Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624). Linche Richard

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.

      FORMAL CHARACTERISTICS

      Like the poems reprinted by Professor Donno, these establish their identity as minor epics by the erotic subject matter of their narration, however symbolized or moralized, and by their use of certain rhetorical devices that came to be associated with the genre. These include the set description of people and places; the suasoria, or invitation to love; and the formal digression, sometimes in the form of an inset tale, such as the tale of Poplar in Mirrha (pp. 148–155). Other rhetorical devices cultivated in the epyllion are the long apostrophe, and the sentence or wise saying. Also, these poems employ numerous compound epithets and far-fetched conceits. (Dom Diego goes hunting with a "beast-dismembring blade" [p. 64], and Cinyras incestuous bed in The Scourge "doth shake and quaver as they lie,/As if it groan'd to beare the weight of sinne." [p. 261].)

      The average length of these, like other Renaissance minor epics, is about 900 lines. Although the length of Renaissance minor epics is not rigidly prescribed, it is noteworthy that several of these poems have almost the same number of lines. Philos and Licia, Mirrha, and Hiren, for example, running to about 900 lines, vary in length by no more than 16 lines. (Amos and Laura, however, the shortest with about 300 lines, is some 650 lines shorter than The Scourge, the longest, with about 950.)

As well as echoing Marlowe's Hero and Leander and Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis in particular words and phrases, these poems reveal a much more general indebtedness to what Professor Bush has aptly called "the twin peaks of the Ovidian tradition in England."[27] The majority employ one of two prosodic patterns—the Marlovian couplet popularized in Hero and Leander, or the six-line stanza used by Lodge but soon after taken over by Shakespeare in Venus and Adonis and thereafter associated with his poem.[28]

      In addition to the couplet, a common mark of Marlovian influence in the poems is the etiological myth, sometimes expanded into a tale. Thus, in Mirrha, for instance, the growth of rare spices and perfumes in Panchaia is explained by the story of how Hebe once spilled nectar there (p. 147).

Comparable marks of Shakespearean influence are the aggressive female like Mirrha, reminiscent of Shakespeare's Venus; the hunting motif in Dom Diego and Amos and Laura, recalling Adonis' obsession with the hunt; and the catalog of the senses in Philos and Licia, pp. 15–16, and Hiren, stanzas 75–79, which imitates Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, ll. 427–450. Only Mirrha among these poems, however, makes specific acknowledgment of a debt to Shakespeare (see p. 167). Finally, Dom Diego's plangent laments at Ginevra's cruelty recall Glaucus' unrestrained weeping at Scylla's cruelty in Lodge's Scillaes Metamorphosis. But whereas the "piteous Nimphes" surrounding Glaucus weep till a "pretie brooke" forms,[29] "the fayre Oreades pitty-moved gerles" that comfort Dom Diego are loath to lose the "liquid pearles" he weeps. Consequently they gather (and presumably preserve) them with "Spunge-like Mosse" (p. 95). Lynche extends his debt to Lodge by establishing at the end of his poem a link between Ginevra and the Maiden he professes to love. But, whereas Lodge in the Envoy to his poem uses Scylla on the rocks as a horrible example of what may happen to unyielding maids, Lynche holds up Ginevra, who finally marries her lover, as an example to be followed by the poet's disdainful Diella of the accompanying sonnets (see p. 101).

It would probably be impossible, even if it were desirable, for any given minor epic to follow all the conventions of the genre, or even all its alternative conventions. Yet all the poems included here adhere so closely to most of the important minor epic conventions that there should be no question as to the minor epic identity of any.[30]

      THE HISTORY OF THE EARLY EDITIONS

      Philos and Licia, though entered on October 2, 1606 and presumably printed soon thereafter, survives only in the unique copy of the 1624 edition printed by W. S. [William Stansby?] for John Smethwick. (No record of transfer of this poem from William Aspley, who entered it, exists, though Aspley and Smethwick were associated, along with William Jaggard, in the publication of Shakespeare's First Folio of 1623.)

Robert Burton bequeathed this