Читать книгу The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare - J. J. Jusserand - Страница 20

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The Italian and French languages were held in great honour; both were taught at Oxford and Cambridge; the latter especially was of common use in England, and this peculiarity attracted the notice of foreigners. "As regards their manners and mode of living, ornaments, garments and vestments," writes the Greek Nicander Nucius, in 1545, "they resemble the French more than others, and, for the most part, they use their language."[50] But besides these elegant languages, Greek and Latin were becoming courtly. They were taught in the schools and out of the schools; the nobles, following the example of King Henry VIII. and his children, made a parade of their knowledge. Ignorance was no longer the fashion, no more than the old towers without windows. The grave Erasmus went to hear Colet, the Dean of St. Paul's, and "he thought he was hearing Plato"; Sir T. More, according to Erasmus, is the "sweetest, softest, happiest genius nature has ever shaped." In a word, "literature is triumphant among the English. The king himself, the two cardinals, almost all the bishops, favour with all their soul and adorn Letters."[51] To learn Greek and Latin was to move with the times and to follow the fashion. "All men," says Ascham, less displeased with this novelty than with the travelling propensities of his compatriots, "covet to have their children speake latin"; and "Sophocles and Euripides are more familiar now here than Plautus was formerly."[52] Dazzled by what he saw and heard, Erasmus was announcing to the world in enthusiastic letters that "the golden age" was to be born again in this fortunate island.[53] His only regret was that he would perhaps not live long enough to see it. Well might he regret it, even though it were not to follow exactly as he had foreseen; for the golden apple of the golden age was not to be plucked in the Greek Hesperides' garden, but in a plain Warwickshire orchard: nor was it the less golden.

This fermentation of mind lasted for more than a century; lives were often shortened by it, but they had been doubly well filled. From this restless curiosity, bent towards past ages and foreign countries, towards everything that was remote, unknown and different, came that striking appearance of omniscience and universality, and that prodigious wealth of imagery, allusions and ideas of every kind that are to be found in all the authors of that time, small as well as great, and which unites in one common bond Rabelais and Shakespeare, Cervantes and Sidney and the "master of the enchanters of the ear," Ronsard.

When the armour, worn less often, began to grow rusty in the great halls, and the nobles, coming forth from their coats-of-mail like the butterfly from the chrysalis, showed themselves all glistening in silk, pearls in their ears, their heads full of Italian madrigals and mythological similes, a new society was formed, salons of a kind were organized, and the rôle of the women was enlarged. English mediæval times had been by no means sparing of compliments to them. But there is a great difference between celebrating in verse fair, slim-necked ladies, and writing books expressly for them: and it is one of the points in which, during the Middle Ages and even until the middle of the sixteenth century, England differed from the nations of the south. In England no Lady Oisille had gathered round her in the depth of green valleys tellers of amorous stories; no thickly-shaded parks had seen Fiammettas or Philomenas listening to all kinds of narratives, forgetful of the actual world and its sorrows. The only group of story-tellers, bound together by a true artist's fancy, Chaucer's pilgrims, had ridden in broad daylight on the high road to Canterbury, led by Harry Bailly, the jovial innkeeper of Southwark, a blustering, red-faced dictator, who had regulated the pace of the nags, and silenced the tedious babblers: very different in all things from Fiammetta and the Lady Oisille.

Under the influence of Italy, France and mythology, the England of the Tudors, changed all that. Women appeared in the foreground: a movement of general curiosity animated the age, and they participated in it quite naturally. They will become learned, if necessary, rather than remain in the shade; they will no longer rest contented with permission to read books written for their fathers, brothers, lovers, or husbands; some must be written especially on their account, consulting their preferences and personal caprices; and they had good reason to command: one of them sat on the throne.

