Chapter I · ROMAN PLAYS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY (continued 2)

Nevertheless satisfactory proof is lacking. The analogies with Garnier’s Marc Antoine not accounted for by the obligation of both dramatists to Plutarch are very vague, and oddly enough seem vaguer in the translation than in the original. Of this there is a good example in Antony’s words when he recalls to his shame how his victor

There is similarity of motif, and even the suggestion of something more, in his outburst in Garnier:

But only the motif is left in the Countess of Pembroke’s rendering:

The alleged parallels are thus most apparent when Shakespeare is collated with the French, and of these the chief that do not come from Plutarch have already been quoted in the description of the Marc Antoine. They are neither numerous nor striking. Besides Antony’s disparagement of his rival’s soldiership there are only three that in any way call for remark. In Garnier, Cleopatra’s picture of her shade wandering beneath the cypress trees of the Underworld may suggest, in Shakespeare, her lover’s anticipation of Elysium, “where souls do couch on flowers” (A. and C. iv. xiv. 51); but there is a great difference in the tone of the context. Her dying utterance:

is in the wording not unlike the dying utterance of Antony:

but there is more contrast than agreement in the ideas. Above all, Cleopatra’s horror at the thought of her children being led in triumph through Rome and pointed at by the herd of citizens is close akin to the feeling that inspires similar passages in Shakespeare (A. and C. iv. xv. 23, v. ii. 55, v. ii. 207); but even here the resemblance is a little deceptive, since in Shakespeare she feels this horror for herself.

The correspondences between Shakespeare and Daniel are equally confined to detail, but they are more definite and more significant. It is Daniel who first represents Cleopatra as scorning to be made a spectacle in Rome; and her resentment at Caesar’s supposing

might have expressed itself in Shakespeare’s phrase,

Noteworthy, too, in the same passage, is her reluctance to pass before the injured Octavia, for there is no mention of this point in Plutarch, but Shakespeare touches on it twice. Further, her very noticeable references to her waning charms, her wrinkles, her declining years have their analogies in Shakespeare and in Shakespeare alone; for Plutarch expressly says that she was “at the age when a woman’s beawtie is at the prime.” The tenderness in tone of her address to the asp is common and peculiar to both English poets; and her adornment in preparation for death suggests to each of them, but not to Plutarch, her magnificence when she met Antony on the Cydnus.[63]

These coincidences are interesting, but they are not conclusive. They are none of them such as could not occur independently to two writers who vividly realised the meaning of Plutarch’s data; for he, as it were, gives the premises though he does not draw the inference. Thus he says nothing of Cleopatra’s disdain for the Roman populace, but he does make the knowledge that she must go to Rome determine her to die. He says nothing of her recoil from the thought of Octavia seeing her in her humiliation, but he does tell us of her jealousy of Octavia’s superior claims. He never hints that Cleopatra was past her bloom, but his praise of her as at her prime belongs to 41 b.c., and the closing incident to 30 b.c., when she was in her thirty-ninth year. He does not attribute to her any kindly greeting of the asp, but he does report that she chose it as providing the easiest and gentlest means of death. And though in describing her suicide he makes no reference to the meeting on the Cydnus, he dwells on the glorious array on both occasions, and the fancy naturally flies from one to the other. Each of these particulars separately might well suggest itself to more than one sympathetic reader. The most that can be said is that in their mass they have a certain cogency. In any case, however, characteristic and far-reaching as some of them are, they bear only on details of the conception.

The possible connection of Julius Caesar with the Cornélie is of a somewhat different kind. It is restricted almost entirely to the conversations between Cassius and Decimus Brutus on the one hand, and between Cassius and Marcus Brutus on the other. It is thought to show itself partly in particular expressions, partly in the general situation. So far as the former are concerned, it is neither precise nor distinctive; and it is rather remarkable that, as in the case of the Marc Antoine, more is to be said for it when Shakespeare’s phraseology is compared with that of the original than when it is compared with that of the translation.[64] In regard to the latter M. Bernage, the chief advocate of the theory, writes:

In the English play (Julius Caesar), as in our own, Brutus and Cassius have an interview before the arrival of the Dictator; the subject of their conversation is the same; it is Cassius too who “strikes so much show of fire” (fait jaillir l’etincelle) from the soul of Brutus.... These characters are painted by Garnier in colours quite similar (to Shakespeare’s), and he is momentarily as vigorous and great. In like manner ... Caesar crosses the stage after the interview of the two conspirators; he is moreover accompanied by Antony.[65]

