Francis Douce

... Priam's six-gated city.

In this, as well as in Dr. Farmer's subsequent note, it might have been better to have quoted Caxton's translation of the Recuyles or destruction of Troy, instead of Lydgate. In the edition of 1607 of the former work, which, in all probability, is that used by the author of the play, the gates of Troy are thus named; Dardan, Timbria, Helias, Chetas, Troyen, Antenorides. These are nearer to the text than those in the other quotation from Lydgate, whose work the author does not seem to have consulted. Should the curious reader be desirous of seeing the manner in which Troy was formerly represented, he may be gratified by an inspection of it in its full glory; the gates inscribed with their names, and fortified with portcullises, in the edition of Jaques Milot's Mystere de la destruction de Troye, Lyon, 1544, folio; or in Raoul le Fevre's Recueil des hystoires Troyennes, Lyon, 1510, folio. This was also a favourite subject in old tapestry, a very fine and ancient specimen of which remained a long time in the painted chamber that separates the two houses of parliament, till it was removed during the repairs of Saint Stephen's chapel for the accommodation of the Irish members. A copy of it was fortunately taken by that ingenious artist, Mr. John Carter, draughtsman to the Society of Antiquaries.

ACT I.

Scene 1. Page 223.

When poets speak of the wounds inflicted by love, they generally make the instrument to be an arrow; how a knife came here to be introduced is not easy to account for. Is it possible that our author has transposed the old saying that a knife cuts love?

Scene 3. Page 245.

Mr. Steevens, admitting the curiosity of his colleague's note on this passage, is unwilling to allow that its design to prove the horse of Perseus a ship, and not an animal, has been accomplished. The learned editor observes, that "Shakspeare would not have contented himself with merely comparing one ship to another;" and that "unallegorized Pegasus might be fairly stiled Perseus' horse, because the heroism of Perseus had given him existence." That one thing is compared to another which resembles it, can surely be no solid objection to the justice of a comparison; and though the birth of the unallegorized Pegasus was doubtless the result of Perseus's bravery in conquering Medusa, it was incumbent on the objector to have demonstrated how this horse of Perseus had "bounded between two moist elements," to have made good the poet's comparison. There can be no doubt that the author of the simile has alluded to the fact concerning the ship Pegasus adduced by Mr. Malone; and every thing leads to the supposition that he used the authority of Caxton's Troy book, though, as will be seen presently, that was not the most ancient of the kind.

It is undoubtedly a well justified poetical license to compare a ship to a horse, on account of its speed. In the translation of an old Celtic ballad called The maid's tragedy, the monarch who pursues the flying damsel is sometimes said to traverse the waves on an enchanted steed; "which," say the Edinburgh reviewers, "probably arises from some equivocal expression in the original, as the Scalds term a ship the rider, and sometimes the horse of the ocean."—Edinb. review, 1805, p. 439.

Mr. Malone has stated in the beginning of his valuable note, that "we nowhere hear of Perseus's horse;" and that "Pegasus was the property not of Perseus but of Bellerophon." This is not quite accurate. It is certain that Ovid has not mounted Perseus on any horse in his combat with the monster which was to devour Andromeda; and therefore it is matter of wonder that the mythological dictionary of ChomprÉ, and particularly that most excellent one by Lempriere, should positively affirm that he has. This error has been likewise adopted by other writers. But though classic authority be wanting that Perseus made use of a horse, Boccaccio, in his Genealogia Deorum, lib. xii. c. 25, has quoted Lactantius as saying, that when Perseus undertook his expedition against Gorgon, at the instance of king Polydectus, he was accompanied by the winged horse Pegasus, but not that he used him in delivering Andromeda. Boccaccio adds that others were of opinion that he had a ship called Pegasus. The liberties which the old French translators of Ovid's Metamorphoses have taken, and their interpolations, are unaccountable. Some have caused Perseus at the instant of his birth, to bestride Pegasus, and travel away to Helicon. In the cuts to many of the early editions of Ovid, the designers have not only placed him on Pegasus in the adventure with Andromeda, but even in his attack upon Atlas. These facts may serve to account for the multiplied errors of artists, who, neglecting to consult proper authorities, have trusted to the erroneous examples of their predecessors. Achilles Tatius, in his third book of The loves of Clitophon and Leucippe, has described a picture of Perseus delivering Andromeda, in which he is made to descend by means of wings to his feet; and another on the same subject is spoken of by Lucian in his description of a house. In neither of these is there any mention of a horse.

