instanced in the once celebrated Palmerin of England, which, like Amadis of Gaul, safely passed the ordeal of the Curate of Don Quixote's village:—"Let Palmerin of England," says the Licentiate, "be preserved, and kept as a singular piece: and let such another case be made for it, as that which Alexander found among the spoils of Darius, and appropriated to preserve the works of the poet Homer.—Therefore, Master Nicholas, saving your better judgment, let this and Amadis de Gaul be exempted from the fire, and let all the rest perish without any further enquiry."[547:A]
Palmerin of England, like its prototype, Amadis de Gaul, is supposed to have originated in Portugal. Mr. Southey, indeed, confidently attributes it to the pen of Francis de Moraes; an ascription which is in direct opposition to the authority of Cervantes, who asserts it to have been written by a King of Portugal. It has shared the like fate, too, in this country, with regard to its translator; Anthony Munday having been the first to usher Palmerin, as well as Amadis, to an English public; in fact, though in its original garb it appeared a century and a half later than the romance of Lobeira, it claims priority with regard to its English dress, having been licensed to Charlewood, and printed in 1580.
The multiplicity and rapid succession of extraordinary events in Palmerin of England, are such as to distract the most steady attention, and if it really deserved the encomium which the curate bestowed upon it in comparison with the rest of the worthy knight's library, little surprise can be excited at the mental hallucinations which the study of such a collection might ultimately produce.
Of the versions of honest Anthony, one of the most indefatigable translators of romance in the reign of Elizabeth, not much can be said, either in point of style or fidelity. Labouring for those who possessed an eager and indiscriminating appetite for the marvellous, he was not greatly solicitous about the preservation of the manners and costume of his original, but rather strove to accommodate his authors to the taste of the majority of his readers. To enumerate the various romances which he attempted to naturalise, would be tedious and unprofitable; the two that we have already noticed, together with "Palmerin D'Oliva," and "The honorable, pleasant, and rare conceited Historie of Palmendo[548:A]," were among the most popular, and will be sufficient to impart an idea of what, among the peninsular works of fiction, were most in vogue, when romances were as much read as novels are in the present age.
The last species of romance, which we shall notice as fashionable in Elizabeth's reign, may be termed the Pastoral. Of this class the most celebrated specimen that we can mention, is the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney, a book well known to Shakspeare, which continued highly popular for near a century, and reached an eighth edition as early as 1633, independent of impressions in Scotland, of which one occurs before the year 1600.[548:B]
The Arcadia appears to have been commenced by its author for the sole amusement of himself and his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, during his residence at Wilton, in 1580, and though prosecuted at various periods was left incomplete at his death in 1586. The affection of the Countess, however, to whose care and protection the scattered manuscripts had been assigned, induced her to publish an impression of it in the year 1590, revised under her own immediate direction; since which period fourteen editions have borne testimony to the merits of the work, and to the correctness of the editor's judgment.
To the publication of this far-famed romance, which is in many respects truly beautiful, and in every respect highly moral, we may attribute an important revolution in the annals of fictitious writing. It appears to have been suggested to the mind of Sir Philip, by two models of very different ages, and to have been built, in fact, on their admixture; these are the Ethiopic History of Heliodorus, Bishop of Tricca, in Thessaly, and the Arcadia of Sannazaro, productions as widely separated as the fourth and the sixteenth centuries. Their connection, however, will be more readily explained, when we recollect, that a translation of Heliodorus into English had been published only three years before the commencement of Sidney's Arcadia. This was the work of Thomas Underdowne, who printed a version of the ten entire books in 1577, dedicating them to Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford.[549:A] That the English Heliodorus was chiefly instrumental in giving this peculiar direction to the genius of Sidney, was the opinion of Warton; but we must likewise recollect, that the Arcadia of Sannazaro, with which Sir Philip, as an excellent Italian scholar, must have been well acquainted[549:B], presented him with the model for his shepherds, for their costume, diction, and sentiment, and that, like the English work, it is a mingled composition of poetry and prose.
