Numbers in bold brackets [] indicate original page numbers.
EDWARD DE VERE — MIDDLE PERIOD: DRAMATIC FOREGROUND
V
Having presented the relationship of Lyly's work to that of "Shakespeare" as stated by an eminent Shakespearean, we shall now give it as it appears to the leading English authority on the work of John Lyly, Mr. R. Warwick Bond, M.A. ("The Complete Works of John Lyly, now for the first time collected and edited." Clarendon Press, 1902). This is of such importance as to deserve a section for itself.
"Gabriel Harvey (states) that when 'Euphues' was being written, i.e. in 1578, he knew Lyly in the Savoy. . . . A recommendation from an influential friend would procure [270] easy admission (to apartments in the Savoy) for some temporary period at least, of a needy man of letters or university student. . . . From details, given in Mr. W. J. Loftie's Memorials of the Savoy, it appears that various chambers and tenements in the Savoy precinct were customarily let to tenants, and in 1573 Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, is over £10 in arrear of rent to the Savoy for two such tenements."
For what purpose Oxford held these tenements, whether for his own literary pursuits, or for the accommodation of poor men of letters, is not known. So early, however, as 1573, when he was but twenty-three years of age, and two years before his Italian tour, he was evidently associated with the men of letters in the Savoy, amongst whom were included within the next few years, Gabriel Harvey and John Lyly. Burleigh's house in the Strand, where Oxford had been domiciled, was quite near to the Savoy, and Oxford's early and habitual association with this particular literary group hardly admits of doubt.
In 1580 Lyly dedicates his work, "Euphues and his England," to his "very good lord and master, Edward de Vere Earl of Oxenforde" and (to resume our quotation) "here we have the first authentic indication of Lyly's connection with Burleigh's son-in-law, a connection which may have begun in the Savoy, where, as we saw, Oxford rented two tenements. . . He was engaged as private secretary to the Earl and admitted to his confidence. The two men were much of an age (Oxford was, in point of fact, Lyly's senior by three and a half years — a considerable difference in early manhood) and had common elements of character and directions of taste. From the Earl probably it was that Lyly first received the dramatic impulse. None of Oxford's comedies survive, but Puttenham, writing in 1589, classes him with Richard Edwards as deserving the highest price (? praise) for comedy and interlude." . . . (Then follow some [271] particulars respecting the activities, of "Oxford's Boys") . . . "Suggestion, encouragement and apparatus thus lay ready to Lyly's hand." In another place, in describing Lyly's educational advantages, he mentions specially that of being "private secretary to the literary Earl of Oxford."
The work of Oxford in drama is therefore recognized as having furnished the generative impulse which produced Lyly's work in this particular domain. As private secretary, in the confidence of Oxford, assisting in the actual staging of Oxford's comedies, which without appearing in print had made such a name that they are spoken of, more than ten years after they had ceased to appear on the stage, as amongst "the best,"* Lyly would naturally be more intimate with these "lost plays" than any other man except the author himself. And as it was the holding of this office which led him to the composition of dramas, we are quite entitled to say that it was the plays of Edward de Vere that furnished Lyly's dramatic education; whilst contact with his master is a recognized force in his personal education.
As to the relationship of Lyly's dramas to the work of "Shakespeare," Mr. Bond quotes on his title the words of Mézières: "Ceux qui ont été les prédécessors des grands esprits ont contribué en quelque façon à leur éducation, leur doivent d'être sauvés de l'oubli. Dante fait vivre Brunetto Latini, Milton du Bartas; Shakespeare fait vivre Lyly." This is the theme which runs through Mr. Bond's great work; the justification almost of his immense labours on behalf of Lyly and Elizabethan literature generally. The nature and value of his researches can only be gathered, however, from a study of the work itself, and therefore we shall merely submit a few indicative sentences:
"In comedy, Lyly is Shakespeare's only model: the evidence of the latter's study and imitation of him is abundant, [272] and Lyly's influence is of a far more permanent nature than any exercised on the great poet by any other writers. It extends beyond the boundaries of mechanical style to the more important matters of structure and spirit" (Vol. II. p. 243).
"Shakespeare imitates Lyly's grouping and, like him, repeats a relation or situation in successive plays" (II. 285). "Lyly taught him (Shakespeare) something in the matter of unity and coherence of plot-construction, in the introduction of songs and fairies" (II. 296).
