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AUTHOR: COULTER, CORNELIA TITLE: PLAUTINE TRADITION IN SHAKESPEARE PLACE: [ILLINOIS] DA TE : [1 920] COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT Master Negative # BIBLIOGRAPHIC MTCRGFORM TARCFT J T7..:_t: 0;KI;^o.,^„Kio Po/-r,rH Restrictions on Use: i3K3/p K'UU fv'ecor d J f- li): MYC(i CC: 9668 CP: iJu PC: m\) ■ 0^0 100 i 2'1S I^ 260 300 i.on Ul) Books rUL/blB NYCG92-eiOi/2 of - K'ocord added today ST RrYP:a CSC:? MOD C^PC:? BiO REP:? CPl DM: RR: P ■? 9 SNR FlC FSJ COL Acquisitions HYCG-PT MS: EL ATC CON ILC EML 92-liloi/2 HLT :afTi OCF :? L:etiq INf :? PU:I920/ OR: POL: MNCIcNNC Coulter, Cornelia C. U,e PlauMne iradition u. Shakespeare^hf mi crof orn, | J/ i,.p!^^^^^^'' 'University of 11 1 inois. ^cI920 | , OR Hi 02-12-92 ?7? • • • 777? AD:02-12-92 UO: 02-12-92 II:? BEN: 8SE: TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA REDUCTION RATIO: //>- FILM SIZ3:__ IMAGE PLACEMENT: lA ^HA^ IB IIB DATE FILMED:__^^^22^4^ INITIALS HLMEDBY: RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS. 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Commonplaces in Elizabethan Life and Letters 65 which contribute to the final development of Bacon's essays belonged to the general literary practice of the time and were specifically of the kind which Bacon would be expected to employ in the process of elaboration, which, in point of fact, he did employ in his regular compositions and which he did not derive from other essayists or aphorists. But the purpose of this paper is not to establish Bacon's entire independence of literary models; it is intended only to indicate the extent of the liking which men in the sixteenth century had for a species of didactic sententiousness and the natural emergence from that taste of the style of essay-writing of which the pointed sentence consti- tutes the nucleus and prevailing unit and of which the greatest representative was Francis Bacon. Jacob Zeitlin University of Illinois 66 Coulter THE PLAUTINE TRADITION IN SHAKESPEARE For the student of the history of literature, the plays of Plautus and Terence have a unique value; they are the only complete representatives of the Greek Comedy of Manners, and they serve in turn as the inspiration of dramatists of the Renaissance throughout the whole of Western Europe. Stand- ing midway in the long line, they gather up the most significant traits of their predecessors to hand on to their descendants. The tradition, to be sure, is not unbroken. Though Saint Jerome confessed that many a time in his unregenerate days, Plautus sumebatur in manus, and though the pious nun of Gandersheim lamented the fondness of the clergy for the unchaste dramas of Terence, the elder poet soon ceased to be read at all, and the younger was valued chiefly for his sapienter dicta } But with the Revival of Learning, the Latin dramatists regained their prestige. Both Petrarch and Boccaccio copied manuscripts of Terence with their own hands, and both expressed in no measured terms their admiration for the genius of Plautus. Editions, commentaries, and translations into Italian, French, and German followed, together with perform- ances of the plays, both in Latin and in the vernacular. Italy took the lead in these productions: the Asinaria was given about 1485 in the University of Rome, the Menaechmi in 1488 at a school in Florence, and in 1502 at the Vatican; and the courts of Ferrara and Mantua witnessed eleven different plays of Plautus and three of Terence within this same period (1486- 1502). It was a young poet of Ferrara, Lodovico Ariosto, who wove together threads from half a dozen Latin plays to make the first Italian comedy, La Cassaria (1498?). Bibbiena's Calandria (a variation on the theme of the Menaechmi) , Mac- chiavelli's Clizia (from the Casino) ^ and a host of others, carried on the tradition. In these dramas, classical elements gradually combined with philosophic and romantic themes, and with popular improvised material from the Commedia dell' * See W. Creizenach, Geschichte des neueren Dramas (Halle, 1893-1909), Vol. I, pp. 1-46. The Plautine Tradition in Shakespeare 67 Arte. There resulted a well-defined type of comedy, with plots closely akin to the Latin; stock figures like the Pantaloon (in the garb of a Magnifico of Venice), the Pedant or Doctor, the Spanish Captain, and the Zanni (a servant, half rascal, half clown, who generally spoke Bergamask dialect); and a recog- nized set of laughter-producing devices called lazzi.^ At the same time there was growing up on Italian soil a form of literature destined to exert a powerful influence on the development of comedy. The prose tales of Boccaccio, Ban- dello, Cinthio, and Straparola, gathered from all quarters of the globe— bits of distorted classical mythology and history, marve- lous stories from the East, and the humorous scenes from real life depicted in the French fabliaux — dealt with many of the same characters and presented many of the same situations as the classical Comedy of Manners. For some of these similari- ties, we need no further explanation than the universality of human nature; others may perhaps be ascribed to descent from a common ancestor — the Euripidean auaypupLais, for instance, coming down by one line through Greek New Comedy and its Latin adaptations, and by another through the Greek and the mediaeval romances. To the dramatist of Italy, and of France and Spain as well, the novelle offered a wealth of congenial mate- rial, of which he was not slow to avail himself. Thus ty^pical figures like the duped parent and the jealous lover attained a double popularity, and the trickery, disguises, and mistaken identity of the novella added many a merry incident to the complications of the stage.