Dismissing many of the paraphernalia of the ancient chivalric romance, its magicians, enchanted castles, dragons, and giants, but retaining its high-toned spirit of gallantry, heroism, and courtesy, combined with the utmost purity in morals, and with all the traditionary simplicity and innocence of rural life, the pastoral romance of Sidney exhibited a species of composition more reconcilable to probability than the adventures of Arthur and Amadis, but less natural and familiar than the tales of the Italians. In these last, however, virtue and decency are too often sacrificed at the shrine of licentiousness, whilst in the Arcadia of our countryman not a sentiment occurs which can excite a blush on the cheek of the most delicate modesty. To this moral tendency of Sidney's fictions, the muse of Cowper has borne testimony in the following pleasing lines:—
Had the disciples of Sir Philip adhered to the model which he constructed; had they, rejecting merely his unfortunate attempt to introduce the Roman metres into modern poetry, preserved his strength and animation in description, his beauty and propriety of sentiment, his variety and discrimination of character, the school of Sidney might have existed at the present hour. On the contrary, whatever was objectionable and overstrained in their prototype, they found out the art to aggravate; and by a monstrous and monotonous overcharge of character, by a bloated tenuity of style, by a vein of sentiment so quaintly exalted as to have nothing of human sympathy about it, and by an indefinite prolixity of fable, they contrived to outrage nature nearly as much as had been effected by the wonders of necromancy and the achievements of chivalry; and this, too, without producing a scintillation of those splendid traits of fancy which illumine, and even atone for, the wild fictions of the Anglo-Norman romance. The Astrea of D'Urfé, written about twenty years after Sidney's work, though sufficiently tedious, and frequently unnatural, makes the nearest approach to the pastoral beauty of the Arcadia; but what longevity can attach to, or what patience shall endure, the numerous and prodigious tomes of Madame Scuderi?[551:A]
The shades of oblivion seem gathering fast even over the beautiful reveries of Sidney, a fate most undoubtedly hastened by the prolix and perverted labours of his successors; and what was the fashion and delight of the seventeenth century has generally ceased to charm. So great, indeed, was once the popularity of the Arcadia, that its effects became an object of consideration to the satirist and the historian. In 1631, we find the former thus admonishing the ladies:—"Insteade of songes and musicke let them learn cookerie and launderie. And instead of reading Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, let them reade the groundes of good huswifery."[551:B] But the grave annalist and antiquary, Fuller, has, with more good sense, vindicated the study of this moral romance:—"I confess," says he, "I have heard some of modern pretended wits cavil at the Arcadia, because they made it not themselves: such who say that his book is the occasion that many precious hours are otherwise spent no better, must acknowledge it also the cause that many idle hours are otherwise spent no worse than in reading thereof."[551:C] There is no work, in short, in the department of prose-fiction which contains more apothegmatic wisdom than the Arcadia of Sidney; and it is to be regretted that the volume which had charmed a Shakspeare, a Milton, and a Waller[551:D], and which has been praised by Temple[552:A], by Heylin[552:B], and by Cowper, should be suffered, in any deference to the opinion of Lord Orford[552:C], to slumber on the shelf.
