[In the following excerpt, Johnson discusses the plays The Supposes, Jocasta, and The Glasse of Government.]

When we read Gascoigne's plays, we are immediately aware that the first two plays, The Supposes and Jocasta, are translations and vary considerably from his last play, The Glasse of Governement, which is original. The two translated plays were done party as exercises, partly as experiments; and their form and content reflect the purposes of their original authors. The Glasse of Governement, however, handles several themes which we now recognize as arising from Gascoigne's own early experiences, and it treats them with a certain grim irony that gives the play a strength which the others lack. The first two plays, The Supposes and Jocasta, were translated and produced in 1566, while Gascoigne was attending Gray's Inn for the second time. He translated The Supposes from Ariosto by himself and Euripides's Jocasta from the Italian playwright Dolce with the help of Francis Kinwelmershe. The Supposes holds the unique distinction of being the first Italian comedy to be translated into English and also of being the first English play to use prose dialogue. In both respects, The Supposes is important to English drama. Jocasta stands as the first Greek tragedy to appear on an English stage. So we can see that the time Gascoigne spent in Gray's Inn was fruitful; indeed, he and his companions for a few years were the center of English drama. They wrote and acted in plays that helped form the tastes of their age and which influenced the shape of the drama to come, both in the content of the drama—the Italian comic mode and the Greek-Senecan tragic mode—and in the form—prose dialogue, adaptation of coherent scene divisions, Senecan characteristics, and others.¹

The Glasse of Governement, the third and original play, was written after Gascoigne returned from the Dutch wars; it shows, in contrast to the other plays, a change in his mood. He was no longer lighthearted and full of illusions; he was wiser and, to some extent, regretful of the lost time of his young life. This change appears, first of all, in his choice of a recognized form for his drama, rather than an experimental one as in his earlier ones. But, second, the intent of the play is to teach morals, to demonstrate the wisdom of authority as contrasted to the foolishness of inexperience. The play is not successful partly because of the gravity in which Gascoigne approaches the theme. But there are aspects in it, as in the others, which make us wish he had given more time to the drama and less, perhaps, to the court.

THE SUPPOSES

Gascoigne's first play, The Supposes, a translation of Ariosto's play, is an example of “New Style” Italian comedy. The characters and situations are conventional, and the language is for the most part refined. This style contrasts sharply with plays such as William Stevenson's Gammer Gurton's Needle, which imitated many aspects of Latin comedy and relied considerably on coarse language and vulgar wit for its success. Although the material of The Supposes is far removed from that which forms the substance of his work, Gascoigne accomplished several things in the play: he avoids coarseness and eroticism and emphasizes the moral positions of the characters; he utilizes the humor and absurdity of the situation rather than the eroticism inherent in it; and he develops a form of euphuistic dialogue that is remarkable in its grasp of the techniques perfected over a decade later by Lyly. For example, in the same way that Euphues argues love policies to himself, so does Polynesta's lover argue to himself:

Hard hap had I when I first began this unfortunate enterprise: … thinking that as shevering colde by glowing fire, thurst by drinke, hunger by pleasant repasts, and a thousande suche like passions finde remedie by their contraries, so my restlesse desire might have founde quiet by continuall contemplation. But alas, I find that only love is unsaciable: for as the flie playeth with the flame till at last she is cause of her own decay, so the lover that thinketh with kissing and colling to content his unbrideled apetite, is commonly seene the only cause of his owne consumption. … I reape the fruites of my desire: yet as my joyes abounde, even so my paines encrease. I fare like the covetous man, that having all the world at will, is never yet content: the more I have, the more I desire. … I know she loveth me best of all others, but what may that prevaile when perforce she shal be constrained to marie another? Alas, the pleasant tast of my sugred joyes doth yet remaine so perfect in my remembrance, that the least soppe of sorow seemeth more soure than gal in my mouth. If I had never knowen delight, with better contentation might I have passed these dreadful dolours. …

(Cunliffe, [J.W., ed. The Complete Works of George Gascoigne. 2 vols. Cambridge: The University Press, 1910.] I, 197)

From this quotation, we can perceive something of Erostrato's character; but we also can see the action of the play being rehearsed.

As we might expect of Italian comedy, the plot situation is quite complex, whereas the plot action is relatively simple. Before the play opens, Erostrato, a Sicilian attending school in Ferrara, has fallen in love with the gentlewoman, Polynesta. In order to gain access to her, Erostrato has assumed the identity of his servant, Dulipo, and taken a position as servingman to her father, Damon. After bribing the nurse, Balia, to speak in his favor, Erostrato becomes Polynesta's lover; but he, of course, reveals his noble identity to his beloved. At this point the play begins. Cleander, an elderly doctor, wants Polynesta for his wife. To counter this suitor, Erostrato has his servant Dulipo, who is masquerading as Erostrato, also make suit for Polynesta. As Cleander has more money to offer, Erostrato's only device is to bring in a false father for the false Erostrato to make an even larger settlement—a scheme that fails when the real father suddenly arrives and unmasks Dulipo. Also at this time, Damon discovers Polynesta's indiscretion and claps Erostrato, a supposed servant, into a dungeon. However, the parasite Pasyphilo helps clear up the confusion, the three elderly men—Damon, Cleander, and Erostrato's father—come to an agreement, and the play ends happily.