^ In Germany and Holland, where the interest in Latin comedy was fostered by schoolmasters intent upon improving both the minds and the morals of their young pupils, a different sort of 2 Creizenach, GeschkfUe, Vol. I, pp. 532, 572-583; Vol. II, pp. 1-22; 217-226; 235-302; 351-359. Cf. J. W. Cunliffe, Ed. Gascoigne's Supposes and Jocasta (Boston, 1906), Introd., pp. ix-xxiv; R. Warwick Bond, Early Plays from tlie Italian (Oxford, 1911), Introd., pp. xvii-1; W. Smith, Tlie Commedia deW Arte (New York, 1912), pp. 1-102. > On the romance and its literary relationships, see J. C, Dunlop, History oj Prose Fiction^ Revised Edition, London, 1911; E. Rohde, Der griechische Roman, Revised Edition, Leipzig, 1914; S. L. Wolif, The Greek Romances in Elizabethan Prose Fiction, New York, 1912; and the introduction by J. E. Edmonds and appendix by S. Gaselee to the edition of Longus in the Loeb Classical Library, London, 1916. 68 Coulter drama arose, the so-called "Christian Terence." This type of play was written in Latin, and aimed to combine the technique and atmosphere of a Roman comedy with an edifying story from Holy Writ. The Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha all furnished material, but by far the most popular theme was the story of the Prodigal Son. The Asotus of Macropedius (c. 1510?) and the Acolastus of Gnapheus (1529) follow the Biblical narrative with very little change; Macropedius's Rehelles (1535) and Petriscus (1536), and the Sttidentes of Stymmelius (1549) shift the scene to school or university, but still inculcate the same moral."* England, too, felt the inspiration of the Latin dramatists. At both Oxford and Cambridge, statutes regulating the produc- tion of comedies and tragedies point to a custom of acting already well established by the middle of the 1 6th Century; and of the seventy-odd plays known to have been performed at those universities between 1547 and 1583, twenty-three were by Plautus and Terence.^ The Andria had been translated into English as early as 1497, and was reprinted at least three times before the end of the year 1588;^ while selections from the first three plays of Terence were gathered into Nicholas Udall's Flouresjor Latine spekynge (1534-35). Jacke Jugeler (1553-58?) gives the Mercury-Sosia scene of the Amphitruo in an English setting, and Ralph Roister Doister (1552-54?) is a free adaptation of the Miles Gloriosus. Both these early plays, as well as the more popular Gammer Our tori's Needle (1550-53?), show the beneficent influence of the classics in structure, though the originality of the characterization and the freshness of the English atmosphere raise them far above the level of mere imitations. Nor did the classical influence cease with direct borrowings from the Latin. German education-drama, carried to England * G. H. Herford, Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany in the 16th Century (Cambridge, 1886), pp. 70-164; M. \V. Wallace, Ed. of The Birlhe oj Hercules (Chicago, 1903), Introd., pp. 45-59; Creizenach, Geschichte, Vol. Ill, pp. 246-249, 352-412; Bond, Early Plays, Introd., pp. xci-cviii. * F. S. Boas, University Drama in the Tudor Age (Oxford, 1914), pp. 16-18; 386-389. The performance of the Adelphi at Queen's College, Cambridge, in 1547-8, which Boas mentions on p. 18, is omitted from the list on p. 386. * C. F. Tucker Brooke, The Tudor Drama (Boston, 1911), p. 156. The Plautine Tradition in Shakespeare 69 by the translation of the Acolastus in 1540, must have left its mark on the work of the schoolmasters, although the Latin dramas of Udall and Radcliffe of Hitchin have perished, and the only remaining examples of '^Schulkomodie" in the manu- scripts of Oxford and Cambridge show more Italian than German influence.^ The Prodigal appears in two interludes written about 1550 — Nice Wanton, and The Disobedient Child of Thomas Ingelend — and the same theme is handled with greater art by George Gascoigne in The Glasse of Government. Meanwhile, Italian plays like Ariosto's / Suppositi had been translated into English, and Italian romances had found their way into England (sometimes through French or Spanish translations) in collections like Painter's Palace of Pleasure. Troupes of Italian actors, too, had passed from the capitals of the Continent to London, and had given many a splendid production before the court. Striking testimony to the per- formance, not only of written drama, but of improvised comedy, is to be found in allusions to the stock roles of Italian drama. The scene-headings and stage directions of the earliest editions of Shakespeare's plays refer to certain characters as ''the Brag- gart," ''the Pedant," "a pantaloon" {Love's Labour's Lost III A] IV.2;V.1;V.2; Taming of the Shrew I A). Biron,in Love's Labour's Lost V.2. 545, lists "the pedant, the braggart, the hedge-priest, the fool, and the boy" ; and Jaques includes the lover, the soldier, "the lean and slippered pantaloon" in the "many parts" of man- kind's "seven ages" {As You Like It II.7.139-166). "The old pantaloon" is referred to in The Taming of the Shrew IIL1.37, and "the magnifico" in Othello 1.2.12 seems to have the same stereotyped meaning. "Zany" is used in the proverbial sense of "fool" in Love's Labour's Lost V.2.463 and Twelfth Night 1.5.96, and it is barely possible that the "Bergomask dance" of Mid- summer Night's Dream V. 1.360 had some connection with the Zanni from Bergamo. Allusions to improvising {Antony and Cleopatra V.2.216-17; Hamlet II.2.420) and to mountebanks {Hamlet IV.7.142; Othello 1.3.61; Coriolanus IIL2.132) show familiarity with the Commedia dell' Arte; and the mountebank ' See the synopses of the Bellum Grammaticak and Paedantius by G. B. Churchill and W. Keller in Shakespeare- J ahrbuch 34 (1898), pp. 271-281, and the discussion in Boas, University Drama, pp. 148-156, 255-265. 70 Coulter scene in Jonson*s Volfone (II. 1) has all the characteristic traits of the improvised farce.