ACT II.

Scene 1. Page 276.

Some doubt having arisen whether an assinego is an ass or an ass-driver, the following passages from Ligon's History of Barbadoes, 1673, will serve to decide the question in favour of the four-legged animal; and demonstrate at the same time that the above term is not exclusively applied to a male ass, as Mr. Ritson had supposed. "We found it was far better for a man that had money, goods, or credit, to purchase a plantation there ready furnish'd, and stockt with servants, slaves, horses, cattle, assinigoes, camels, &c." And again, "And though I found at Barbadoes some who had musical minds; yet I found others, whose souls were so fixt upon, and so riveted to the earth, and the profits that arise out of it, as their souls were lifted no higher; and those men think, and have been heard to say, that three whip-sawes going all at once in a frame or pit, is the best and sweetest musick that can enter their ears; and to hear a cow of their own low, or an assinigo bray, no sound can please them better."—pp. 22, 107.

Scene 3. Page 309.

This ungrammatical line, though perhaps the property of Shakspeare, might as well be corrected.

Scene 3. Page 309.

How Mars was to accomplish this the metaphysicians must decide. The idea is an odd compound of grandeur and absurdity. It might have turned to some account in the hands of the ingenious Edgworths.

ACT III.

Scene 2. Page 329.

If this be Shakspeare's, he got it from Taverner's translation of Publius Syrus, at the end of Catonis disticha, 1553, 12mo, where it stands thus, "To be in love and to be wyse is scarce graunted to God. It is not one man's propertie both to love and also to be of a sounde mynde."

Scene 2. Page 333.

Although the above is, no doubt, the real etymology of the word pandar, the original use of it does not rest with Shakspeare. An earlier instance occurs in Gabriel Harvey's Pierce's supererogation, 1593, 4to, in which "the pandars stew" is mentioned. All other derivations must be rejected, because the term occurs in no language but our own. Nashe, in his Have with you to Saffron Walden, has most extravagantly deduced it from Pandora; and he adds that Sir Philip Sidney fetches it from Plautus. In Sir Philip's Defence of poesie, the author, speaking of Terence's Gnatho and Chaucer's Pandar, says, "we now use their names to signifie their trades."

Scene 3. Page 338.

If a former explanation should be thought to stand in need of further authority, the following may suffice.

In A treatise between trouth and information, by W. Cornishe, printed among the works of Skelton, are these lines:

The same instrument was used for tuning other stringed instruments, as appears from the same poem:

Again,

In King James's edict against combats, &c., p. 45, is this passage, "this small instrument the tongue being kept in tune by the wrest of awe," &c.

And in Swetnam's Arraignment of women, 1615, 4to, "They are always tempering their wits, as fidlers do their strings, who wrest them so high, that many times they stretch them beyond time, tune, and reason."

ACT IV.

Scene 5. Page 383.

This expression seems borrowed from the maister of the game, the ancient title of the king's game-keeper. There was also a treatise on hunting, so called, which Shakspeare had often read of, or might perhaps have seen.

ACT V.

Scene 3. Page 425.

See a preceding note pp. 189, 190.

Scene 9. Page 444.

The author of this play, in his account of the death of Hector, has undoubtedly departed from his original; and, as it should seem, without necessity. Mr. Steevens, on this occasion, takes notice of Lydgate's vehement reprehension of Homer's praise of Achilles, and of his gross violation of the characters drawn by the Grecian poet; but he has censured the wrong person. Lydgate has only followed his predecessor Guido of Colonna, who, (or perhaps the original writer Benoit de Saint More,) adopting the statement in the prologue to Dares Phrygius, appears to regard the latter as a more correct and veracious historian than Homer.

Scene 9. Page 451.

If Mr. Mason had accidentally consulted the English part of Littelton's excellent dictionary, he would not have doubted that "any symptom of the venereal disease was called a Winchester goose."

ON THE STORY OF THIS PLAY.