In the whole tone and direction of the dialogue, too, Shakespeare resembles Garnier and does not resemble Plutarch. The Life records one short sentence as Brutus’ part of the colloquy, while Cassius does nothing more than explain the importance of the anonymous letters and set forth the expectations that Rome has formed of his friend. There is no denunciation in Plutarch of Caesar either for his overgrown power or for his “feeble temper”; there is no lament for the degeneracy of the Romans; there is no reference to the expulsion of the kings or appeal to Brutus’ ancestry; all of these matters on which both the dramatists insist. And at the end the two friends are agreed on their policy and depart to prosecute their plans, while in Garnier as in Shakespeare Brutus comes to no final decision.

It would be curious if this conjecture were correct, and if this famous scene had influenced Shakespeare as it was to influence Alexander. There would be few more interesting cases of literary filiation, for, as we have seen, there is no doubt that here Garnier bases and improves on Grévin, and that Grévin bases and improves on Muretus; so the genealogy would run Muretus, Grévin, Garnier, Kyd, Shakespeare.

Here the matter may rest. The grounds for believing that Shakespeare was influenced by Garnier’s Marc Antoine are very slight; for believing that he was influenced by Daniel’s Cleopatra are somewhat stronger; that he was influenced by Garnier’s Cornélie are stronger still; but they are even at the best precarious. In all three instances the evidence brought forward rather suggests the obligation as possible than establishes it as certain. But it seems extremely likely that Shakespeare would be acquainted with dramas that were widely read and were written by persons none of whom can have been strange to him; and in that case their stateliness and propriety may have affected him in other ways than we can trace or than he himself knew.

Meanwhile the popular play had been going its own way, and among other subjects had selected a few from Roman history. We may be certain that slowly and surely it was absorbing some of the qualities that characterised the imitations of the classics; and this process was accelerated when university men, with Marlowe at their head, took a leading share in purveying for the London playhouse. The development is clearly marked in the general history of the drama. Of the Roman play in this transition phase, as treated by a scholar for the delectation of the vulgar, we have only one specimen, but it is a specimen that despite its scanty merit is important no less for the name of the author than for the mode of the treatment. That author was Thomas Lodge, so well known for his songs, novels, pamphlets, and translations. As dramatist he is less conspicuous, and we possess only two plays from his hand. In one of them, A Looking Glass for London and England, which gives a description of the corruption and repentance of Nineveh, and was acted in 1591, he co-operated with Robert Greene. Of the other,[66] The Wounds of Civill War: Lively set forth in the true Tragedies of Marius and Scilla: As it hath beene publicquely plaide in London, by the Right Honourable the Lord High Admirall his Servants, he was sole author, and it is with it that we are concerned. It was printed in 1594, but was probably composed some years earlier.[67] In any case it comes after the decisive appearance of Marlowe; but Lodge was far from rivalling that master or profiting fully by his example, and indeed is inferior to such minor performers as Peele or Greene. Moreover, in the present case he adds to his general dramatic disabilities, the incapacity to treat classical history aright. In this respect, indeed, he improves on the Senecan school by borrowing graphic minutiae from Plutarch, such as the prefiguration of Marius’ future glory in his infancy by the seven eagles, the account of the Gaul’s panic in Minturnae, or the unwilling betrayal of Antonius by the slave. But on the other hand he astonishes us by his failure to make use of picturesque incidents which he must have known; like Sulla’s flight for shelter to his rival’s house, the relief of Marius by the woman whom he had sentenced, the response of the exile from the ruins of Carthage. And even when he utilises Plutarch’s touches, Lodge is apt to weaken or travesty them in his adaptation. The incident of the eagles, though it furnishes two of the best passages in the play, illustrates the enfeeblement. Plutarch had said:

When Marius was but very young and dwelling in the contry, he gathered up in the lappe of his gowne the ayrie of an Eagle, in the which were seven young Eagles; whereat his father and mother much wondering, asked the Sooth-sayers, what that ment? They answered, that their sonne one day should be one of the greatest men in the world, and that out of doubt he should obtain seven times in his life the chiefest office of dignity in his contry.

Plutarch is not quite sure about the trustworthiness of this story, for the characteristic reason that “the eagle never getteth but two younge ones,” and his hesitation may have led Lodge to modify the vivid and improbable detail. Favorinus the Minturnian tells the story thus:

And this version, with only another slight variation, is repeated rather happily in the invented narrative of the presage of Marius’ death:

But the other two passages Lodge modernises beyond recognition and beyond decency.