* In English drama of the Elizabethan period we may there- fore expect to find the native elements which already existed in the moralities and interludes touched by two new influences, one introduced directly from the Latin, the other filtering through Dutch and German education-drama and Italian drama and romance. Shakespeare, **soul of the age," could hardly have escaped these influences. As to his knowledge of education- drama we have no direct evidence, but his acquaintance with the work of Italian "professionals" is evident from the passages just quoted, and the characterization of the actors for whom "Seneca can not be too heavy, nor Plautus too light" {Hamlet II.2. 418-419) testifies to his familiarity with the general types of Latin drama. Whenever a translation was available, Shake- speare seems to have preferred it to the original; but he probably knew enough Latin to extract the plot of a play, had a working knowledge of French, and was not altogether ignorant of Italian.® And in addition to all the suggestions that might reach him in print, he undoubtedly heard much talk on the literary topics of his day, and witnessed the production of a host of plays, of which even the names are lost to us.^° It is the purpose of this paper to examine the plays of Shake- speare for traces of the Plautine tradition, both direct and indirect. The threads are so interwoven that it is practically impossible to separate the two, and in most cases it is useless to attempt to discover direct borrowings. Even general resem- blances must be noted with caution; for horseplay and farcical tricks are common to all climes and ages, and it is even possible that, given similar circumstances, the same comic type might arise independently — as the figure of the braggart soldier * Cf. Smith, Commedia ddV Arte, pp. 141-199. •H. R. D. Anders, Shakespeare's Books (Berlin, 1904), pp. 6-73. The results of this study are summarized by W. A. Neilson and A. H. Thomdike in The Facts about Shakespeare (New York, 1913), pp. 50-59. ^^ Cf. the famous assertion of Stephen Gosson, in Playes confuted in five actions (1582): "I may boldely say it, because I have seene it, that the Palace of pleasure, the Golden Asse, the i^thiopian historie, Amadis of Frauncc, the Rounde table, baudie Comedies in Latine, French, Italian, and Spanish, have beene thoroughly ransackt to furnish the Playe houses in London." The Plautine Tradition in Shakespeare 71 actually did in Greece of the 4th Century B.C. and in 16th Century Italy. ^^ But after all these allowances have been made, certain features remain to prove indisputably Shakespeare's kinship with the Latin comic poets. We may note, first of all, resem- blances in the external form of the play. The ancient Roman stage normally represented a street, with three house doors.^^ In the written comedies of Renaissance Italy the scene was regularly a street or square, with houses of three dimensions at the back, and the painted canvas for the improvised plays nearly always showed three main houses, with a balcony on the middle house and perhaps on each of the other two.^ The text of the earliest English comedies implies a similar setting — in Jacke Jugeler, the house of Maister Boungrace; in Ralph Roister Doister, the house of Dame Custance; in Gammer Gur- ton^s Needle, the houses of Gammer Gurton and Dame Chat." In Shakespeare, aside from the numerous scenes of locality undetermined to which modern editors prefix "A Street," "An Open Place," etc., there are some in which the action unques- tionably requires a house as the background. This is the case — to cite only a few instances — when Antipholus of Syracuse is led in to dine with Adriana, whereas the true master of the house, arriving later, finds the door locked {Comedy of Errors, II.2;III.l); when Jessica, after Shylock's injunction to go in and shut the doors, opens the casement to her lover and then steals away with him {Merchant of Venice II. 5; II.6); and when " Gr. Senigaglia, Capitan Spavento (Florence, 1899), pp. 24-33. On the general resemblance between these two periods, see also Bond, Early Plays, Introd., pp. xxii-xxiii. " The three entrances (a heritage from the royal palace of Greek tragedy) seem to have been represented even when the action of the play required only one house, as in the Amphitruo of Plautus, or two houses, as in the Adelpki of Terence. See Dziatzko-Hauler, Ed. Phormio (Leipzig, 1913), Introd., p. 36. The action of the Rudens of Plautus was supposed to take place on the seashore, and that of the Heauton Timorumenos of Terence in the country, but we do not know exactly how the scenes of these plays were represented. " Bond, Early Plays, Introd., p. xliii; Smith, Contniedm Dell* Arte, pp. 116- 117. " If we might assume that, at the beginning of Act III, Hodge follows a convention of Latin comedy and speaks back into the house of Sym Glover (Cf . Plaut Cure. 223-228; MU. 411-414; Ter. Adelph. 511-516; Phorm. 51), Gamtncr Gurton's Needle would present an exact parallel to the classical setting. 72 Coulter lago's cries of "What, ho! Thieves!*' rouse Brabantio to the discovery of Desdemona's flight (Othello I. 1). The prologue had been characteristic of classical drama from the time of Euripides. In Plautine comedy, it took the form of a greeting to the audience, with a statement of the setting and a summary of the plot, which was delivered sometimes by a special Prologus {Captivi, Casina, Menaechmi)^ sometimes by a supernatural being (the Lar Familiaris in the AululariOy Arc- turus in the Rudens) or a personified abstraction (Auxilium in the Cistellariay Luxuria in the Trinumnms), sometimes by one of the characters in the play (Mercury in the Amphitruo^ Charinus in the Mercator). One Leone de Sommi, an actor- manager of 16th Century Italy, gives special commendation to the prologue "in the manner of the ancients," spoken by the poet or his representative, clad in a toga and wearing a crown of laurel. ^^ We may picture such a figure appearing to deliver the graceful sonnets at the beginning of Acts I and II of Romeo and Juliet, or to herald the splendid deeds of each act of Henry V. "Rumour, painted full of tongues," in the Induction to 2 Henry IV, and "Time, the Chorus," at the beginning of Act IV of The Winter^s Tale, correspond