They, too, began to read Greek, Latin, Italian and French; knowledge was so much the fashion that it extended to women. Here Ascham bears testimony in their favour; the Queen herself gives the example: "She readeth now at Windsore more Greeke every day than some prebendarie of this chirch doth read Latin in a wole weeke."[54] In this she has innumerable imitators, so much so that Harrison sums up as follows his judgment concerning English ladies: "To saie how many gentlewomen and ladies there are, that beside sound knowledge of the Greeke and Latin toongs are thereto no lesse skilfull in the Spanish, Italian and French or in some one of them, it resteth not in me."[55]

It must not be believed, however, that so much Greek and Latin in any way imperilled the grace and ease of their manners, or that when you met them you would be welcomed with a quotation from Plato and dismissed with a verse from Virgil. Far from it. It was the custom at that time with English ladies to greet their friends and relations, and even strangers, with kisses, and strange as it may appear to our modern ideas, accustomed as we are to stare in amazement at such practices when by any chance we observe them in southern countries, the custom was so strikingly prevalent in England that travellers noticed it as one of the strange sights of the land; grave Erasmus cynically calls it one of its attractions. "This custom," says he, "will never be praised enough."[56] The above-named Nicander Nucius, of Corcyra, who came to England some fifty years later, notices the same habit as a great local curiosity. According to him, the English "display great simplicity and absence of jealousy in their usages towards females. For not only do those who are of the same family and household kiss them … with salutations and embraces, but even those, too, who have never seen them. And to themselves this appears by no means indecent."[57] The very Queen herself, even in the middle of the most imposing ceremonies, could not help indulging in familiarities contrary to our ideas of decorum, but quite in accordance with the freedom of manners then prevalent. Sir James Melville relates in his memoirs how he was present when Robert Dudley was made "Earl of Leicester and baron of Denbigh; which was done at Westminster with great solemnity, the Queen herself helping to put on his ceremonial, he sitting upon his knees before her with a great gravity. But she could not refrain from putting her hand in his neck, smilingly tickling him, the French Ambassadour and I standing by. Then she turned, asking at me, 'how I liked him?'"[58]

The earliest attempts at the novel in the modern style bore a resemblance to these social and intellectual manners. Let us not be surprised if these works are too heavily bedizened for our liking: the toilettes and fashions of that time were less sober than those of to-day; it was the same with literature. Queen Elizabeth, who was wholly representative of her age, and shared even its follies, liked and encouraged finery in everything. All that was ornament and pageantry held her favour; in spite of public affairs, she remained all her life the most feminine of women; on her gowns, in her palaces, with her poets, she liked to find ornaments and embellishments in profusion. The learned queen who read Plutarch in Greek, a thing Shakespeare could never do, and translated Boetius into English,[59] found, in spite of her philosophy, an immense delight in having herself painted in fantastic costumes, her thin person hidden in a silken sheath, covered by a light gauze, over which birds ran. Around her was a perpetual field of cloth of gold, and the nobles sold their lands in order to appear at Court sufficiently embroidered. She liked nothing better than to hear and take part in conversations on dresses and fashions. This was so well known, that when Mary, Queen of Scots, sent the same Sir James Melville on his mission to the English Court, in 1564, she was careful to advise him not to forget such means to propitiate her "dear sister." The account left by Melville of the way in which he carried into effect this part of his instructions is highly characteristic of the times, and gives an idea of the way in which a courtly conversation was then conducted:

"The Queen my mistress," says Melville, in his "Memoires," "had instructed me to leave matters of gravity sometimes, and cast in merry purposes, lest otherwise I should be wearied [wearying], she being well informed of that queens natural temper. Therefore in declaring my observations of the customs of Dutchland, Poland and Italy, the buskins of the women was not forgot, and what countrey weed I thought best becoming gentlewomen. The Queen said she had cloths of every sort, which every day thereafter, so long as I was there, she changed. One day she had the English weed, another the French, and another the Italian and so forth.

"She asked me which of them became her best?

