Rosalynde Part 1

Rosalynde.

by Thomas Lodge.

PREFACE

This edition of Lodge's "Rosalynde" has grown out of a need felt by the editor for an example of Elizabethan prose suitable for use in a general survey course in English, designed for college freshmen.

"Rosalynde," of all the books that were considered, seemed on the whole best to fulfill the desired conditions. As a pastoral romance it belongs to a cla.s.s of books which, if not peculiar to the Elizabethan age, is at least thoroughly representative of it. Moreover, the story is entirely un.o.bjectionable, nothing being found in it that could offend any reader. The "Rosalynde," being one of the shortest of the prose romances, is not open to the objections that might be urged against the more famous, but also more discursive, "Arcadia" of Sidney. Its close relations with Shakespeare's "As You Like It," which is also read in the course, and its added interest as one of the precursors of the modern novel, additionally recommend it. Finally, its coherent plot, its freedom from digressions, and its happy ending, make it seem likely to interest students, in spite of the conventionality of the pastoral form.

The annotation has been confined to giving the meanings of obsolete or unusual words. There are many mythological allusions that call for explanation; but this, it is thought, any good dictionary of mythology will supply. The list of questions is not of course exhaustive, and is intended to be merely suggestive of the kind of study the college student in an introductory course in English might well be fitted to undertake. The text is that of the Hunterian Club edition of Lodge's "Works." This reprint is of the first edition, that of 1590, except that (since the only known copy of the first edition of "Rosalynde" is imperfect) a few pages (121-127 of this edition) were reprinted from the second edition of 1592. The spelling and punctuation have to some extent been modernized--the latter having been altered only where changes serve to make the author's meaning more obvious.

The editor acknowledges his indebtedness to the scholarly edition of Lodge's "Rosalynde" by W.W. Greg (London and New York, 1907), particularly to the glossarial index, which has supplied the meanings of some words about which the editor was in considerable doubt. Thanks are due, also, to my colleague Mr. Arthur Tietje for his helpful suggestions in preparing the list of questions.

E.C.B.

URBANA, ILLINOIS

INTRODUCTION

_Birth and Education._ Of the life of Thomas Lodge comparatively little is definitely known. Yet, though even the year of his birth is uncertain, we are able from the meager facts that have come down to us to see that his life was typically Elizabethan. Like Sidney and like Raleigh, Lodge lived a varied and active life. He was born in either 1557 or 1558 of a rather prominent middle-cla.s.s London family, both his father and his mother's father having been lord mayors of the city. He was sent to Merchant Taylors' School and afterwards to Trinity College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1577. Of his career at the university we know almost nothing except that among his fellow students were John Lyly, destined to exert a powerful influence upon his style, and George Peele, later to become a dramatist of note, to whom Lodge may to some extent have owed his subsequent interest in the drama.

_Early Work._ After leaving Oxford, Lodge returned to London and entered the Society of Lincoln's Inn, in other words took up the study of the law. Legal studies seem not to have absorbed his attention to the total exclusion of literary work. The occasion of his first publication was the death of his mother in 1579. In that year appeared the "Epitaph of the Lady Anne Lodge." This is not extant, but his reply to Stephen Gosson's "School of Abuse" has survived. Gosson's book had been a furious attack upon the contemporary drama. Lodge's reply was a fair sample of the literary billingsgate of that controversial age and deserves the oblivion into which it promptly sank. His next publication was his "Alarum against Usurers" (1584), a book belonging to a cla.s.s of tracts popular in that day in which the characters and customs of the underworld of London were exposed to popular execration. The impulse to engage in this journalistic kind of work Lodge may have owed to Robert Greene, the dramatist, with whom he at this time became intimate, and whose popular books on cony-catching the "Alarum," in its spirit and purpose, closely resembles. Greene certainly furnished some of the inspiration for the dramatic attempts that followed. Lodge's play, "The Wounds of Civil War," though not printed till 1594, may have been acted in 1587. We know that he collaborated with Greene in "A Looking Gla.s.s for London and England,"

produced in 1592.