It is with pleasure, however, that we find a very modern critic not only passing a just and animated eulogium on the Arcadia, but asserting on his own personal knowledge, that, even in the general classes of society, it has still its readers and admirers. "Nobody, it has been said, reads the Arcadia. We have known very many persons who have read it, men, women, and children, and never knew one who read it without deep interest and admiration at the genius of the writer, great in proportion as they were capable of appreciating it. The verses are very bad, not that he was a bad poet, (on the contrary, much of his poetry is of high merit,) but because he was then versifying upon an impracticable system. Let the reader pass over all the eclogues, as dull interludes unconnected with the drama, and if he do not delight in the story itself, in the skill with which the incidents are woven together and unravelled, and in the Shakespearean power and character of language, with which they are painted; let him be assured the fault is in himself and not in the book."[552:D]
After this brief survey of the state of romantic literature, and of the various romances which were most popular, in the days of Shakspeare, it will be a proper appendage, if we add a few observations on the yet lingering relics of chivalric costume. That gorgeous spectacle, the Tournament, in which numerous knights engaged together on either side, fighting with the sword and truncheon, was latterly superseded by the joust or tilting-match, consisting of a succession of combats between two knights at one time, and in which the spear was the only weapon used. The dexterous management of this military amusement depended upon striking the front of the opponent's helmet, in such a manner as either to beat him backward from his horse, or break the spear in the contest. Jousting or tilting, which was usually celebrated in honour of the ladies, by whom the prizes were always awarded and distributed, continued to be a favourite diversion with Elizabeth to the close of her reign; she was attached to the gallantry which constituted the soul of these games, and to the splendour which accompanied their exhibition, and her nobles were not backward in encouraging and gratifying her romantic taste. Of this a remarkable instance may be adduced, in the person of Sir Henry Lee, Knight of the Garter, who vowed that he would annually, while health and strength permitted, enter the tilt-yard as his sovereign's knight. The completion of this vow led to annual contentions in the lists, and twenty-five personages of the first rank, among whom are to be found Lord Leicester, Sir Christopher Hatton, &c. agreed to establish a society of arms for this purpose. The presidency of the association was resigned by Sir Henry, on the plea of infirmity, in 1590, when he formally invested the Earl of Cumberland with his dignity, one of the most envied at that time, in the court of Elizabeth.[553:A]
It was usual at these chivalric exhibitions, which ceased on the demise of their regal patroness, for the combatants, and even the men of fashion who attended as spectators, to wear a lady's favour on their arm; and when a knight had tilted with peculiar grace and spirit, the ladies were wont to fling a scarf or glove upon him as he passed; a custom which Shakspeare has attributed, as is frequent with him, to an age long anterior to chivalric usage, for he represents Coriolanus, on his way to the capitol, as thus honoured:
It appears also, from a passage in the second part of King Henry the Fourth, that an oath derived from a singular observance in the days of chivalry, was common in the days of Shakspeare; for Shallow, persuading Sir John Falstaff to remain with him as his visitor, exclaims, "By cock and pye, Sir, you shall not away to night[554:B];" an adjuration which Steevens and Ridley refer to a corruption of the sacred name, and to a service-book of the Romish church, called in this country, previous to the Reformation, a pie; but Mr. Douce has, with more probability, advanced the origin to which we allude. "It will, no doubt, be recollected," he observes, "that in the days of ancient chivalry it was the practice to make solemn vows or engagements for the performance of some considerable enterprize. This ceremony was usually performed during some grand feast or entertainment, at which a roasted peacock or pheasant, being served up by ladies in a dish of gold or silver, was thus presented to each knight, who then made the particular vow which he had chosen, with great solemnity. When this custom had fallen into disuse, the peacock nevertheless continued to be a favourite dish, and was introduced on the table in a pie, the head, with gilded beak, being proudly elevated above the crust, and the splendid tail expanded. Other birds of smaller value were introduced in the same manner, and the recollection of the old peacock vows might occasion the less serious, or even burlesque, imitation of swearing not only by the bird itself, but also by the pie; and hence probably the oath by cock and pie."[554:C]
As all persons beneath the rank of an esquire were precluded, by the laws of chivalry, from taking any part in the celebration of justs and tournaments, while at the same time, a strong desire of imitation was excited in the public mind, by the attractive nature of these diversions, it soon became an object with the commonality to establish something which might bear a striking resemblance to the favourite amusements of their superiors. Hence the origin of tilting at the quintain, which we have already noticed in the chapter on Rural Diversions, and of tilting at the ring and on the water; sports, of which even the Queen herself condescended not unfrequently to be a spectator.