roughly to Plautus's allegorical figures. And though there is no play in which one of the characters gives the necessary information in a direct address to the audience, the long speeches of Aegeon to the Duke in the first scene of The Comedy of Errors, and of Lucentio to Tranio at the opening of The Taming of the Shrew, perform exactly the same function. ^^ The Epilogues spoken by a dancer in 2 Henry IV and by the actor who had played Rosalind in i45 Yoii Like It correspond roughly to the dismissal of the audience by the caterva in Plautus (Captivi, Cistellaria, etc.) The last words of the King in AlVs Well and of Prospero in The Tempest run directly into the Epilogue, as in the Mercator and Pseudolus; and "Your gentle hands lend us," "With the help " Cf. Misogonus, Prologue, 1.18. De Sommi's dialogue is quoted in Smith, Commedia delV Arte, pp. 69-77. On prologue and epilogue in English drama, see W. Creizenach, The English Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (Philadelphia, 1916; an English translation, with additions and corrections, of Vol. IV, Books I- VIII, of Professor Creizenach's Geschichte des netieren Dramas), pp. 275-277. " In the Menaechmi of Plautus, the Latin original of Tlte Comedy of Errors, the information is given by the Prologue. The Plautine Tradition in Shakespeare 73 of your good hands," are faint echoes of the Plautine plaudite}'' In view of the numerous Latin comedies that close either with a banquet on the stage or with the mention of one behind the scenes, it is perhaps significant that The Comedy of Errors ends with an invitation to dinner. The Two Gentlemen of Verona with the promise of a marriage feast, and The Taming of the Shrew with the feast itself .^^ Other resemblances in form are probably accidental. One might draw a neat parallel between Plautus's variation of lyric and simple dialogue meters, and Shakespeare's alternation of verse and prose, especially when the senarius of the Latin poet and the prose of the English bring a distinct lowering of emo- tional tone.^^ It is interesting to note that letters, which Shakespeare regularly casts in prose,-'^ are composed in iambic senarii, breaking in upon a lyric scene, in three different passages in Plautus.^^ The plots of Shakespeare's plays, too, contain Plautine elements — though all these elements are found in the romances as well, and it seems probable that in most cases they reached Shakespeare through the latter channel rather than by direct descent from Plautus and Terence. The Roman dramatists had made much of mistaken identity, whether due to natural resemblance or to the deliberate assumption of another role. Italian comedy took up the idea with particular zest, adding '" The Prologues and Epilogues of Troilus and Cressida and Hefiry VII I also follow the classical model, but are probably not by Shakespeare. i« This feature may be a survival from Old Comedy, since the Lysi strata and Pax of Aristophanes likewise end with a banquet. The feasting takes place on the stage in Plautus's Asinaria, Pcrsa, and Stichiis; is anticipated in the Bacchides, Curculio, Pseudolus, and Rudens of Plautus and the Phormio of Terence. Cf. Ralph Roister Doister, V. 4. 16-18; Gammer Gurtons Needle V. 2. 326; Buggbears V. 9. 69-71. »' The contrast is of course more marked in the "innumcris numeris" of Plautus than in the comparatively simple meters of Terence. Amph. 463-498, Most. 747-782, Rid. 1338-1356, and Trin. 998-1007 furnish especially good examples. 20 With rare exceptions, such as the sonnets of Love's Labour's Lost IV. 3 and AWs Well III. 4, and the rhymed verse of All's Well IV. 3 and Hamlet II. 2. 2» Bacch. 997-1035; Pers. 501-527; Psetid. 998-1014. The letters of Asin. 751-807, Cure. 429-436, and Pseud. 41-73 occur in the middle of iambic scenes; in Bacch. 734-747 the trochaics of the remainder of the scene are used for the letter. 74 Coulter one complication to another until the plots passed even the most remote limits of possibility.^ The comparatively simple theme of the Menaechmi, the confusion resulting from the likeness between twin brothers, is taken over by Shakespeare for The Comedy of Errors; but the situation is complicated by the addi- tion of a double for the serving-man — a suggestion which, as a German critic pointed out half a century ago, may have come from the Amphitruo.^ The underplot of The Taming of the Shrew borrows from Gascoigne's Supposes (a translation of Ariosto's Suppositi) two disguise motives, one of which is closely paralleled in Plautus. Just as the wandering Sycophant is hired to pose as a messenger from Charmides, and, all unwitting, confronts old Charmides himself (Trin. 843-997), so a Pedant from Mantua is induced to play the part of Lucentio^s father, Vin- centio, and is summoned to the door by the knock of "the right Vincentio" (IV. 2; IV. 4; V. 1). The other motive is a composite of several situations in classical comedy. The Captivi represents a noble-minded slave who, when he and his master are prisoners of war, assumes his master's dress and name, so that the latter may escape. In the EunuchuSj too, an exchange of clothing takes place, but this time the object is to give Chaerea access to the girl with whom he is in love. Similarly, in the AmphitrtiOy Jupiter and Mercury take the forms of Amphitruo and his slave Sosia, in order that Jupiter may enjoy Amphitruo's wife. The lover in Shakespeare's play first arranges that his servant Tranio shall "keep house and port and servants" in his stead, and then, in the guise of a pedant, presents himself as a tutor for his lady.