Читать книгу Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) - Linche Richard - Страница 5

Traditionally the storyhouse of minor epic source materials has been classical mythology, but inevitably, as suitable classical myths were exhausted, Renaissance poets turned to such sources as the Italian novella, or even—romantic heresy—to comparatively free invention. As if to compensate for these departures from orthodoxy, the later epyllionists leaned ever more heavily on allusions to classical mythology. Of the seven poems included here only three (Pyramus and Thisbe, Mirrha, and The Scourge) are based on a classical source (Ovid's Metamorphoses). Of the remaining four tales, two are drawn from Bandello apparently by way of Painter, and the last two (Philos and Licia, Amos and Laura), though greatly indebted to Hero and Leander overall, seem not to have drawn their characters or actions directly from either a classical or more contemporary source. These last two poems, then, from a Renaissance point of view, are comparatively free inventions. But both, and especially Philos and Licia, are a tissue of allusions to classical mythology.

Gale in Pyramus and Thisbe expands Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, IV, from some 130 to 480 lines, Barksted expands less than 300 lines of Golding's Ovid, X, to nearly 900, and H. A. enlarges the same tale to about 950 lines.[14] It should be emphasized, however, that these are not mere amplified translations, but reworkings of the classics, with significant departures from them. Gale, for example, prefaces the romance of Pyramus and Thisbe with their innocent meeting out-of-doors in an arbor, amid violets and damask roses. He has Venus, enraged at seeing these youngsters engaging in child-like rather than erotic play, command Cupid to shoot his arrows at them "As nought but death, their love-dart may remove" (Stanza 8). There is no counterpart to this opening scene in Golding's Ovid.

Similarly Barksted departs at length from Ovid in the beginning of his tale, where the Renaissance poet undertakes to explain why Mirrha is cursed with love for her father. While she listens to the sweet, sad songs of Orpheus, Cupid,[15] falling in love with her, courts her and is rejected; his parting kiss "did inspire/her brest with an infernall and unnam'd desire" (p. 123). Golding's Ovid, specifically denying that Cupid had anything to do with Mirrha's unnatural love, suggests that Cinyras' daughter must have been blasted by one of the Furies.[16] Other inventions of Barksted include a picture of her father with which Mirrha converses (pp. 126–127), pictures of her suitors (p. 128), a picture of her mother, over which she throws a veil (p. 128) and a description of Mirrha herself (pp. 131–132). Later in the story Mirrha meets a satyr named Poplar (unknown to Ovid), who makes free with her (pp. 148–155). As punishment for such goings on in Diana's sacred grove, he is to be metamorphosed into the tree that now bears his name (even as Mirrha is subsequently transformed into the tree that produces myrrh).

The Scourge of Venus, though following Ovid's story more closely than Mirrha, expands Golding by more than 600 lines, to a little more than the average length of the Elizabethan minor epic. In the process, Mirrha is assigned lustful dreams not found in Ovid (p. 236), and is impelled to write a long letter to her father (pp. 237–240). Shortly thereafter, the author introduces an emphatically Christian digression on the horror of Mirrha's "fowle incestious lust" and on the importance of reading "Gods holy Bible" as a salve for sin (p. 243), and invents the Nurse's prolix arguments against such "filthy" love as Mirrha desires (pp. 248–251).[17] The fact that the author follows Ovid's story as closely as he does should be taken as a commentary on his limited powers of invention rather than on his devotion to the art of translation.

Bandello, I, 27, Belleforest, 18, Whetstone's Rocke of Regard, 2, Fenton's Tragicall Discourses, 13, and Painter's Palace of Pleasure, II, 29[18] have all been listed as possible sources for Dom Diego and Ginevra.[19] Grosart regarded Fenton's work, 1579, as the source from which Lynche got the bare bones of his story, and Arber agreed.[20] But though Jeannette Fellheimer could find no evidence that Lynche knew Belleforest's or Fenton's version of the tale, she demonstrated, on the basis of two very close parallels, that he knew Painter's.[21] In support of Fellheimer's view, one notes that Lynche follows Painter in employing the form "Cathelo[y]gne"[22] (p. 63) rather than Fenton's "Catalonia."[23]

Barksted may have known ballads on the subject of Hiren, alluded to in stanza 34 of his poem, as well as Peele's lost play The Turkish Mahomet and Hyren the fair Greek. But like Lynche, he seems heavily indebted to a tale by Painter, in this case "Hyerenee the Faire Greeke."[24] Among other equally striking but less sustained correspondences between Painter's prose narrative and Barksted's minor epic verse, one notes the following, in which Mahomet's confidant Mustapha attempts to reanimate his leader's martial spirit, drowned in uxoriousness: "But nowe I cannot revive the memorie of your father Amurate, but to my great sorow and griefe, who by the space of XL. yeres made the sea and earth to tremble and quake … [and so cruelly treated the Greeks] that the memorie of the woundes do remaine at this present, even to the mountaines of Thomao and Pindus: he subjugated … all the barbarous nations, from Morea to the straits of Corinthe. What neede I here to bring in the cruel battell that he fought with the Emperour Sigismunde and Philip duke of Burgundia wherein he overthrew the whole force of the Christians, toke the emperour prisoner, and the duke of Burgundie also … or to remember other fierce armies which he sent into Hungarie."[25]

Barksted versifies this speech in stanzas 1 and 2, putting it at the beginning instead of toward the end, where it comes in Painter's novella. By a poetic license, Barksted credits all these achievements to the son, none to the father. Barksted follows Painter's story quite closely, but he cuts, amplifies and invents in order to develop its minor epic potentialities. Thus, in addition to turning Painter's prose into the sixains of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, he cuts the length of Painter's tale by about two-thirds. In the process, much of Painter's attention to historical detail, his complication of plot, and his tedious moralizing are mercifully lost. By way of amplification in the minor epic mode, Barksted expands as follows Mahomet's brief command in Painter that Hiren should "adorne herselfe with her most precious jewels, and decke her with the costliest apparell shee had" (see stanza 100).[26] Also, in order to bring out Mahomet's realization of the enormity of his crime of slaying Hiren, the consummation of all his amorous dreams, Barksted invents a second killing—Mahomet's killing of Mustapha, who had driven his lord to perform the first execution.