Tilting at the ring was considered as the most respectable of the three amusements, and was generally practised as a preparatory exercise to the knightly feat of jousting. The ring was suspended at a fixed height, in a sheath, by the contrivance of two springs, and the object of the tilter was, while riding at full speed, to thrust the point of his lance through the ring, drawing it, by the strength of his stroke, from its sheath, and bearing it away on the summit of his lance. In this pastime, the horses, as well as the men, required constant training and practice, and, on the day of contest, the palm of victory was adjudged to him who in three courses, for this number was allowed to each candidate, carried the point of his lance the oftenest through the ring.
Of these games the most vulgar, but the most productive of merriment, was that of tilting on the water, in which the combatants, standing in the centre of their respective boats, were armed with a lance and shield, and he was esteemed the conqueror, who, by a dexterous management of his weapon, contrived to strike his adversary in such a manner as to overturn him in the water, while he himself remained firm and stationary. With this curious exhibition it would appear that the Queen was highly gratified, on her visit to Sandwich, "where certain wallounds that could well swym, had prepared two boates, and in the middle of each boate was placed a borde, upon which borde there stood a man, and so they met together, with either of them a staff and a shield of wood; and one of them did overthrow another, at which the Queene had good sport."[556:A]
To jousting, and to tilting at the ring, some of the most remarkable relics of expiring chivalry, and of which the latter had attained to almost scientific precision at the commencement of the seventeenth century, Shakspeare has several allusions in the course of his dramas.[556:B] The most striking of these refers to an accident which not unfrequently occurred, when a knight, unable to manage his horse with due skill, suffered it to deviate sideways in its career, the consequence of which was, that instead of breaking his lance in a direct line against his adversary's helmet, it was broken across his breast, a circumstance deemed highly dishonourable, as the result either of timidity or want of dexterity:—"O, that's a brave man!" says Celia, speaking of Orlando, in As You Like It, "he writes brave verses, speaks brave words, swears brave oaths, and breaks them bravely, quite traverse, athwart the heart of his lover; as a puny tilter, that spurs his horse but on one side, breaks his staff like a noble goose."[556:C]
It was about this period too, the close of the sixteenth century, that another remnant of romantic usage became nearly extinct. We allude to the profession of the Minstrel, which, until the year 1597, had been cherished or tolerated in this country, from an era as ancient as the conquest.
During the reign of Elizabeth, indeed, the character of the Minstrel, combining the offices of the poet, the singer, and the musician, and that of the Jestour, or mere reciter of tales and gestes, gradually lost their importance and respectability, and were no longer protected by the noble and the opulent. On the accession of the Queen, however, and for about twenty years afterwards, instances may be adduced where the Minstrel appears to have acted in his genuine capacity, that is, as the sole depository of the poems which he chaunted, and not, as was subsequently the case, the fabricator of songs and ballads merely for the press. The latest specimens of what may be termed the old Minstrelsy, Dr. Percy assigns to the years 1569 and 1572, when the ballads entitled "The Rising in the North," and "Northumberland betrayed by Douglas," were produced.[557:A] Between the Minstrel-ballads and those written merely for the press, a marked difference was usually perceptible, the former exhibiting greater rudeness of language, with a more northern cast in their structure; greater irregularity in metre, and incidents more romantic, wild, and chivalric; while the latter presented altogether a southern dialect, more correct versification, incidents, though occasionally pathetic, comparatively tame and insipid, and a costume more modern and familiar. Of this last kind, were the numerous ballads of the reign of James the First, frequently collected together, and published under the appellation of Garlands.