_Later Work and Death._ It is not, however, as a dramatist that Lodge is remembered, but as a writer of pastoral romance. Here the discursive and idyllic quality of his genius, both in verse and prose, was to find complete and unhampered expression. Of the pastoral romances that Lodge produced during the next decade "Rosalynde" is by far the most important. The author wrote it, he tells us, while he was on a freebooting expedition to the Azores and the Canaries, "when every line was wet with a surge, and every humorous pa.s.sion counterchecked with a storm." The immediate success of "Rosalynde"

encouraged Lodge to continue the writing of romances. The best known of those that followed, and one of the prettiest of his stories, is "A Margarite [i.e. pearl] of America." This was written while Lodge was engaged in another patriotic raid under Captain Cavendish against the Spanish colonies of South America. The romance is in no sense American, and owes its t.i.tle solely to the fact that it was written, or, as Lodge claims, translated from the Spanish, while Lodge's s.h.i.+p was cruising off the coast of Patagonia. Lodge certainly knew Spanish; and during the month that the expedition lingered at Santos in Brazil, he spent much of his time in the library of the Jesuit College.

Possibly this was the beginning of his leaning toward Catholicism. At all events, he later became a Roman Catholic and wrote in support of that faith at a time when to be other than a Protestant in England was extremely dangerous. Sometime previous to 1600 he took a degree of doctor of medicine at Avignon and wrote among other medical treatises one on the plague. Of this disease, it is said, he died in 1625.

_Source of "Rosalynde": "The Tale of Gamelyn."_ Lodge did not invent the plot of "Rosalynde." The story is based upon "The Tale of Gamelyn." This is a narrative in rough ballad form, written in the fourteenth century and formerly attributed to Chaucer. Indeed all the copies of it that have been preserved occur in the ma.n.u.scripts of the "Canterbury Tales" under the t.i.tle "The c.o.ke's Tale of Gamelyn." From the "Tale" Lodge borrowed and adapted the account of the death of old Sir John of Bordeaux, the subsequent quarrel of his sons, the plot of the elder against the younger by which the latter was to be killed in a wrestling bout, the wrestling itself, the flight of the younger accompanied by the faithful Adam to the Forest of Arden, and their falling in with a band of outlaws feasting. Yet from the "Tale" Lodge took hardly more than a suggestion. All the love story was his own.

Original also, so far as we know,[1] was the story of the two kings, and the pastoral element--for "Rosalynde" is a pastoral romance.

[Footnote 1: It has been conjectured that Lodge drew upon some Italian novel for the material that he did not find in "The Tale of Gamelyn."

There seems, however, no ground for denying to Lodge credit for some originality; for the novel, if it ever existed, has been lost.]

_Form: A Pastoral Romance._ As a pastoral romance it belongs to the cla.s.s of books of which Sidney's' "Arcadia" is the most famous representative in English. The "Arcadia" was published in 1590--the same year as "Rosalynde"--though it had been written some ten years earlier. The literary genus to which they belong is a very old one.

The prose pastoral romance, that kind of prose romance which professes to delineate the scenery, sentiments, and incidents of shepherd life,[1] is, like most other literary forms, Greek in origin.

It goes back at least to the "Daphnis and Chloe" of Longus, the Byzantine romancer of the fifth century A.D. Longus represents the romantic spirit in expiring cla.s.sicism, the longing of a highly artificial society for primitive simplicity, and the endeavor to create a corresponding ideal. Indeed the pastoral has always been a product of a highly artificial age. Naturally, therefore, it has always been written by men of the city rather than by men of the country. It is distinctly an urban product. That it was so accounts in part for the idealized view of life that it presents. Speaking of the pastoral, Doctor Johnson says in his ponderous way:[2]

Our inclination to stillness and tranquillity is seldom much lessened by long knowledge of the busy and tumultuary part of the world. In childhood we turn our thoughts to the country, as to the region of pleasure; we recur to it in old age as a port of rest, and perhaps with that secondary and advent.i.tious gladness, which every man feels on reviewing those places, or recollecting those occurrences, that contributed to his youthful enjoyments, and bring him back to the prime of life, when the world was gay with the bloom of novelty, when mirth wantoned at his side, and hope sparkled before him.

[Footnote 1: Dr. Johnson defines a pastoral as "the representation of an action or pa.s.sion by its effects upon a country life." See _The Rambler_, Nos. 36 and 37.]

[Footnote 2: _The Rambler_, No. 36. See also Steele's essays on the pastoral in _The Guardian_, Nos. 22, 23, 28, 30, 32. No. 22 is particularly interesting, because in it Steele a.s.signs three causes for the popularity of the pastoral form,--man's love of ease, his love of simplicity, and his love of the country. Pope's remarks on the pastoral, which may be found in _The Guardian_, No. 40, are also worth referring to in this connection.]

Probably Doctor Johnson was entirely right about the perennial charm of the pastoral and in his theory that its charm is potent in the direct ratio to the square of the distance that separates the writer and reader from rural life itself. It is not strange, therefore, that in the newly awakened interest in the cla.s.sics that characterized the Renaissance, when literature was so largely a product of city culture, the revival of the pastoral should have been one of the first manifestations of the earlier Renaissance humanism.

