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The Captives which precedes it in the same volume) as autograph, and for dating The Escapes of Jupiter later than The Golden Age and The Silver Age. He finally points out that the play 'adds one more to the indubitable instances of revision to be taken into account by those who seek to minimize the practice; on the other hand, it lends no support to the hypothesis of continuous copy'.

In T. L. S. (17th Dec.) Mr. E. H. C. Oliphant makes out a good case for assigning The Bloodie Banquet (usually attributed to Thomas Drew) to the joint hands of Dekker and Middleton. He points out that the quarto of the play gives 'T; D.' as the author; that a seventeenth-century catalogue ascribed it to Thomas Barker, a misprint for Dekker; and that in the Catalogue of Sheldon's collection of plays compiled by Anthony Wood it is grouped among Dekker's works. Dekker is known to have collaborated with Middleton at least twice, and their joint work, The Honest Whore, Part I, was published under the former's name only. Mr. Oliphant is of opinion that this happened also with The Bloodie Banquet. He sees signs of Middleton's hand in the vocabulary, the versification, and the management of the Tethys story. Quotations are given in support of these points. In T. L. S. (24th Dec.) Dr. Greg states that the date of the quarto, as to which Mr. Oliphant was doubtful, is 1639, and that a number of copies of it are extant.

In Anglia (Jan.) Miss Mildred C. Struble of the University of Southern California deals with The Indebtedness of Ford's "Perkin Warbeck' to Gainsford. It has hitherto been held that Ford's chief source was Bacon's History of King Henry the Seventh, 1622, and that he also drew upon Halle's and Holinshed's Chronicles, and probably Speed's History of Great Britain (1611). Miss Struble shows that in addition to these works Ford used Gainsford's True and Wonderful History of Perkin Warbeck (1618), which has been reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany. Miss Struble is of opinion that Ford had before him as he wrote the histories of both Bacon and Gainsford' and that he has drawn therefrom about equally'. In illustration she quotes a number of lines from the play and the corresponding passages in Gainsford's History. A consideration of these leaves

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no doubt that she has proved her case. And her analysis of speeches in Perkin Warbeck where Ford has skilfully dovetailed materials from more than one source adds something to his dramaturgical reputation.

Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore and Love's Sacrifice have been translated into French prose by M. Georges Pillement, as has Cyril Tourneur's The Atheist's Tragedy, by MM. Camille Cé and Henri Servajean.16

In R. E. S. (July) Professor Moore Smith discusses The Canon of Randolph's Dramatic Works. The authenticity of Aristippus, The Conceited Pedlar, The Jealous Lovers, The Muses LookingGlass, and Amyntas is beyond doubt. As to Hey for Honesty, translated from the Plutus by Randolph, augmented and published by F. J. (1651), Dr. Moore Smith decides that 'in spite of insertions by F. J. on almost every page, there can be no doubt that the substratum is Randolph's work. Many phrases in it can be paralleled from his plays and poems, and local allusions show that it was originally written as a Cambridge 'show'.

The Latin comedy Cornelianum Dolium presents greater difficulty. When published by Thomas Harper in 1638 he ascribed it T. R. ingeniosissimo huius aevi Heliconio'. But except that it has two motifs which are also employed in The Jealous Lovers the Latin comedy does not show much likeness to Randolph's undoubted works. On the other hand, in Notes and Queries, ser. 2, vol. xii, Mr. J. Crossley gave grounds for assigning the play to Richard Braithwait, and Dr. Moore Smith adds further parallels between it and Braithwait's writings. He suggests that Randolph at least drafted the play, if he did not sketch the contents of the different scenes, and that afterwards Braithwait took it over, and dedicated it in Randolph's name to his own patron Sir Alexander Radcliffe.

Finally, Dr. Moore Smith claims for Randolph the Praeludium, a prologue to a play, preserved in B. M. Add. MS. 37425.

16 Paris: La Renaissance du Livre. 15 f. and 20 f.

VIII

THE ELIZABETHAN PERIOD

POETRY AND PROSE

[By H. J. C. GRIERSON and A. MELVILLE CLARK]

THE most notable contribution of 1925 to the study of Spenser is Professor W. J. Renwick's volume. As the title indicates, he approaches Spenser's poetry from a definite angle, considering it in relation to the poetic theory and practice of the Renaissance, 'what a very important poet was trying to do and why he was trying to do that and not something else'. 'In the formation of Spenser's art, the central fact, after his time and nationality, and as the corollary to these, is his scholarly training... We must regard his work as part of a cultured movement of European extent, as fruit of general and not mere personal experience.' Professor Renwick's thesis links Spenser's work to the revived enthusiasm for the vernaculars which followed the first homage to Latin; the interest of the age in theories of poetry, the kinds and their relative values; their rhetoric and metrics; the theory of imitation; the claims of allegory; the supreme importance for the poet not only of art but of knowledge, of learning of all kinds and especially of philosophy. No poet of the Renaissance believed that

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach us more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

Spenser's work has never been so consistently examined from this point of view and the result is fruitful of interest, if one feels that Spenser suffered as well as gained from the influence of theory and erudition. The allegory especially, and its modern expounders, are apt to make the head ache, which indeed, as

1 Edmund Spenser: An Essay on Renaissance Poetry, by W. J. Renwick. Arnold. pp. vii+ 198. 10s. 6d.

Dickens says, 'would seem to be Allegory's object always, more or less'.