"I answered, in my judgment the Italian dress, which answer I found pleased her well, for she delighted to shew her golden coloured hair, wearing a caul and bonnet as they do in Italy. Her hair was more reddish than yellow, curled in appearance naturally.

"She desired to know of me what colour of hair was reputed best, and which of them two was fairest.

"I answered the fairness of them both was not their worst faults.

"But she was earnest with me to declare which of them I judged fairest?

"I said she was the fairest Queen of England, and mine the fairest Queen of Scotland.

"Yet she appeared earnest.

"I answered they were both the fairest Ladies in their countries; that Her Majesty was whiter, but my Queen was very lovely.

"She inquired which of them was of highest stature?

"I said my Queen.

"Then saith she, she is too high, for I, my self, am neither too high nor too low. Then she asked what kind of exercise she used?

"I answered that when I received my dispatch, the Queen was lately come from the High-land hunting. That when her more serious affairs permitted, she was taken up with reading of histories; that sometimes she recreated her self in playing upon the lute and virginals.

"She asked if she played well? I said reasonably, for a Queen.

"That same day after dinner my Lord of Hunsdean drew me up to a quiet gallery, that I might hear some musick, but he said that he durst not avow it, where I might hear the Queen play upon the virginals. After I had hearkned a while, I took up the tapistry that hung before the door of the chamber, and seeing her back was toward the door, I entered within the chamber, and stood a pretty space hearing her play excellently well, but she left off immediately, so soon as she turned her about and saw me. She appeared to be surprized to see me, and came forward, seeming to strike me with her hand, alledging she used not to play before men, but when she was solitary to shun melancholly."

Fortunately she does not strike the ambassador, and is easily pacified. She wants to dazzle him also with her knowledge of languages:

"She said my French was good, and asked if I could speak Italian which she spoke reasonably well. … Then she spake to me in Dutch [i.e., German], which was not good; and would know what kind of books I most delighted in, whether theology, history, or love matters." She manages to keep Melville two days longer than he had intended to stay "till I might see her dance, as I was afterward informed. Which being over, she inquired of me whether she or my Queen danced best? I answered the Queen danced not so high and disposedly as she did."

This woman, nevertheless, with so many frailties and ultra-feminine vanities, was a sovereign with a will and a purpose. Even in the midst of this talk about buskins, love-books and virginals, it shone out. So much so, that hearing she is resolved not to marry, the Scottish ambassador immediately retorts in somewhat blunt fashion: "I know the truth of that, madam, said I, and you need not tell it me. Your Majesty thinks if you were married, you would be but Queen of England, and now you are both King and Queen. I know your spirit cannot endure a commander."[60]

The same singular combination may be observed in the literary works of her time: flowers of speech and vanities abound, but they are not without an aim. Rarely was any sovereign so completely emblematic of his or her period. She may almost be said to be the key to it; and it may be very well asserted that whatever the branch of art or literature of this epoch you wish to understand, you must first study Elizabeth.

Her taste for finery and jewels remained to the last. Hentzner, a German, who saw her many years after Melville, describes her coming out of her chapel at Greenwich Palace, in 1598. She has greatly altered; she is no longer the young princess that would publicly forget etiquette at Westminster for the sake of Robert Dudley; but she still glitters with jewels and ornaments. "Next came the Queen, in the sixty-fifth year of her age, as we were told, very majestic; her face oblong, fair, but wrinkled, her eyes small, yet black and pleasant; her nose a little hooked, her lips narrow, and her teeth black. … She had in her ears two pearls, with very rich drops; she wore false hair and that red; upon her head she had a small crown. … Her bosom was uncovered as all the English ladies have till they marry, and she had on a necklace of exceeding fine jewels; her hands were small, her fingers long, and her stature neither tall nor low; her air was stately, her manner of speaking kind and obliging. That day she was dressed in white silk, bordered with pearls of the size of beans, and over it a mantle of black silk, shot with silver threads … Instead of a chain, she had an oblong collar of gold and jewels."[61]