This, then, is the situation represented by the consensus of opinion of two eminent authorities. The dramas of Edward de Vere form the source from which sprang Lyly's dramatic conceptions and enterprises, and Lyly's dramas appear as the chief model, in comedy the only model, upon which "Shakespeare" worked. We are therefore entitled to claim that the highest orthodox authorities, in the particular department of literature with which we are dealing, support the view that the dramatic activities of Edward de Vere stands in almost immediate productive or causal relationship of a most distinctive character with the dramatic work of "Shakespeare." Even if we are unable to extract any further evidence from Oxford's relationships with Lyly we shall have added another very important link in our chain of evidences.
Take now the following passage from the work we have just been quoting: Lyly was "the first regular English dramatist, the true inventor and introducer of dramatic style, conduct and dialogue, and in these respects the chief master of Shakespeare. There is no play before Lyly. He wrote eight; and immediately there after England produced some hundreds - produced that marvel and pride of the greatest literature in the world, the Elizabethan Drama. What the long infancy of her stage had lacked was an example of form, of art; and Lyly gave it. . . . Lyly was one whose immense merits and originality were obscured by [273] the surface-qualities, the artificiality and tedium of his style . . . (There is) far more dramatic credit due and far more influence on Shakespeare attributable to him than to Marlowe or any other of those with whom he has been customarily classed" (Preface vi and vii).
In the world of drama, then, Lyly appears as a great inventive genius, to whose originating impulse is due "the greatest literature in the world." Contrast now with the above passage the following comment upon Lyly's "Euphues," which appears in the same work:
"The book is artificial, divorced from homely realities. It is deficient, too, in characterization and in pathos; but undoubtedly its chief defect is its want of action. . . . The want of action is probably referrable to poverty of invention. . . . Poverty of invention is discerned in the parallelism of the two parts" (Vol. I. 162).
In the writing of his novel, then, Lyly shows a distinct lack of dramatic power, and a noticeable "poverty of invention." When he enters his employer's special domain, the drama, he appears as "the true inventor and introducer of dramatic style, conduct and dialogue."
Only one conclusion, it would seem, can be drawn from these facts, namely that the real inventor of those things, which "Shakespeare" is supposed to have derived from Lyly, was the Earl of Oxford. Whether we examine the lyric poems of the latter, the vicissitudes of his career, or the varied and disturbing impressions he left in the minds of others, with all the mystifying and conflicting personal traits that they suggest, we find ourselves in the presence of an original and self-dependent intellect; just the kind of mind to possess that dramatic inventiveness which is attributed to the plays but which is missing from the "Euphues" of Lyly. The inventiveness and dramatic form and dialogue in Lyly's plays is therefore evidently due to Oxford's participation either direct or indirect. The features [274] of Lyly's work which relate it so intimately with "Shakespeare's" dramas are such as an apt disciple might have learnt from a master of forceful and original genius: in the intellectual substance of Lyly's dramas, as in his other literary work, his biographer and editor freely admits superficiality and tediousness. The conceptions, phrases, and dramatic form of the master's work could be appropriated by the pupil; its genius he could not appropriate or imitate. As then Lyly's work, apart from what he might have borrowed from Oxford, marks him as an early type of that literary mind which rapidly catches and reflects the ideas of others, it is almost certain that his works will contain not only much that was in Oxford's writings, but also a great deal of what Oxford thought and said without committing it to writing.
As a kind of unconscious Boswell to the Earl of Oxford it is more than probable that even his "Euphues " owes much to his intercourse with his patron; for this work consists mainly of such talk and reflections as a man of Lyly's type would gather together from the conversation of the group of young litterateurs in the Savoy. Scraps of ideas gleaned in this way, and dressed up in his own inflated style, might easily pass for a time as solid intellectual matter; the deficiency of genuine substance only being disclosed through familiarity. It is interesting to notice that Mr. Bond gives us no less than nine pages of parallelisms between this early work of Lyly's and the plays of Shakespeare. The difference between the two is mainly that in "Euphues" the passages appear as more or less disjointed and rambling remarks, whereas in "Shakespeare" they take their places as parts of a coherent whole. In a word, in Lyly's work they indicate a mind that reflects the conceptions and imitates the expressions of others; in "Shakespeare" they are the expression of an originating intellect; and were it not for the difficulty presented by the fact that Lyly's work was published some years before "Shakespeare's," no [275] competent judge would have questioned Lyly's great indebtedness to "Shakespeare" even in the writing of his famous "Euphues."