^ Of the farcical " On the whole subject of disguise in drama, see V. O. Freeburg, Disguise Plots in Elizabethan Drama (New York, 1915). Cf. Creizenach, English Dramas pp. 220-223. The theme is of course common in the literature of the East and in mediaeval romances which are quite indep>endent of Latin influence. ^ M. Rapp, Geschichte des griechischen Schauspiels (Tubingen, 1862), p. 342, quoted by K. von Reinhardstoettner, Plautus: Spdtere Bearbeilungen plautin- ischer Lustpiele (Leipzig, 1886), pp. 574-575. The similarity of Comedy of Errors J I. 2, II. 2, III. 1, III. 2, IV. 1, IV. 4, V. 1, to scenes in the Amphitruo was noted by Paul Wislicenus, Zwei neuentdcckte S hakes peare-Quellen^ in Die Liter- atury 1874, Nos. 1 and 3 (reviewed in Shakes peare- J akrhuch 9 [1874], p. 330). " Ariosto, in the prologue to the prose version of / Suppositi (quoted by Bond, Early Plays, Introd., p. lii) acknowledges his debt to the Eunuchus and the Captivi. The PlatUine Tradition in Shakespeare 75 developments of this idea, so frequent in Italian comedy, there is a hint in The Merry Wives of Windsor IV. 2, where Mistress Ford hustles Falstaff into the gown of "my maid's aunt, the fat woman of Brainford," and then stands by to see him "most unpitifully" beaten by Master Ford. In a variant which is not found in Plautus and occurs in only a few scattering instances in Italian drama, but is repeated- ly employed by English playwrights, a character assumes dis- guise for the purpose of watching unobserved. The Duke in Measure for Measure announces his intention of quitting the city, but actually remains, in the garb of a friar, and takes an important part in the action. King Polixenes attends the sheep- shearing in disguise, in order to spy upon the love-affairs of his son (Winter^ s Tale IV.4). And in Lear, the banished Kent, returning in humble guise, and the outlawed Edgar, as "poor Tom,'^ still wait upon their king. Another off-shoot — and by far the most popular — represents a woman "caparisoned like a man." Julia, Portia, Rosalind, Viola, Imogen, all have their prototypes in Italian drama and romance, although the surpassing charm of these heroines is due to Shakespeare alone. The additional complication which gives to Viola a twin brother exactly like her, is found in Italian literature again and again. The reverse of this figure, the "Boy Bride," comes much more directly from Latin comedy. The story of the old man who married a fair maiden, only to find her a boy in disguise, was handled by Plautus in the Casina, enjoyed some popularity on the Italian stage, and received its most notable treatment in Jonson's Epicoene, or the Silent Woman. Shakespeare has only two faint reminiscences of this situation — in the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew (borrowed from the earlier Taming of a Shrew), where a lad plays "madam wife" to Christopher Sly, and in the closing scene of The Merry Wives, where Dr. Caius and Slender are duped. Each snatches from the troop of fairies a dancer whom he supposes to be sweet Anne Page, and then each discovers that he has married "oon garsoon," "a great lubberly boy."^^ * Students of folk ritual will notice the resemblance of the disguised dancers of The Merry Wives to the "Bessy" or "Maid Marian" of sword play or morris dance, and may be inclined to trace all these figures back to the primitive ceremonial whereby men and women exchanged clothing. 76 Coulter Another constantly recurring motive in New Comedy (especially in Menander) is the restoration of a long-lost son or daughter.26 Sometimes the child has been separated from its parents by an accident ;2^ sometimes it is a love-child and has been exposed to preserve the mother's good name.^^ This motive occurs in three of Shakespeare's plays {Comedy of Errors, Winter's Tale, and Cymheline), and in the first and last was apparently added by him to the plot as he found it in his sources. The Comedy of Errors differs slightly from its original in making a storm at sea responsible for the separation of the family, whereas in the Menaechmi one son strays away in a crowd; the kidnapping of the two little princes in Cymbeline corresponds to the loss of Hanno's daughters in the Poenulus; and the voyage of Antigonus to **the deserts of Bohemia," with the cruelly slandered babe of Leontes {Winter's Tale III.3) recalls the mission of Lampadio in the Cistellaria. The "most curious mantle, wrought by the hand of his queen mother," which proves the identity of Arvigarus, "a, mole, a sanguine star," upon the neck of Guiderius {Cymbeline V.5. 360-368), and "the mantle of Queen Hermione's, her jewel about the neck of it, the letters of Antigonus found with it," which pro- claim Perdita the king's daughter {Winter's Tale V.2. 36-38), are exactly like the "tokens" of classical comedy .^^ * The story of Pericles, with its marvelous conglomeration of perils by land and by sea, treasures washed up by the waves, and the reunion of the long- separated father, mother, and daughter, is based on the mediaeval romance of Apollonius of Tyre. For the interaction between drama and romance, see p. 67 above. "Plautus, Captivi, CurcuUo, Epidicus, Menaechmi, Poenulus, Rjtdens; Terence, Andria, Eunuchus. Similarly, in Supposes, the five-year-old son of Cleander is lost at the sack of Otranto. 28 Plautus, Casina, Cistellaria; Terence, Adelphi, Hecyra. In Terence's Heauton Timor umenos the child of a legal marriage is exposed simply because of her undesirable sex. Misogonus represents the elder of twin sons as being "sent away" at birth, without adequate reason. 