Of the attempt on Marius’ life at Minturnae, Plutarch narrates very impressively:

Now when they were agreed upon it, they could not finde a man in the citie that durst take upon him to kill him; but a man of armes of the Gaules, or one of the Cimbres (for we finde both the one or the other in wryting) that went thither with his sword drawen in his hande. Now that place of the chamber where Marius lay was very darke, and, as it is reported, the man of armes thought he sawe two burninge flames come out of Marius eyen, and heard a voyce out of that darke corner, saying unto him: “O, fellowe, thou, darest thou come to kill Caius Marius?” The barbarous Gaule, hearing these words, ranne out of the chamber presently, castinge his sworde in the middest of the flower,[68] and crying out these wordes onely: “I can not kill Caius Marius.”

Here is Lodge’s burlesque with the Gaul nominated Pedro, whose name is as unsuitable to his language as is his language to his supposed nationality.

Pedro. Marius tu es mort. Speak dy preres in dy sleepe, for me sal cut off your head from your epaules, before you wake. Qui es stia?[69] What kinde of a man be dis?

Favorinus. Why, what delays are these? Why gaze ye thus?

Pedro. Notre dame! Jésu! Estiene! O my siniors, der be a great diable in ce eyes, qui dart de flame, and with de voice d’un bear cries out, “Villain, dare you kill Marius?” Je tremble; aida me, siniors, autrement I shall be murdered.

Pausanins. What sudden madness daunts this stranger thus?

Pedro. O, me no can kill Marius; me no dare kill Marius! adieu, messieurs, me be dead, si je touche Marius. Marius est un diable. Jesu Maria, sava moy!

exit fugiens.

Things are scarcely better in the episode of Antonius’ betrayal. Plutarch has told very simply how the poor man with whom the orator took refuge, wishing to treat him hospitably, sent a slave for wine, and how the slave, by requiring the best quality for the distinguished guest, provoked the questions of the drawer. In Lodge the unsuspecting serving man becomes a bibulous clown who blabs the secret in a drunken catch that he sings as he passes the soldiers:

Lodge is not more fortunate with his additions. Thus, after Sylla’s final resignation, two burghers with the very Roman names of Curtall and Poppy are represented as tackling the quondam dictator.

Curtall. And are you no more master-dixcator, nor generality of the soldiers?

Sylla. My powers do cease, my titles are resign’d.

Curtall. Have you signed your titles? O base mind, that being in the Paul’s steeple of honour, hast cast thyself into the sink of simplicity. Fie, beast!

Poppy. Nay, goodman Curtall, your discretions are very simple; let me cramp him with a reason. Sirrah, whether is better good ale or small-beer? Alas! see his simplicity that cannot answer me; why, I say ale.

Curtall. And so say I, neighbour.

Poppy. Thou hast reason; ergo, say I, ’tis better be a king than a clown. Faith, Master Sylla, I hope a man may now call ye knave by authority.

Even more impertinent, because they violate the truth of character and misrepresent an historical person, are some of the liberties Lodge takes with Marius. Such is the device with the echo, which he transfers from the love scenes of poetical Arcady, where it is quite appropriate, to the mountains of Numidia, where it would hardly be in place even if we disregarded the temperament and circumstances of the exile.

Yet Lodge was a competent scholar who was by and by to translate The Famous and Memourable Workes of Josephus, a Man of Much Honour and Learning among the Jewes, and the Works both Moral and Natural of Lucius Annaeus Seneca. And already in this play he makes Sylla’s genius, invisible to all, summon him in Latin Elegiacs audible only to him. If then the popular scenes in Shakespeare’s Roman plays do not make a very Roman impression, it should be remembered that he is punctilious in comparison with the University gentleman who preceded him. Nor did the fashion of popularising antique themes with vulgar frippery from the present die out when Shakespeare showed a more excellent way. There is something of very much the same kind in Heywood’s Rape of Lucrece which was published in 1608.