There is reason to suppose, notwithstanding the declining state of the minstrel tribe, that some attention was yet paid to their appearance and dress; that their ancient distinguishing costume was well known, and sometimes imitated, and that, especially in the prior half of the Elizabethan era, a peculiar garb was still attached to their office. We are warranted in these inferences by contemporary authority: Laneham, in his description of Elizabeth's entertainment at Killingworth Castle, in 1575, mentions his having been in company with a person who was to have performed the character of an ancient Minstrel before the Queen, "if meete time and place had been foound for it." This man, who was probably a member of the profession, entertained some worshipful friends, of which Laneham was one, with a representation of the part which he should have enacted at the Earl of Leicester's; and it is remarkable that this assumed minstrel is styled, "a squire minstrel of Middilsex, that travaild the cuntree THYS soomer season unto fayrz and woorshipfull menz houzez;" a strong proof that the character, in all its full costume, was not considered as sufficiently bizarre and obsolete to render such an assertion improbable. "A person very meete seemed he for the purpose; (we here drop the author's absurd orthography;) of a XLV years old, apparelled partly as he would himself. His cap off, his head seemly rounded tonster-wise; fair kembed, that with a sponge daintily dipt in a little capon's grease, was finely smoothed to make it shine like a mallard's wing; his beard smugly shaven; and yet his shirt after the new trink, with ruffs fair-starched, sleeked, and glistering like a pair of new shoes: marshalled in good order: with a stetting stick, and stout that every ruff stood up like a wafer. A side gown of Kendal green, after the freshness of the year now; gathered at the neck with a narrow gorget, fastened afore with a white clasp and a keeper close up to the chin, but easily for heat to undo when he list: seemly begirt in a red caddis girdle; from that a pair of capped Sheffield knives hanging a to side (one on each side): out of his bosom drawn forth a lappet of his napkin, edged with a blue lace, and marked with a true love, a heart, and a D. for Damian; for he was but a batchelor yet.
"His gown had side sleeves down to midleg, slit from the shoulder to the hand, and lined with white cotton. His doublet-sleeves of black worsted: upon them a pair of poynets of tawny chamblet, laced along the wrist with blue threaden joints; a wealt toward the hand of fustian anapes: a pair of red neather stocks: a pair of pumps on his feet, with a cross cut at the toes for cornes; not new, indeed, yet cleanly blacked with soot, and shining as a shoeing horn. About his neck, a red ribband suitable to his girdle: his harp in good grace dependent before him: his wrest[558:A] tied to a green lace, and hanging by. Under the gorget of his gown a fair flagon chain of pewter (for silver); as a squire minstrel of Middlesex, that travelled the country this summer season, unto fairs and worshipful mens houses. From his chain hung a scutcheon, with metal and colour, resplendent upon his breast, of the ancient arms of Islington.—After three lowly courtsies, 'he' cleared his voice with a hem and reach, and spat out withal; wiped his lips with the hollow of his hand for filing his napkin, tempered a string or two with his wrest, and after a little warbling on his harp for a prelude, came forth with a solemn song, warranted for story out of King Arthur's acts."[559:A]
In 1592, Henry Chettle, describing Anthony Now-Now, an aged and celebrated minstrel of his own time, represents him as "an od old fellow; low of stature, his head covered with a round cap, his body with a tawney coate, his legs and feete truste uppe in leather buskins, his gray haires and furrowed face witnessed his age, his treble viol in his hande[559:B];" from which it would appear that even to the last the members of this tuneful tribe were distinguished by some peculiarity of dress.
In the mean time, however, they were becoming, through the dissoluteness of their manners, obnoxious to government, and contemptible in the public estimation. Stubbes, in the first edition of his Anatomie of Abuses, 1583, terms them a parcel of drunken sockets, and baudy parasites, that "raunge the countries," he observes, "riming and singing of unclean, corrupt, and filthy songs in tavernes, ale-houses, innes, and other publike assemblies.—There is no ship," he exclaims, "so laden with merchandize, as their heads are pestred with al kinds of baudy songs, filthy ballades, and scurvy rymes, serving for every purpose, and for every company. For proof whereof," he subjoins, "who bee baudier knaves than they? who uncleaner than they? who more licentious, and looser minded than they? and brieflie, who more inclined to all kind of insolency and leudness than they?—I think that al good minstrels, sober and chast musitions, may dance the wild Moris through a needles eye." He subsequently adds that, notwithstanding their immorality, "every toune, citie, and countrey, is full of these minstrelles to pipe up a daunce to the devill."