29 A casket of crepundia is mentioned in Plautus's Cistellaria and Terence's Eunuchus, and the tiny trinkets are described in the Epidicus and Rudens of Plautus. (Cf. the Ion of Euripides.) "Privie marks" have a precedent in the scar on the left hand of Agorastocles (Plant. Poen. 1073-1074), and the scar on the brow of Orestes in the Eiectra of Euripides. Similarly, the identity of Eugonus in Misogonus is established by a sixth toe, and that of Dulipo in Supposes by a mole on the left shoulder. The Plautine Tradition in Shakespeare 77 Perhaps the most common means of identification in Greek and Latin drama is the ring snatched by the mother of the child from the hand of its father on the night of their one meeting. This motive reappears, in a somewhat different setting, in ^//'^ Well IV.2, V.3, where two rings are brought forth to prove that Bertram, under the impression that he was meeting Diana, has really wedded Helena. The exchange of rings also figures, in connection with disguise, in the plots of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merchant of Venice, and Twelfth Night}^ Some of the characters in Shakespeare's plays show a remote resemblance to their classical forbears. Beyond an occasional hint of lowly rank {Winter's Tale, Tempest), which could have come into English quite as readily through the romances as through Italian comedy, the heroine has little in common with the meretrices of Plautus. The hero, however, continues to be "a proper stripling and an amorous." Lucentio's undoing {Taming of the Shrew I A) recalls the fate of Antipho in the Phormio or Chaerea in the Eunuchus, and Romeo's rhapsody on love {Romeo and Juliet. 1. 1. 167-200) sounds the same note as the soliloquy of Alcesimarchus (Plaut. Cist. 203-228). Master and servant are still on familiar terms; witness Lucentio's out- pouring of his heart to Tranio {Taming of the Shrew LI. 153- 163), and the gibes of Speed at Valentine's doleful plight {Two Gentlemen ILL 18-33).^^ The balancing of one love-affair by another {Merchant of Venice), the portrayal of contrasted char- acters {Two Gentlemen), and the presentation of such problems as the conflict between love and duty or love and friendship {Two Gentlemen), all have parallels in Plautus and Terence.^^ 30 The ring taken by the girl figures in Terence's Adelphi, also in the Epi- trepontes of Menander and probably in the lost Auge of Euripides, while the plot of the Hecyra of Terence turns upon the ring snatched by the young man. Only the first of these motives appears in the story of Boccaccio (Third Day, Ninth Novel) upon which the plot of AlVs Well is based. A ring also brings about the recognition in the Curculi-o of Plautus and the Heautmi Timorumenos of Terence, although the circumstances are somewhat different. « Cf. Plaut. Asin. 616-637; Cure. 1-95; Poen. 129-197; Pseud. 3-128; Ter. Eun. 46-80. For some points in the discussion of comic characters, I am indebted to Bond, Early Plays, Introd., pp. xxix-xli; Smith, Commedia delVArte, pp. 4-10, 84-87; Creizenach, English Drama, pp. 294-312. « Two young men in love appear in the Bacchides, Epidicus, and Mostellaria of Plautus, and in all of Terence's plays except the Hecyra. The dutiful Lysiteles 78 Coulter The pater familias of Latin comedy was useful chiefly because he furnished (albeit unwillingly) the necessary funds for his son's romance. Sometimes the memory of his own wild oats made him tolerant of the young man's misdemeanors; more often he took an uncompromising stand as censor of morals and laudator temporis acti.^ In four plays of Plautus {Asinaria^ Bacchides, Casinaj Mercator), the old men cast lustful eyes at their sons' mistresses; in the Aululariay the rich old bachelor Megadorus makes an honorable request for the hand of the miser's daughter, without dowry. Italian dramatists took over these figures, and, by exaggerating their ridiculous aspects, developed the Pantaloon and the Pedant or Doctor, the former, as a rule, the father of hero or heroine, the latter often a suitor for the lady's hand. Both were unattractive figures, stupid, avaricious, amorous, and easily duped by the young people in the play. Shakespeare's treatment is much more kindly, but we can still recognize traits of the classical senex in the stern decrees of Antonio {Two Gentlemen 1.3) and Baptista {Taming oj the Shrew I.l), in Capulet's reminiscences of by-gone days {Romeo and Juliet 1.5), and in the "wise saws" of Polonius to Laertes {Hamlet 1.3). Silvia's father traps Valentine by the story of a coy lady whom his "aged eloquence" has failed to move {Two Gentlemen III.l. 76-136), and "old Signior Gremio" offers plate and gold, Tyrian tapestry and arras counterpoints, as dower for the fair Bianca {Taming of the Shrew II. 1. 347-364). The Pedant of The Taming of the Shrew is very faintly outlined, but Holofernes of Love's Labour^s Lost has the characteristic traits of the Italian Doctor. His speech is a hodge-podge of Latin and English ("scraps" from "a great feast of languages"); he talks pompously of Dictynna and Ovidius Naso, quotes a line from "good old Mantuan" and then caps it with an Italian couplet (IV. 2; V.l).^* Sir Hugh Evans, of The Merry Wives, b contrasted with the spendthrift Lesbonicus in the Trinummus of Plautus, and the apparent conflict between love and friendship complicates the plot of the Bacchides and the Adelphi. »3 Cf. Plant. Trin. 279-323; Ter. Heaut. 200-210. The father's moralizing tendencies are shared by Lydus, the paedagogus of the Bacchides. (Cf . especially 11.419-448.) "\V. Keller {Shakes pear e- J ahrhnch 34(1898,1 pp. 278-279) considers Holo- fernes indebted to the hero of the Cambridge University play Paedantius, and Sidney Lee {The French Renaissance in England, New York, 1910, pp. 423-427) The Plautine Tradition in Shakespeare 79 is drawn with a gentler hand, but he also airs his own learning when he asks young William Page "some questions in his accidence" (IV.l). Like his Italian predecessors, Sir Hugh talks with an accent, and his mixture of Welsh dialect and Latin must have given very much the same effect as the Bolognese dialect and Latin of Doctor Gratiano. In the comedies of Plautus the heroine was sometimes accompanied by an aged lena {Asinaria, Cistellaria, Curculio, Mostellaria); in those of Terence (following the Euripidean tradition), she was usually attended by a nurse or a faithful old slave {Adelphi, Eunuchus, Heauton Timorumenos, Phormio), The latter was a rather shadowy figure, not unkindly portrayed; the former was the personification of cruelty, inebriacy, and greed. These two figures merged in the Italign hallia, a gar- rulous old woman who acted as go-between for the lovers. Such a character survives in Dame Quickly of The Merry Wives (especially 1.4; III.4) and, most notably, in Juliet's nurse. A trace of the nurse's coarseness lingers, too, in younger maids who act as confidantes for their mistresses— Lucetta in The Two Gentlemen, Margaret in Much Ado, Emilia in Othello. The slave, who was always the chief fun-maker, and often the most important actor, of classical comedy, passes over into the resourceful servant of Italian drama, and thence into the English clown— a character who retains all the humorous possibilities of the Latin servus, although he no longer controls the plot. Like the Plautine slave, he is given to quibbles and retorts {Two Gentlemen 11.5)^^ and to abuse of other servants {Romeo and Juliet I. 1);^ he soliloquizes {Taming of the Shrew IV.l)," holds mock-serious debates with himself {Merchant of Venice 11. 