In The Text of Spenser's 'Complaints' (M. L. R., Jan.) Bernard E. C. Davis directs attention to the superiority in many respects of the punctuation, spelling, and diction of the 1611 Folio, which is usually dismissed in favour of the 1591 Quarto as the work of later editors anxious to modernize the text. But as a result of the calling in of the Quarto and the existence of manuscript copies, some perhaps of later date and made in consequence of this suppression, it is not impossible that the 1611 editors had authority for their changes or for some of them. Some of their commendable alterations are noted by Mr. Davis, who is inclined to accept the F. reading in more doubtful cases where the Q., though inferior, is not unacceptable. The best of the Q. texts is that of Muiopotmos, a fact which may be connected with the separate date (1590) on the title-page, and which suggests that the proofs were either corrected by Spenser himself or at any rate treated with greater care than those of the other poems'. From this general question Mr. Davis goes on to the problem of the substantial alterations in 1611 in The Ruins of Time by the substitution of a general reference for a personal attack, obviously aimed at Burleigh, and to the omission in the Folio of Mother Hubberd's Tale. As the same charges are levelled against the Lord Treasurer in the Tale as in the first form of The Ruins of Time, there is good reason for placing the two texts together and for drawing similar conclusions as to the history of each'. Was it Spenser, then, who revised the one poem and cut out the other in a MS. copy, or did some one else alter and omit in deference to Burleigh and that before 1598, or, finally, were the changes made, presumably by the 1611 editors, to please Sir Robert Cecil? Mr. Davis very plausibly argues for the third solution. As the trouble over the Complaints had long blown over, there would be no difficulty in getting permission to reissue poems previously suppressed, 'except in the case of one satire and certain passages in another poem, which had originally been aimed at the father of the present Secretary of State'. With the death of Cecil in 1612 there was no reason at all for restraint, and Mother Hubberd's Tale was at once reprinted.

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We cannot do better than quote Mr. Merritt Y. Hughes's summary of his acute article on Spenser's Debt to the Greek Romances (Mod. Phil., Aug.): 'There is no evidence', he says, 'that Spenser derived any element of his poetry directly from any Greek Four motifs in the story of Pastorella derive ultimately from Longus or Heliodorus, but all of them had become literary commonplaces when Spenser wrote. The use that he makes of them relates him as much to Ariosto, Tasso, Guarini, and Sidney as it does to the ancient romancers.' This is the more convincing part of the article and makes abundantly clear the complexity of the problem. The further attempt to see in Spenser's pictorial effects the influence direct or indirect of Longus or Achilles Tatius requires more elaboration than Mr. Hughes allows himself. As for the moral purpose of the Faerie Queene, Spenser had more likely guides than Heliodorus, even though that romancer does formally discuss all the Spenserian virtues with the exception of holiness.

In an interesting article on Spenser and Boiardo (P. M. L. A., xl) Mr. Harold H. Blanchard shows from consideration of a number of details in different episodes that Spenser's knowledge of the Italian romantic epics included not only Ariosto's Orlando Furioso and Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, as has been well established, but also the Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo. Mr. Blanchard has a similar study, Imitations from Tasso in the Faerie Queene, in S. in Ph. (April).

Miss Susannah J. McMurphy's Washington dissertation on Spenser's Use of Ariosto for Allegory describes the curious sixteenth-century allegorical interpretations of Ariosto, especially that of Fornari (1549), and explains certain parallels between Ariosto and Spenser.

Mr. F. F. Covington's article on Spenser's Use of Irish History in the 'Veue of the Present State of Ireland' 2 breaks virgin soil: his explorations also suggested his Note on 'Faerie Queene', tv. iii. 27 (M. L. N., April), in which passage he sees one of the earliest specific references to Spenser's Irish environment, and his Spenser and Alexander Neckham (S. in Ph., April), in which he notes a passage in Neckham's De Laudibus on several of the Irish rivers in Spenser. Mr. R. A. Law's Tripartite Gaul in the

2 In Univ. of Texas Bulletin: Studies in English, iv (1924).

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