That this description is not much exaggerated by the puritanical severity of its author, is evident from the language of Puttenham, a courtier and polite writer, who calls this degraded race "cantabanqui," singers "upon benches and barrels heads—minstrels that give a fit of mirth for a groat—in taverns and ale-houses, and such other places of base resort[560:A];" a picture corroborated by the authority of Bishop Hall, who a few years afterwards, speaking of the exhilarating effect of his own satirical poetry, says it is
The character which Shakspeare attributes to the minstrel race of this period, is in accordance with the preceding passages. In the original edition of his Rape of Lucrece, which appeared in 1594, he draws his heroine exclaiming,
The epithet in Italics very distinctly points out the vagrant life of these attendants on merriment and good cheer. They were accustomed to travel the country, in search of bride-ales, Christmas dinners, fairs, &c., and wherever they could get access to the halls of the gentry and nobility.
It is in the Winter's Tale, however, that the minstrel of our poet's age is but too faithfully depicted. In the person of Autolycus, whom we have already noticed, when describing the country wake, is to be found, in colours faithful to nature, the very object of Stubbe's satire, a composition very curiously blending the various functions of the minstrel, the pedlar, and the rogue.
No harshness therefore can be attributed to the act of Queen Elizabeth, which in 1597 nearly annihilated an occupation so vilely associated and degraded. In the fourth chapter of this statute the law enacts that "all fencers, bearwards, common players of enterludes, and MINSTRELLS, wandering abroad; all juglers, tinkers, pedlars, &c. shall be adjudged and deemed rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggers;" a clause which, very deservedly, put an end to a profession which, though once highly respectable and interesting, no longer had a claim to public support; a clause which enabled Dr. Bull to say, with much truth,
Of the use which Shakspeare made of the various romances, tales, and ballads which undoubtedly occupied a large portion of his library, an accurate estimate may be formed from a close inspection of his dramas. It will be found, that, with the exception of the Historical plays, derived either from English chronicles or translations of classic story, the residue of his dramatic productions may be traced to sources exclusively existing within the regions of romantic literature. As we shall have occasion, however, hereafter to notice the origin of each drama, as it passes before us in chronological succession, it will merely be necessary in this place, in order to afford some proof of his familiarity with these fictions, to select a few specimens of his allusion to them from the body of his plays.
That our poet was well acquainted with the celebrated Romance, entitled Mort d'Arthure, the most popular of its class, would have been readily admitted from the known course of his studies, even if he had not once alluded to it in the course of his works. In the Second Part, however, of King Henry the Fourth, he makes Shallow, vaunting of his youthful feats to Falstaffe, say, "I was then Sir Dagonet in Arthur's show[562:A];" a line upon which Mr. Douce observes, "Whatever part Sir Dagonet took in this show would doubtless be borrowed from Mallory's romance of the Mort Arture, which had been compiled in the reign of Henry VII. What there occurs relating to Sir Dagonet was extracted from the excellent and ancient story of Tristan de Leonnois, in which Dagonet is represented as the fool of king Arthur[562:B];" a character certainly well adapted to the powers of the worthy justice.