2), ^^ and addresses remarks directly to the audience {Two Gentlemen 11.3) f he shows the same pretended stupidity thinks that he detects in the dialogue of Love's Labour's Lost IV. 2, Merry Wives IV. 1, and Taming of the Shrew III. 1 the influence of French plays on Italian models, especially Le Fiddle and Le Uquais of Larivey. « Cf. Plant. Epid. 1-80; Pcrs. 16-32. In the notes on this paragraph, I have given only a few of the many possible classical parallels. 3» Cf. Plant. Asin. 297-307; Most. 1-75. »7 Cf. Plant. Aid. 587-607; Merc. 111-119; Ter. Heaut. 668-678. w Cf. Plant. Asin. 249-264; Epid. 81-100; Ter. And. 206-225. »» Cf. Plant. Bacch. 1072-1074; Pseud. 562-573a, 80 Coulter {Taming of the Shrew 1.2.5-19);*° the same burlesque exaggera- tion of grief (Two Gentlemen 11.3).*^ These traits are most marked in the early plays, and Launce, Launcelot Gobbo, and Grumio are close kin to the slave of Plautus. Sometimes a subordinate r61e in Latin comedy fell to a boy, whose pert retorts to questions (Plant. Pers. 183-250; Stick. 315-325) and shrewd characterizations of other people in the play (Plant. Capt. 909-921; Pseud. 767-789) filled a gap in the action and put the audience in a good humor. Moth in Lovers Labour^ s Lost^ Biondello in The Taming of the Shrew, Falstaff^s diminutive page in 2 Henry /F, and the boy attached to the "three swashers" of Henry V, all belong to this category, and slight as are their parts, their relationship to the Plautine puer is unmistakable. But of all the characters who have come down from classical times, the braggart soldier has the longest history. He flour- ished on the Italian stage for three hundred years, and "Capitan Spavento da ValP Inferna" was the favorite role of that prince of comedians, Francesco Andreini. In English, he furnished the basic features for "the most humorous character in all literature." For underneath his mountain of flesh and the whimsical humor that endears him to every heart, Falstaff is still the miles gloriosus, lauded by his associates for his military prowess and his power over feminine hearts, but doomed to disaster both on the field of battle and in the lists of love. Other braggarts, too, tread the stage of Shakespeare: Don Armado, the fantastical Spaniard; Parolles, who displays the most contemptible traits of the Italian hravo\ Bardolph, Nym, and Pistol; Doctor Caius and Sir Hugh Evans; and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. All these show some characteristics of the classical miles — his boastf ulness when no peril threatens, and his cowar- dice in the face of danger, his ambition to be a lady-killer, and his ignominious end.*^ *o Cf. Plaut. Poen. 357-399; Pseud, 22-96. « Cf. Plaut. Pseud. 79-82. ^ On the figure of the miles gloriosus in literature, see J. Thummel, Der Miles Gloriosus bei Shakespeare, in Shakespeare- J ahrbuch 13 (1878), pp. 1-12 O. Ribbeck, Alazon (Leipzig, 1882); K. von Reinhardstoettner, Plautus Spdtere Bearbeitungen plautinischer Lustspiele (Leipzig, 1886), pp. 595-680 Gr. Senigaglia, Capitan Spavento (Florence, 1899). It should be noted that the Falstaff of The Merry Wives is much closer to the stock character than the Falstaff of the historical plays. The Plautine Tradition in Shakespeare 81 Not only the plots and the characters, but the stage-tricks of ancient comedy persist in Shakespeare. Characters are very frequently heralded before their entrance (e.g.. As You Like It 1.1.28).*^ Proteus completely overlooks Valentine, although the latter must have been in plain sight on the stage {Two Gentlemen 111.1.188-191);^ and Julia, from her hiding-place, listens to her lover's wooing of Silvia, and comments aside on what she hears {Two Gentlemen IV. 2).** Satirical asides on the speech of another character, a device used by Plautus and Terence, and copied repeatedly by Italian comic writers, occur in the comments of the Second Lord on Cloten's boastful utterances {Cymbeline 1.2).'** The ancient device by which a slave or parasite, in his anxiety to be the bearer of news, knocked down everybody in his way, and then arrived too breathless to deliver his message, is suggested in The Comedy of Errors III. 2.71, IV.2.28-30, Much Ado V.2.95-102, and, most humorously, in Romeo and Juliet 11.5.18-66.*^ The cook, with his spit and basket, still makes confusion worse confounded {Romeo and Juliet 1.3; 1.5; IV.2; IV.4);*^ and knocking "as he would beat down the gate," occurs again and again with comic effect {Comedy of Errors III.l.SOfF.; Taming of the Shrew 1.2.5 ff.; V.l.Uff.; Merry Wives 1.1.74; 2 Henry IV. 11.4.380).*^ And horseplay, cudgelings, and fisticuffs still call forth a laugh from the groundlings, just as they did in the days of Plautus ♦>Cf. Plaut. Amph. 148; Ter. And. 174; Ralph Roister Doister IV. 5.5. Comic cliches are discussed in Bond, Early Plays, Introd., pp. xlvi-1; Creizen- ach, English Drama, pp. 275, 299-303, 325-326. My notes include only a few of the many classical parallels. **Cf. Plaut. Asin. 267-296; Ter. PJwrm. 841-851; Ralph Roister Doister V. 2. 1-4; Supposes V. 2. 1-7. « Cf. Plaut. Asin. 876-906; Ter. Phorm. 231-285; Misogonus U. 3. « Cf. Plaut. Mil. 20; Ter. Eun. 401 ff.; Supposes 1. 2. *' Cf. Plaut. Cure. 277-328; Merc. 109-161; Ter. Adelph. 