Of Lollius, the supposed inventor of this story, it will become every one to speak with diffidence. Until something decisive relating to him shall occur, it is better to conclude with Mr. Tyrwhitt, that Chaucer borrowed the greatest part of his admirable story from Boccaccio's Philostrato; and that he either invented the rest altogether, or obtained it from some completer copy of the Philostrato than that which we now possess. What Dryden has said of Lollius is entirely destitute of proof, and appears to be nothing more than an inference from Chaucer's own expressions.

It would be a matter of extreme difficulty to ascertain, with any sort of precision, when and in what manner the story of Troilus and Cressida first made its appearance. Whether the author of the Philostrato was the first who detailed it so minutely as it is there found, remains to be decided; but it is certain that so much of it as relates to the departure of Cressida from Troy, and her subsequent amour with Diomed, did exist long before the time of Boccaccio. The work in which it is most known at present is the Troy book of Guido of Colonna, composed in 1287, and, as he states, from Dares Phrygius, and Dictys Cretensis, neither of whom mentions the name of Cressida. Mr. Tyrwhitt, as it has eventually proved, had, with his usual penetration and critical acuteness, suspected that Guido's Dares was in reality an old Norman French poet named Benoit de Saint More, who wrote in the reign of our Henry the Second, and who himself made use of Dares. This work seems to be the earliest authority now remaining. The task which Mr. Tyrwhitt had declined, has on this occasion been submitted to; and the comparison has shown that Guido, whose performance had long been regarded as original, has only translated the Norman writer into Latin. It is most probable that he found Benoit's work when he came into England, as he is recorded to have done; and that pursuing a practice too prevalent in the middle ages, he dishonestly suppressed the mention of his real original. What has been advanced by Mr. Warton and some other writers respecting an old French romance under the name of Troilus and Cressida, will not carry the story a moment higher; because this French romance is in fact nothing more than a much later performance, about the year 1400, compiled by Pierre de Beauvau from the Philostrato itself. This has been strangely confounded with several other French works on the Troy story related with great variety of circumstance, all or most of which were modelled on that of Guido of Colonna or his original; citing, as they had done, the supposititious histories of Dictys and Dares. It is worth while to embrace this opportunity of mentioning, for the first time, that there is a prose French version of Benoit's metrical romance; but when made, or by whom, does not appear in a MS. of it transcribed at Verona in 1320.

Lydgate professedly followed Guido of Colonna, occasionally making use of and citing other authorities. In a short time afterwards Raoul le Fevre compiled from various materials his Recueil des histoires de Troye, which was translated into English and published by Caxton; but neither of these authors has given more of the story of Troilus and Cressida than any of the other romances on the war of Troy; Lydgate contenting himself with referring to Chaucer. Of Raoul le Fevre's work, often printed, there is a fine MS. in the British museum, Bibl. Reg. 17, E. II., under the title of Hercules, that must have belonged to Edward the Fourth, in which Raoul's name is entirely and unaccountably suppressed. The above may serve as a slight sketch of the romances on the history of the wars of Troy; to describe them all particularly would fill a volume.

It remains to inquire concerning the materials that were used in the construction of this play. Mr. Steevens informs us that Shakspeare received the greatest part of them from the Troy book of Lydgate. It is presumed that the learned commentator would have been nearer the fact had he substituted the Troy book or recueyl translated by Caxton from Raoul le Fevre; which, together with a translation of Homer, supplied the incidents of the Trojan war. Lydgate's work was becoming obsolete, whilst the other was at this time in the prime of its vigour. From its first publication to the year 1619, it had passed through six editions, and continued to be popular even in the eighteenth century. Mr. Steevens is still less accurate in stating Le Fevre's work to be a translation from Guido of Colonna; for it is only in the latter part that he has made any use of him. Yet Guido actually had a French Translator before the time of Raoul: which translation, though never printed, is remaining in MS. under the whimsical title of "La vie de la piteuse destruction de la noble et supellative citÉ de Troye le grant. TranslatÉe en Francois lan MCCCLXXX;" and at the end it is called "Listoire tres plaisant de la destruction de Troye la grant." Such part of our play as relates to the loves of Troilus and Cressida was most probably taken from Chaucer, as no other work, accessible to Shakspeare, could have supplied him with what was necessary.