It should, however, be remarked, that the Arthur's show in this passage was not, what it might at first be supposed, an exact representation of the ancient chivalric costume of that romantic Prince and his knights, but principally an exhibition of Archery by a toxophilite society, of which Richard Robinson, the translator of the English Gesta, has given us an account under the title of "The Auncient Order Societie, and Unitie Laudable, of Prince Arthure and his knightly Armory of the Round Table. With a Threefold Assertion friendly in favour and furtherance of English Archery at this day." 1583. 4to.[562:C]
These city-worthies, to the number of fifty-eight, it would seem, had for some time assumed the arms and the names of the knights of the Round Table, and Robinson, who the year before had published a translation of Leland's Assertio Arthvrii, thought proper to dedicate his Ancient Order to M. Thomas Smith, Esq., the then Prince Arthur of this fellowship, and compliments him by deducing his society from the establishment of the round table in the reign of Edward the First. "But touching your famous order and fellowship of knights in shooting, though in K. E. I. his time (ann. 1279) a valiant Knight and manly Mortimer at Kenelworth appointed a knightly game, which was called the Round Table of 100 knights and so manie Ladies (nameth not expressely shooting to be one) yet for exercise of armes thither came many warlike knightes of divers kingdomes. And the most famous and victorious king E. 3. builded at Winchester (ann. 1344) an house called the Round Table of an exceeding compasse, to the exercise of like or farre greater Chevalry therin:—So the most famous, prudent, politike and grave prince K. Henry the 7 was the first Phenix in chusing out a number of chiefe Archers to give daily attendance upon his person, whom he named his Garde. But the high and mighty renowned prince his son, K. H. 8. (ann. 1509) not onely with great prowes and praise proceeded in that which his father had begon; but also added greater dignity unto the same, like a most roial renowned David, enacting a good and godly statute (ann. 33. H. 8. cap. 9.) for the use and exercise of shooting in every degree. And furthermore for the maintenance of the same laudable exercise in this honourable city of London by his gratious charter confirmed unto the worshipful citizens of the same, this your now famous order of Knights of Prince Arthures Round Table or Society: like as in his life time when he sawe a good Archer indeede, he chose him and ordained such a one for a knight of the same order."[563:A]
As this "friendly and franke fellowship of Prince Arthur's Knightes," as Mulcaster terms it in his Positions[563:B], bore little resemblance to its celebrated archetype in any point of chivalric observance, beyond the name; and as archery had ceased to be an object with government in a military light, and was considered indeed, in the reign of James I., as a mere pastime, the society, though respectable in the days of Robinson and Mulcaster, soon dwindled into contempt, an idle mockery of an institution which had originally been great and imposing.
In Much Ado About Nothing, our author very distinctly refers to another of Captain Cox's romances, Huon of Bourdeaux, a production of equal popularity with Morte Arthure, and which was translated into English by Lord Berners, in the reign of Henry the Eighth[564:A], under the title of Sir Hugh of Bourdeaux. Benedict being informed of the approach of Beatrice, addresses Don Pedro in the following terms:—"Will your grace command me any service to the world's end? I will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes, that you can devise to send me on; I will fetch you a tooth-picker now from the farthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John's foot; fetch you a hair of the great Cham's beard; do you any embassage to the Pigmies, rather than hold three word's conference with this harpy."[564:B] The passage in Italics, together with the spirit of the context, will be discovered in the subsequent command and achievement.
"Thou must goe to the citie of Babylon to the Admiral Gaudisse, to bring me thy hand full of the heare of his beard, and foure of his greatest teeth. Alas, my lord, (quoth the Barrons,) we see well you desire greatly his death, when you charge him with such a message."[564:C]
"He opened his mouth, and tooke out his foure great teeth, and then cut off his beard, and tooke thereof as much as pleased him."[564:D]
This version of Lord Berners furnished Shakspeare with the name, though not with the character, of Oberon.
The Second Part of King Henry the Sixth supplies us with a reference to the ancient romance of Sir Bevis of Southampton. In the combat between Horner and his servant Peter, the former exclaims—"Peter, have at thee with a downright blow, as Bevis of Southampton fell upon Ascapart."[565:A]
This romance, which forms the fourth article in the Coventry Library, was once highly popular, though possessing little merit. It was printed by Pynson, and issued twice from the press of Copland, and once from that of East. It has been since frequently republished, in various forms, for the amusement of the juvenile part of the community.
Of the hero of the tale, Selden has left us the following notice in his notes on the Polyolbion:—"About the Norman invasion was Bevis famous with the title of Earl of Southampton; Duncton in Wiltshire known for his residence.—His sword is kept as a relique in Arundel Castle; not equalling in length (as it is now worn) that of Edward 3, at Westminster."[565:B]
Shakspeare has done further honour to this legend, by putting two lines of it into the mouth of Edgar. Bevis, being confined in a dungeon, was allowed neither meat nor corn, but