305-327; Ralph Roister Doister III. 3. 7 ff.; Supposes V. 7. 1 ff.; Buggbears V. 4. 22ff.; Misogonus IV. 1.22-24. ♦• Cf. Plaut. Aul. 280-459; Merc. 741-782; Disobedient Child (in HazUtt's Ed. of Dodsley's Old English Plays, Vol. II), pp. 281-286; Supposes III. 1; Misogonus IV. 2. 17. *»Cf. Plaut. Amph. 1020-1027; Most. 445-454; Jacke Jugeler 326-331, 361-362; Supposes IV. 3. 68-74; Bugbears III, 2. 29-33. The same insistent knocking is introduced without humorous effect in TroUus and Cressida IV. 2. 34 ff., and serves to heighten the tragedy in Macbeth U. 2. 57 ff. 82 Coulter (Comedy of Errors 1.2.92 flf.; II.2.23 ff.; IV.4.17 S.; raming of the Shrew 1.2.12 ff.; IV.1.151 ff.).^^ Even the dialogue of Shakespeare's plays occasionally shows a Plautine coloring, most noticeable in scenes like AlVs Well II. 2, where the Clown's reiterated "O Lord, sir! Spare not me!" corresponds to the Censeo and I modo of Plautine slaves {Rud. 1269-1278; Trin. 584-590). In view of the widespread use of foreign language and dialect in dramatic literature, too much weight should not be attached to chance resemblances. We may note, however, that the Greek words of Plautus give about the same tone as the sprinkling of French and Italian phrases in Shakespeare, and that the broken English of the Welsh, Scotch, and Irish soldiers in Henry F, and of Doctor Caius and Sir Hugh Evans in The Merry Wives, finds many parallels in Italian comedy. The scene in which the Princess Katherine of France learns English by the "direct method" {Henry V. III. 4) bears a faint resemblance to the monologue of the Carthaginian Hanno (Plant. Poen. 930-954), and the Boy's interpretation of the French captive's plea {Henry V IV.4) must have made the same humorous appeal as Milphio's attempt to translate Punic greetings into Latin {Poen. 995-1028).5i It is evident, therefore, that Shakespeare typifies the in- fluences which came into English both directly from Latin comedy and indirectly through German education-drama and Italian drama and romance. We see survivals of the tradition in a few externals, such as stage setting and the use of Prologue and Epilogue; in some devices of plot (which are common in the romances as well) — for example, mistaken identity and the restoration of long-lost children; in characters, drawn on con- ventional lines in Shakespeare's earlier plays, but rounded out "^oCf. Plaut. Amph. 370-397; Aid. 628-660; Cas. 404-421; Jacke Jugeler 442 ff.; 694; 910; Misogonus II. 1. 61-68. " On the use of dialect and foreign language in Italian plays, see Smith, Commedia delV Arte p. 6; Senigaglia, Capitan Spavento, pp. 16-17, 78, 84-85. The effect of the foreign language was most humorous when foreign words could be confused with native words of similar sound. So, in Poen. 998, 1002-1003, Milphio understands danni as doni, and meharhocca as misera bucca; and in Henry V. IV. 4, Pistol interprets "Seigneur Dieu!" as "Signieur Dew," the gendeman's name. Latin words are distorted by the Man-Cook in The Dis- obedient Child (Dodsley's Old English Flays, Vol. II, pp. 284-285), and by Dame Quickly in The Merry Wives IV. 1. The Plautine Tradition in Shakespeare 83 and individualized in his mature work; and in stage-tricks like the perennially humorous beating on the gate. The plots of Shakespeare show Plautine elements down to the very end of his literary activity, and in one play of the earliest and one of the latest period he has added the stock "recognition-scene" of classical drama to the material which he found in his sources. In general, however, the resemblances are more marked in the early plays, some of which can be traced directly to Latin or Italian sources: The Comedy of Errors, borrowed from Plautus; The Taming of the Shrew, taken (in part) from Plautus's imitator Ariosto; The Merry Wives of Windsor, reminiscent of the miles gloriosus and of his descendants in Italian comedy; and portions of The Two Gentle- men of Verona, Romeo and Juliet, and AlVs Well. Cornelia C. Coulter Vassar College 84 Bryan BfiOWULF NOTES 303 Eofor-lfc scionoa 304 ofer lil6or-ber[g]an gehroden golde, 305 iih. ond f^r-heard ferh-wearde h^old, 306 g(it$-m6d grummon. "The boar figures adorned with gold shone over the cheek-guards; bright and hardened in the fire they gave life protection; war-minded they raged." The renderings of this passage suggested in the various edi- tions of the Beowulf all assume the necessity of emendation in the last half-verse. The only suggestion for retaining the MS. reading, so far as I am aware, is Schiicking^s statement in the ninth and tenth Schiicking- Heyne editions that Brandl "(brieflich) will gUd-nidd grummon in Hinblick auf grimman *roar* beibehalten." Schiicking, however, gives no hint as to how Brandl would translate this half-verse or how he would fit it into the context. Chambers in the most recent English edition of the Biowulf (Cambridge, 1914) asserts that "the MS. reading, gUpmdd grummon, hardly admits of inter- pretation." If, however, eofor-lic is construed as the subject of grummon, the MS. reading affords not merely a possible inter- pretation but a spirited and picturesque rendering. The poet of the Beomulf concentrated his attention upon the fierce appear- ance of the boar figures upon the helmets, and by a characteris- tically vigorous Old English figure represented them as savagely raging or roaring. The only syntactic difficulty in rendering this entire passage without resort to emendation is the singular Mold interchanging with the plurals scionon and grummon. The singular verb form may be explained (Klaeber, Mod. Phil., 3, 451) by construing its subject, eofor-lic, as a collective in this instance; or it may be merely another example in the Beowulf of a singular verb form with a plural subject (see Klaeber, Mod. Phil., 3, 259). A possible motive for the change in verb form in this particular passage is a momentary change in the poet's point of view — from the savage appearance of the boar figures to the protecting service rendered by each.