Читать книгу The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare - J. J. Jusserand - Страница 14

robert the devil, about 1510.

[p. 57.

Once in the whole length of this immense work he does impart to us his personal opinion on a question of importance: in the twenty-fifth chapter of his eighteenth book, Malory confesses what he thinks of love, and lays aside his usual reserve: and thus furnishes the first attempt at analysis of feeling to be found in the English prose romance. Malory declares that every man should love God first and his mistress afterwards; and so long as a man does love his God first, the other love seems to him to be not only permissible but even commendable; it is a virtue. "Therfore, as may moneth floreth & floryssheth in many gardyns, soo in lyke wyse, lete every man of worship florysshe his herte in this world, fyrst unto God & next unto the joye of them that he promysed his feythe unto: for there was never worshypful man or worshipfull woman but they loved one better than another … & suche love, I calle vertuous love." But now-a-days, continues the old knight, little suspecting that his grievance is one of all ages, men cannot love seven-night but they must have all their desires. The old love was not so. Men and women could love together seven years, and no wanton lusts were between them, and then was love truth and faithfulness. "And loo," Malory adds forgetting that his Lancelot and his Tristan waited much less than seven years, "in lyke wyse was used love in Kynge Arthurs dayes."[24]

Very strikingly does this view of love contrast with the southern irrepressible impetuosities of young Aucassin, who, considering, three centuries earlier, this same question of holy and profane love, of earth and paradise, in the above-mentioned exquisite prose tale which bears his name, simply alters the order of precedence afterwards adopted by good Sir Thomas: "Tell me," says he, "where is the place so high in all the world that Nicolete, my sweet lady and love, would not grace it well? If she were Empress of Constantinople or of Germany, or Queen of France or England, it were little enough for her. … In Paradise what have I to win? Therein I seek not to enter, but only to have Nicolete my sweet lady that I love so well. … For in Paradise go none but … these same old priests, and halt old men and maimed, who all day and night cower continually before the altars, and in the crypts. … These be they that go into Paradise; with them have I naught to make. But into Hell would I fain go; for into Hell fare the goodly clerks and goodly knights that fall in tourneys and great wars. … And thither pass the sweet ladies. … Thither goes the gold and the silver and cloth of vair, and cloth of gris, and harpers and makers, and the prince of this world. With these I would gladly go, let me but have with me Nicolete my sweetest lady."[25]

"noble helyas knyghte of the swanne," about 1550.

[p. 61.

No one perceived the coldness of Malory's stories. He wrote for a youthful and enthusiastic people; it was a period of new birth throughout Europe, the period of the spring-time of modern literature, the epoch of the Renaissance. There was no need to depict in realistic fashion the passions and stirrings of the heart in order to excite the emotion of the reader; a relation of events sufficed for him; his own imagination did the rest, and enlivened the dull-painted canvas with visions of every colour. The book had as much success as Caxton could have expected; it was constantly reprinted during the sixteenth century, and enchanted the contemporaries of Surrey, of Elizabeth, and of Shakespeare. It was in vain that the serious-minded Ascham condemned it; it survived his condemnation as the popularity of Robin Hood survived the sermons of Latimer. Vainly did Ascham denounce "Certaine bookes of Chevalrie … as one for example, Morte Arthure: the whole pleasure of whiche booke standeth in two speciall poyntes, in open mans slaughter, & bold bawdrye. In which booke those be counted the noblest knightes, that do kill most men without any quarell, & commit fowlest aduoulteres by sutlest shiftes."[26]

When the people became more thoughtful or more exacting in the matter of analysis, they neglected the old book. After 1634, two hundred years passed without a reprint of it. In our time it has met with an aftermath of success, not only among the curious, but among a class of readers who are not more exacting than Caxton's clients, and who are far more interested in fact than in feeling. Children form this class of readers; in the present century Malory's book has been many times re-edited for them, and it is to Sir Thomas Malory, rather than to Tennyson, Swinburne or Morris, that many English men and women of to-day owe their earliest acquaintance with King Arthur and his Knights.

Caxton's example was followed by many; printing presses multiplied, and with most of them fiction kept its ground. A new life was infused into old legendary heroes, and they began again, impelled not by the genius of new writers, but simply by the printer's skill, their never ending journeys over the world. Their stories were published in England in small handy volumes, often of a very good appearance, and embellished with woodcuts. There were prose stories of "Robert the devyll," and there were verse stories of "Sir Guy of Warwick" and of "Syr Eglamoure of Artoys." Many of the cuts are extremely picturesque and excellently suited to the general tone of the story. On the title-page the hero of the tale usually sits on his horse, and indomitable he looks with his sword drawn, his plume full spread, his mien defiant. A faithful squire sometimes follows him, sometimes only his dog; between the feet of the horse fabulous plants spread their unlikely leaves, and give the sole and very doubtful clue to the country in which the knight is travelling, certainly a very desolate and unpleasant one. In this fashion does Duke Robert of Normandy travel, and so does Eglamoure, and Tryamoure, and Bevis, and Isumbras. In the same series too is to be seen "Y^e noble Helyas, Knyght of the Swanne," drawn by the said swan, a somewhat wooden bird, not very different from his successor of a later age whom we are accustomed to see swimming across the stage to the accompaniment of Wagner's famous music.[27]

"Then went Guy to fayre Phelis." "sir guy of warwick," about 1560.

[p. 65.

The means by which English printers supplied themselves with these engravings, is a mystery that they have kept to themselves. Many of the blocks were, very probably, purchased in the Low Countries. A very few are almost certainly of English manufacture, and among them are Caxton's illustrations of the Canterbury Tales: on this account we have given a fac-simile of the most important of them, representing the pilgrims seated round the table at the "Tabard" prior to starting on their immortal journey. What is certain is that many of these wood-block portraits of knights, supplied to the printers by English or Dutch artists, underwent many successive christenings. The same knight, with the same squire, the same dog and the same fabulous little wooden plants between the legs of the horse was sometimes Romulus and sometimes Robert of Normandy. In one book a rather fine engraving of a lord and a lady in a garden, represents Guy of Warwick courting "fayre Phelis,"[28] but in another book the same engraving does duty for "La bel Pucell" and the knight "Graund Amoure."[29] It may be observed, in passing, that these romances might be soundly criticized without much study of their contents by simply inspecting their illustrations. Full as they are of extraordinary inventions and adventures, unrestricted as their authors were by considerations of what was possible or real, some dozen well-chosen engravings seem enough to illustrate any number of them. For, alas, there is nothing more stale and more subject to repetitions than these series of extraordinary adventures; all their heroes are the same hero, and whether he was following the philosophical turn of his mind, or merely the thrifty orders of his printer, the engraver was well justified in leaving as he did in most of his drawings an empty scroll over the head of his knights, for the publisher to label them at will, Robert the Devil or Romulus.

We are thus fairly advanced into the sixteenth century; the Renaissance has come; before long Spenser will sing of the Fairy Queen and Shakespeare will leave his native Stratford to present to a London audience the loves of Juliet and Romeo. Scarcely any sign of improvement appears yet in the art of novel-writing; nothing but mediæval romances continue to issue from the press; it is even difficult to foresee an epoch in which something analogous to the actual novel might be produced in England. Contrary to what was taking place in France at the same time, that period seemed far off. In reality, however, it was near at hand; the great age of English literature, the age of Elizabeth and of Shakespeare, was about to furnish, at least in the rough draft, the first specimens of the true novel.

leo.