_Spanish Influence._ Even when all due credit has been given to the charm of the pastoral romance, it still remains doubtful whether the influence of the Greek and Latin cla.s.sics alone is sufficient to explain its vogue in the Elizabethan age. Their influence, though undoubtedly great, was scarcely sufficient to account for the naturalization in England of so exotic a form as the pastoral. Indeed the pastoral never was thoroughly naturalized, remaining to the end somewhat alien to its English surroundings. Shepherds with their oaten pipes were never quite at home in the English climate, which is ill suited to life in the open, to loose tunics, and bare limbs.[1] It is doubtful whether the pastoral would have become popular in England without the stimulus furnished by contemporary European literature.

Most influential of these contemporary influences was the "Diana Enamorada," published about 1558, a Spanish pastoral romance written by Jorge de Montemayor, a Portuguese by birth, a Spaniard by adoption.

Although the English translation of the "Diana" did not appear until 1598[2] it was well known to Sidney, who translated parts of it, and imitated it in his "Arcadia" (1590), and to Greene, whose "Menaphon,"

also an imitation of the "Diana," had appeared in 1589, the year before "Rosalynde." Though it is entirely possible that Lodge may have imitated Greene, it is probable that he, like Greene, had read the "Diana," for it is certain that he knew Spanish,[3] as well as French and Italian, and the "Diana" was already, it is said,[4] the most popular book in Europe.

[Footnote 1: Steele, speaking of the pastoral (_The Guardian_, No.

30), says, "The difference of the climate is also to be considered, for what is proper in Arcadia, or even in Italy, might be quite absurd in a colder country."]

[Footnote 2: Though not published till 1598, Bartholomew Young's translation of the "Diana" was made in 1583.]

[Footnote 3: In the epistle To the Gentlemen Readers, prefixed to "A Margarite of America," he tells us that he read the original of that story "in the Library of the Jesuits in Sanctum ... in the Spanish tongue."]

[Footnote 4: Jusserand, "The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare," p. 236.]

_Style: Euphuistic._ Nor was Lodge more original in his manner than in his matter. His style is that of the euphuists. John Lyly's "Euphues, or the Anatomy of Wit" (1579), and its sequel "Euphues and His England" (1580), had set a fas.h.i.+on that was destined for the next two decades to enjoy a tremendous vogue. Lyly's was the first conspicuous example in English of the attempt to achieve an ornate and rather fantastic style. The result became known as euphuism, and those who employed it as euphuists. In its essential features it consists of three distinct mannerisms: a balance of phrases, an elaborate system of alliteration, and a profusion of similes taken from fabulous natural history. Regarding the euphuistic use of balance, Dr. Landmann says of Lyly's prose:[1] "We have here the most elaborate ant.i.thesis not only of well balanced clauses, but also of words, often even of sentences.... Even when he uses a single sentence he opposes the words within the clause to each other."

[Footnote 1: In "Shakspere and Euphuism," _Transactions of the New Shakspere Society_, 1880-1882.]

Of this balance Lodge's "Rosalynde" affords abundant ill.u.s.tration.

Such a succession of sentences as that on page 7, where each sentence is composed of balanced clauses, is a striking but by no means unique example. Usually the contrasted words begin with the same letter or sound, as in the sentences just cited, where the alliteration appears to be employed to emphasize the contrast. Often the alliteration serves merely for ornament, as in the sentence: "It is she, O gentle swain, it is she, that saint it is whom I serve, that G.o.ddess at whose shrine I do bend all my devotions; the most fairest of all fairs, the phoenix of all that s.e.x, and the purity of all earthly perfection."

The euphuistic similes were of three kinds. First, there were those drawn from familiar natural objects, such as, "Happily she resembleth the rose, that is sweet but full of p.r.i.c.kles." Secondly, there are those taken from cla.s.sical history and mythology, like these: "Is she some nymph that waits upon Diana's train, ... or is she some shepherdess ... whose name thou shadowest in covert under the figure of Rosalynde, as Ovid did Julia under the name of Corinna?" Thirdly, there are those similes most characteristic of euphuism, though less commonly found than the two kinds just mentioned, namely, those drawn from "unnatural natural history." Such are the comparisons to "the serpent Regius that hath scales as glorious as the sun and a breath as infectious as aconitum is deadly," to "the hyena, most guileful when she mourns," to "the colors of a polype which changes at the sight of every object," and to "the Sethin leaf that never wags but with a southeast wind."