It is no part of our argument, but it is of some interest from the point of view of Elizabethan literature, that as we get a glimpse of this group of young literary men drawn into association in the Savoy, and realize something of what their relationships would tend to be at the time when "Euphues" was being written, one gets a suggestion that, in accordance with their literary methods, Edward de Vere and Philip Sidney were the chief originals for Lyly's principal characters of Euphues and Philautus. For to the names of the men already given we are quite entitled to add those of both Edmund Spenser and Philip Sidney; since it was Gabriel Harvey under whose influence Spenser had come to London about that time, and it was he, too, who introduced Spenser to Philip Sidney. Shortly afterwards Spenser brought out his first work "The Shepherd's Calendar," dedicated to Sidney, and containing allusions, as we believe, to both Oxford and Sidney. Later, as we have already seen, Spenser addressed an important dedicatory sonnet to Oxford in first publishing his "Fairie Queen." All the works we have just named are representations, in varying degrees of disguise, of contemporary life and personalities; and as the Earl of Oxford and Philip Sidney were the outstanding personalities connecting this group of litterateurs with the court life it was natural that Lyly's two chief characters should assume some of their features, even if he had not intended the representation at first. Although Harvey, Lyly, Oxford and Sidney all seem to have come to cross purposes within the next few years, there is no reason to suppose that their relations were other than friendly at the time when Lyly was penning Euphues.
However these things may be, it is much more feasible that the great "Shakespeare" poems and dramas should have owed their rise to the interchange of ideas, and the [276] stimulation which mind derives from contact with kindred mind, such as would be enjoyed by the young wits and savants in the Savoy, than to the studies of an isolated youth poring over well-thumbed books in an uncongenial social atmosphere. And if this social intercourse were really the source of the Shakespeare literature as we believe it to have been directly, and Sir Sidney Lee and Mr. Bond imply that it was indirectly, we should naturally expect to find, in some outstanding play, such a representation of the chief figures of the group as Spenser, Lyly and Gabriel Harvey were accustomed to make of contemporaries in their own writings. "Love's Labour's Lost" is the play that we have selected in this connection, and dealt with in the opening pages of this chapter. That Lyly is also represented in the play is most probable; we know too little, however, of his personality for purposes of identification. The fact that the authorship we are now urging brings "Shakespeare's" plays into line with the literature of the times, as a dramatic representation of contemporary events and personalities, and at the same time gives the works a firm root, like all the other great achievements of mankind, in the direct social intercourse of men possessing common tastes and interests, is not the least of the arguments in its favour.
If Lyly's works were produced as we suppose them to have been; produced, that is to say, by a somewhat ordinary mind working upon ideas and with apparatus furnished by an almost transcendent genius, we should naturally expect to find marked discordances and inequalities in his work, resulting from the imperfect blending of the two elements. This is just the feature that Lyly's work does present; and in the matter of the songs interspersed through the plays, there is such a superiority to much of the other work as to have raised doubts respecting their authenticity. The first play written by Lyly was "Campaspe," published in 1584; and on more than one occasion, in speaking of later [277] writings, Mr. Bond contrasts them with the superior lyrics in his first play. Some work he describes as "a disgrace to the writer of 'Cupid and my Campaspe'" (one of these lyrics). Speaking again of a poetical lampoon by Lyly, entitled "A Whip for an Ape," he asserts that the "authorship is not disputable," though the notion that the author of "Cupid and my Campaspe" also wrote "A Whip for an Ape" had induced him to regard the latter work as doubtful.
This is not, however, the most interesting or significant fact which the writer brings to light in respect to the songs in Lyly's plays. In the editions of these works published during the author's lifetime and the lifetime both of Edward de Vere and William Shakspere, the songs did not appear; their positions alone being merely indicated in the text.
"The absence of the whole thirty-two (except two merged in the dialogue of 'The Woman') from the quarto editions (i.e. the originals) has cast some doubt upon Lyly's authorship: but some of them seem too dainty to be written by an unknown hand, there is a uniformity of alternative manners and measures, etc." The writer then proceeds to offer possible reasons for the omission of the songs from the editions of the plays as first published. The important fact is that these songs are in several cases the best things the plays now contain. For nearly fifty years some of these works were published and republished without the songs ("Campaspe" performed at court in 1582, and published first in 1584). Then, in 1632, that is to say twenty-six years after Lyly's death, twenty-one out of the missing thirty unaccountably reappeared in an edition of Lyly's plays issued by the same publishers and in the same year as the Second Folio edition of "Shakespeare's" work, and within the lifetime of Oxford's cousin, Horatio de Vere, who, as we shall have occasion to show, had probably been entrusted with the task of preserving and publishing Oxford's writings. The remaining nine are still missing. The [278] simultaneous reappearance of so many of these songs, after so long an interval, would almost certainly be the work of some one who had been carefully preserving the, entire set. The non-appearance of the remaining nine suggests that these had already appeared elsewhere, probably in the pages, of "Shakespeare."