But these superficial laches are not the most objectionable things in the play. There is nothing organic in it. Of course its neglect of the unities of time and place is natural and right, but it is careless of unity in structure or even in portraiture. The canvas is crowded with subordinate figures who perplex the action without producing a vivid impression of their own characters. A few are made distinct by insistence on particular traits, like Octavius with his unbending civic virtue, or Antonius with his ‘honey-dropping’ and rather ineffectual eloquence, or Lepidus with his braggard temporising. The only one of them who has real individuality is the younger Marius, insolent, fierce, and cruel, but full of energy and filial affection, and too proud to survive his fortunes. He perhaps is the most consistent and sympathetic person in the piece; which of itself is a criticism, for he occupies a much less important place than the two principals, expressly announced as the heroes in the title-page. It is difficult even to guess the intention of the author in this delineation of them, and in any case the result is not pleasing. Marius, despite a certain amount of tough fortitude—which for the rest is not so indomitable as in Plutarch—and a rude magnanimity displayed in the imaginary scene with Sylla’s daughter and wife, is far from attractive; and it comes as a surprise that after all his violence and vindictiveness he should meet his death “with a reverend smile” in placid resignation. But with Sylla matters are worse. He would be altogether repulsive but for his courage, and Lodge seems to explain him and his career only by appealing to his own adopted epithet of Felix or Fortunate. His last words are:

And when, “to conclude his happiness,” his sumptuous funeral is arranged, Pompey expresses the same idea in the lines that close the play:

The problem of his strange story is not so much stated as implied, and far less is there any attempt at a solution. After all his blood-guiltiness, he too, like Marius, passes away in peace, but with him the peacefulness rises to the serenity of a saint or sage. To his friend he exclaims:

To his wife, who soon after asks:

he replies still more devoutly:

There is thus no meaning in the story. The rival leaders are equally responsible for the Wounds of Civil War, but end as happily as though they had been benefactors of society. And this is by no means presented as an example of tragic irony, in which case something might be said for it, but as the natural, fitting, and satisfactory conclusion. Yet Plutarch tells of Marius’ sleeplessness, drunkenness, and perturbation, and of Sylla‘s debaucheries and disease. These were hints, one might have thought, that would have suited the temper of an Elizabethan dramatist; but Lodge passes them over.

It is the same with the public story. If Rome is left in quiet it is only because Sylla’s ruthlessness has been ‘fortunate’; it is not represented as the rational outcome of what went before, nor is there any suggestion of what was to follow after.

The merit of the play, such as it is, lies in its succession of stirring scenes—but not the most stirring that might have been selected—from the career of two famous personalities in the history of a famous State. It is almost incredible that in barely more than half a dozen years after its publication London playgoers were listening to Julius Caesar with its suggestive episodes, its noble characterisation, and full realisation of what the story meant.

Yet Lodge’s play is probably as good as any of those based on Roman History till Shakespeare turned his attention to such subjects. The titles of a number of others have come down to us. Some of these are of early date and may have approximated to the type of Apius and Virginia. Others would attempt the style of Seneca, either after the crude fashion of Gorboduc or subsequently under the better guidance of the French practitioners; and among these later Senecans were distinguished men like Lord Brooke, who destroyed a tragedy on Antony and Cleopatra in 1601, and Brandon, whose Vertuous Octavia, written in 1598, still survives.[71] In others again there may have been an anticipation or imitation of the more popular manner of Lodge. But the fact that they were never published, or have been lost, or, in one or two cases where isolated copies are extant, have not been thought worth reprinting, affords a presumption that their claims are inferior, and that in them no very characteristic note is struck. It is pretty safe to suppose that they did not contain much instruction for Shakespeare, and that none of them would bridge the gap between Lodge’s medley and Shakespeare’s masterpiece.

The progress made since the middle of the century was, of course, considerable. A pioneer performance, like Apius and Virginia, had the merit of pushing beyond the landmarks of the old Morality, and of bringing Roman story within the ken of English playgoers, but it did nothing more. It treated this precisely as it might have treated any other subject, and looked merely to the lesson, though, no doubt, it sought to make the lesson palatable with such dramatic condiments as the art of the day supplied. The Senecans, inspired by the Octavia, make a disinterested effort to detach and set forth the conception of old Roman greatness, as it was given that age to understand it, and these productions show no impropriety and much literary skill, but the outlines and colours are too vague to admit of reality or life. Lodge is realistic enough in his way, but it is by sacrificing what is significant and characteristic, and submerging the majesty of ancient Rome in the banalities and trivialities of his own time. No dramatist had been able at once to rise to the grandeur of the theme and keep a foothold on solid earth, to reconcile the claims of the ideal and the real, the past and the present. That was left for Shakespeare to do.