_One of the Last Examples of Euphuism._ When Lodge wrote "Rosalynde,"

euphuism was already on the wane. Even among Lodge's contemporaries the fas.h.i.+on was becoming an object of frequent ridicule. Thus Warner, in his "Albion's England" (1589), complains in the preface, which, by the way, is written wholly in the euphuistic manner: "Onely this error may be thought hatching in our English, that to runne on the letter we often runne from the matter: and being over prodigall in similes we become less profitable in sentences and more prolixious to sense."

By 1627 euphuism had become an obsolete fas.h.i.+on. In that year Drayton wrote of Sidney that he

did first reduce Our tongue from Lillies writing then in use: Talking of Stones, Stars, Plants, of Fishes, Flyes, Playing with words and idle Similies As th' English Apes and very Zanies be Of everything that they doe heare and see, So imitating his ridiculous tricks, They spake and writ like meere lunatiques.

"Rosalynde" marks the end of the unquestioned supremacy of euphuism as a literary mode. It was the last book of any importance to employ the style that Lyly had made so popular.

_The Charm of the Book._ In spite of the conventionality inseparable from the pastoral form, and the obvious artificiality of the style in which it is written, "Rosalynde" is really charming. Its charm is much like that of Watteau's landscapes. Like them, it is an idyll in court dress, a _fete elegante_, a kind of elegant picnic. Yet, like Watteau's pictures it is of more than merely historic interest, for it is far more than simply a reminder of the fopperies of a vanished time. There is in it, as in the paintings, a lightness and daintiness of coloring, and an indescribable air of freshness that have made the romance appeal to poets as the work of Watteau has appealed to painters. Shakespeare felt its charm so much that he made it the basis of the plot of "As You Like It." That it became one of his "sources"

has injured it incalculably in the popular estimation. It has become a commonplace of criticism to declare that "Rosalynde's" chief t.i.tle to be remembered is its having furnished a hint to Shakespeare. As a matter of fact, however, it had, to use Johnson's phrase, "enough wit to keep it sweet," even without Shakespeare's play "to preserve it from putrefaction." Lodge really had a pretty story to tell, and he tells it, if not with gusto, at least with grace and with some degree of skill. Exquisitely graceful are some of the narrative pa.s.sages, where the very words seem to possess a clear and pellucid quality like the water of the spring that Rosalynde and Aliena found in Arden, "so crystalline and clear, that it seemed Diana and her Dryades and Hamadryades had that spring, as the secret of all their bathings."[1]

Such, for instance, is the account of the night and morning succeeding the first meeting of Rosalynde and Rosader in the Forest of Arden.[2]

Graceful, too, are the descriptions of the landscapes in Arden, such as that of the "fair valley" where Rosalynde and Aliena found Monta.n.u.s and Corydon "seeing their sheep feed, playing on their pipes many pleasant tunes, and from music and melody falling into much amorous chat." So charmingly graceful are these descriptions that, together with Shakespeare, Lodge has made the Forest of Arden almost as much the accepted home of the pastoral as Sicily and Arcadia[3] had been hitherto.

[Footnote 1: P. 31.]

[Footnote 2: Pp. 58 and 60.]

[Footnote 3: Theocritus (283-263 B.C.) localized his "Idyls" in Sicily; Vergil (70-19 B.C.), his "Eclogues" in Arcadia.]

_Lodge's Skill as a Story-teller._ To say that Lodge is a skillful as well as a graceful story-teller is, of course, to make an indefensible a.s.sertion. In the sixteenth century English fiction was still in its infancy, and English prose was still undeveloped. Yet we do find in Lodge certain qualities of style that show clearly an advance over the formlessness of some of the stories that had preceded. Though the sentence and paragraph structure is loose and amorphous, the transitions from one subject to another are almost invariably well made, or at least are clearly marked. Phrases such as, "But leaving him so desirous of the journey, to Torismond"[1]; "Leaving her to her new entertained fancies, again to Rosader"[2]; "where we leave them, and return again to Torismond"[3]; show clearly a growing regard for the value of clear arrangement, to which the earlier romancers had been indifferent. In the avoidance of digressions, too, Lodge's style is an improvement upon that of his predecessors, and even upon that of most of his contemporaries.[4] The story moves along, if not rapidly, at least continuously from start to finish. There is a gratifying lack of such preposterous complications and tortuous windings as we meet with in the plot of Greene's "Menaphon," for example, where it sometimes seems doubtful whether the characters ever will emerge from so mazy a labyrinth of plot, and where the reader is bewildered by the almost complete lack of unity in the story.

[Footnote 1: P. 12.]

[Footnote 2: P. 17.]