The possible reasons advanced for the omission of all these lyrics from the original issue of the plays are such as might apply to the work of any other playwright; yet we can find no other instances, of sets of superior lyrics being omitted from the original publication of the works to which they belong. The simplest hypothesis, is that these lyrics were not the composition nor the property of Lyly, but, like the lyric work contributed to Munday's play, had been composed by the master of the playwright, the "best of the courtier poets" of those days: and although Oxford could not prevent Lyly's rushing into print with superficial plays, in which he saw his own developments in drama being prematurely exploited, he certainly would resent his own lyrics appearing in them, and was quite able to prevent it if Lyly had been disposed to insert them.
Mr. Bond's statement respecting the quality of Lyly's own lyric work. is therefore of special importance: "Spite of his authorship of two or three of the most graceful songs our drama can boast — an authorship, which if still unsusceptible of positive proof is equally so of disproof — some of those in his plays, and others pretty certainly his, which I have found elsewhere, stamp him as negligent, uncritical, or else inadequately practised in the art; while he lacked altogether, in my judgment, those brave translunary things so infinitely beyond technique, so far above mere grace or daintiness or fancy, of which the true poet is made" (Preface vii). The mere raising of the question of the authenticity of these first class lyrics in this way, by one who adds to his fine literary discrimination an undoubted admiration for Lyly, affords strong confirmation of the theory that these superior verses [279] were either written by Oxford for Lyly's plays, or were modelled by Lyly on songs written by Oxford.
It is necessary to keep in mind that Oxford was primarily a lyric poet; that during the years in which many of Lyly's plays were being written the two men were working together, writing plays for the "Oxford Boys"; and that eight of the plays written by Lyly have been preserved, whilst the whole of Oxford's plays have disappeared. Seeing, then, that Lyly displays a marked weakness in lyrical capacity, whilst Oxford is specially strong, then most of the songs would almost certainly be the exclusive contribution of the latter, to plays in which there was more or less collaboration between the two men.
We come now to what is perhaps the most vital part of this particular argument. In estimating "Shakespeare's" indebtedness to Lyly, on what we are reluctantly obliged to call the orthodox view, we should have to include his indebtedness to this lyric work with which Lyly has been only doubtfully credited. For a comparison of the two sets of lyrics discloses a marked similarity of lyric forms, with something of the same rich variety. We have made a careful examination of the lyrics that reappeared in Lyly's plays in 1632, and although, until supported by recognized literary authorities, we may hesitate to affirm definitively that they are from the same pen as the lyrics of "Shakespeare," no one who knows the best of them will hesitate to say that they are such as "Shakespeare" might have written. Yet some were written, though not published, prior to 1584, the year in which the play to which they belong was published, and before William Shakspere is said to have left Stratford. Those, on the other hand, who hold that William Shakspere, who came to London and began to issue plays about the year 1592, studied carefully and modelled his work upon the published dramas of John Lyly, will find some difficulty in explaining how he could [280] have modelled his work upon lyrics which were not published until 1632, or sixteen years after his own death.
In this connection we shall give but one illustration of the similarity of "Shakespeare's" lyric work to the lyrics attributed to Lyly.
Shakespeare.
Fairies sing:
"Pinch him, fairies, mutually;
Pinch him for his villany.
Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about,
Till candles and starlight and moonshine be out.
("Merry Wives," published 1602.)Lyly.
Fairies sing:
"Pinch him, pinch him, black and blue,
Saucy mortals must not view
What the Queen of Stars is, doing,
Nor pry into our fairy wooing.
Pinch him blue
And pinch him black,
Let him not lack
Sharp nails to pinch him blue and red,
Till sleep has rocked his addle head."
("Endymion." Play written 1585. Song first published 1632.)No one can doubt that these two songs were either from the same pen, or the writer of one of them was indebted to the other. The connection being established, not only for the one song but for the lyric work as a whole, a difficult problem, though, of course, not altogether insoluble, is presented to those who believe that William Shakspere in writing lyrics for "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Love's Labour's Lost," and "The Merry Wives," was working from a copy of Lyly's Lyrics.
If "Shakespeare" wrote both sets, or if the writer of the lyrics attributed to Lyly worked upon "Shakespeare's" model, then "Shakespeare" must have been some one who was right in the heart of the literary life of London some [281] years before William Shakspere's supposed entry upon his career. If, on the other hand, "Shakespeare" was working in 1602 on the model of Lyly's work, he must have had private access to his contemporary's manuscripts, and have not only exploited the work to an extraordinary extent, but slavishly adopted the lyric forms and mannerisms of his fellow poet. That the greatest lyric and dramatic genius of the age should have so gone out of his way to follow pedantically a single writer of inferior powers to his own, even supposing the whole of that writer's work had been accessible to him — an almost extravagant supposition — would bespeak a kind of infatuation to which geniuses are not usually prone.
All these contradictory and far-fetched implications disappear when the theory of authorship we are now advocating is substituted. Under our theory "Shakespeare," in the person of Edward de Vere, furnishes the model, and becomes the initiating force and leader in the poetic and dramatic movement, and Lyly the follower and imitator of "Shakespeare." The anomalies and "disgraceful" inequalities of Lyly's work receive for the first time a rational explanation, and the mystery of "Shakespeare's" apparent dependence upon Lyly entirely disappears. Lyly's dramas are seen to be, for the most part, hasty productions intended for immediate performance; receiving afterwards such dressing as a "superficial and tedious" writer was able to give them; but which had been modelled upon work of a higher order, and, in their first shaping for the stage, had had the advantage possibly of being trimmed and enlivened by the same hand that afterwards gave forth the supreme masterpieces.
The dramas of "Shakespeare," on the other hand, are seen to be the finished literary form of those plays by De Vere which Lyly knew in the rough, as performed by the Oxford Boys in the days of dramatic pioneering, but which their author, with the feeling and vision of the true poet, [282] had seen were capable of being transformed into something much greater and more worthy of an enduring existence. At the same time the so-called Lyly's lyrics are seen to have been, in the main, a contribution made by Oxford to the plays composed by Lyly to be performed by the Oxford Boys — lyrics which on the one hand he had left, maybe, in too crude a form for publication, being composed originally just to be sung, and which on the other hand he was not willing should be made a present to Lyly.
There is no record of a single play of Oxford's ever having been published, and the lyrics from his pen published in his lifetime are without doubt the work of a man who was most reluctant to commit anything to print that had not been very carefully revised and if possible perfected. With his artistic striving after perfection it was natural that he should work long and laboriously at any literary task he undertook, and that in the process of transforming his plays they should undergo such changes that the original work of Oxford should not have been detected in the finished plays of "Shakespeare." That writers of plays should adopt the practice we have attributed to Oxford of deferring publication is no mere hypothesis invented to meet a difficulty. Even in the case of Lyly, with his evident eagerness for literary fame and deficient sense of literary perfection, the intervals between the production and publication of plays were considerable. "Campaspe," composed about 1579-80, was first published in 1584. "Gallathea," composed in 1584, was first published in 1592; whilst "Love's Metamorphosis," which in a defective form evidently first made its appearance about 1584, was not put into its present form and published until 1601. Between the actual performance of his plays and their ultimate publication there was usually a period of three or four years. With the richer, more elaborate, more highly finished and much more voluminous work of "Shakespeare," a longer interval [283] was naturally to be expected; and it is just in that interval between Oxford's composition of his dramas and the appearance of the "Shakespeare" work that the dramas of Oxford's private secretary and coadjutor make their appearance, having so striking a resemblance, in everything but genius, to the "Shakespeare" work, that the latter is supposed to have been definitely modelled upon it to a most unusual extent.
Somewhere, then, about the year 1592 these plays of Oxford's we believe began to appear attributed to William Shakspere, and this is the time when Lyly's plays cease to appear ("The Woman in the Moon," composed 1591-3). In 1598 "Shakespeare's" plays are first published with an author's name. Lyly's "Woman in the Moon" had been published the previous year, and after it he only published a revised edition of the old play, "Love's Metamorphosis." Both in the matter of presenting and publishing plays, the appearance of "Shakespeare's" work put a check upon Lyly's. About the same time there appeared Meres' account of Elizabethan poetry and drama, containing names alike of authors and titles of plays; and, though he gives the titles of "Shakespeare's" works, and accords a foremost place to the name of Edward de Vere as a playwright, he does not give the title of a single play that Oxford had written.
These are matters which belong more properly to a later period than the one we are now discussing. In respect to Oxford's early dramatic activities, and the connection of his missing comedies with the work of "Shakespeare" — for it is this early period with which we are now concerned — we have undoubtedly a most extraordinary set of coincidences. Two men, and two men only, Anthony Munday and John Lyly, are directly and actively associated with him in his dramatic enterprises. Both men have work attributed to them which is evidently not theirs, and it is this work which specially links them on — in Lyly's case in a remarkable way [284] to the work of "Shakespeare," thus forming a direct bridge between the "lost or worn out" dramas of Edward de Vere and "the greatest literature of the world." Surely this, along with all the other coincidences, is not merely fortuitous. We may have laboured unduly these connections: their immense importance, we hope, is a sufficient justification.
* Meres, 1598. back