The success of the play depends much more on the situation than on the characters. The characters are stock figures in Italian comedy—two young lovers, two greedy old men, a two-faced servant, a faithful servant, a corruptible nurse, an interfering old crone, and several low-life comic figures. None of these is on stage long enough to be a protagonist; indeed, all of them, except Erostrato's father, are guilty of one or another crime: Erostrato seduces Polynesta and deceives society at large; Polynesta loses her honor quite willingly; her father, Damon, wishes to sell her to the highest bidder; old Cleander is apparently fired by lust; and Dulipo, the faithful servant, is living a fraudulent life and is forced to renounce the master who once saved his life.

As is usual with stock figures, there is little attempt at depth of characterization. Erostrato, rather than capturing our sympathy, simply sums up past events when he says:

O howe often have I thoughte my selfe sure of the upper hande herein? but I triumphed before the victorie. And then how ofte againe have I thoughte the fielde loste? Thus have I beene tossed nowe over, nowe under, even as fortune list to whirle the wheele, neither sure to winne nor certayne to loose the wager.

(Cunliffe, I, 212)

Polynesta, the center around which all the action moves, speaks only in the opening scene and does not appear onstage again until the end of the play. Dulipo, masquerading as Erostrato, is perhaps the most convincing character, for his position is completely untenable, and we feel his growing confusion and fear as events close in on him. Of the clowns, Pasyphilo is the most consistent with his ravenous appetite, yet he commands some admiration as a gourmet and leads directly to Greedy in Massinger's A New Way To Pay Old Debts.

The most puzzling lost opportunity to develop character comes when Erostrato's seduction of Polynesta is discovered by her father and Erostrato is thrown into a dungeon. We would expect speeches worthy of Euphues from Erostrato, or at least words of despair; but he is silent from this point until the last scene. Instead, we hear Damon, the father, airing his griefs in a long soliloquy:

My daughter is defloured, and I utterly dishonested: how can I then wype that blot off my browe? and on whom shall I seeke revenge? … O Polynesta, full evill hast thou requited the clemencie of thy carefull father: and yet to excuse thee giltlesse before God, and to condemne thee giltie before the worlde, I can count none other but my wretched selfe the caytife and causer of all my cares. … It is too true, that of all sorowes this is the head source and chiefe fountaine of all furies: the goods of the world are incertain, the gaines to be rejoyced at, and the losse not greatly to be lamented: only the children cast away, cutteth the parents throate with the knife of inward care, which knife will kill me surely, I make none other accompte.

(Cunliffe, I, 213-15)

Selfish though Damon is, Polynesta's sin has made him realize his own shortcomings.

The dialogue is witty, and the play moves rapidly into its complications. But the success of the play lies directly on its structure, and in this respect Ariosto simply plays upon the familiar and successful theme of young lovers struggling to get together against the desires of one or two old men and, to some extent society. The twists in this play are the many cases of mistaken identities (the reason for the title of the play by the way), and they are explained by Gascoigne in “The Prologue”:

But understand, this our Suppose is nothing else but a mystaking or imagination of one thing for an other. For you shall see the master supposed for the servant, the servant for the master: the freeman for a slave, and the bondslave for a freeman: the stranger for a well knowen friend, and the familiar for a stranger.

(Cunliffe, I, 188)

False identity is the key to the play; critical moments arise when the various characters learn of the duplicity and when Erostrato's father comes looking for his noble son, only to find a servingman in his place. The one case of unknown identity which surprises audience and characters alike is Dulipo, who is really Cleander's lost son.

As I have observed earlier, part of the play's importance lies in the Italian source. It brought to the scholars, nobles, and gallants a new, sophisticated comedy, not yet tainted by the eroticism which haunted such comedy during the following century and a half and which finally destroyed it. In The Supposes, the erotic elements are, however, present: an old man's lust for a young, beautiful girl; a pandering nurse; a demure but sexually permissive heroine; and a disguised nobleman who enjoys the heroine almost at will. However, the play concentrates on the problems faced by the two young lovers, not of how to satisfy their desires (there they have no problems), but of how to overcome the greater fortune of old Cleander so that they can marry.

The play emphasizes the position of each character rather than his deeper emotions. Erostrato's speech, quoted above in part, explains his position intellectually. Damon's long soliloquy points out precisely why he feels injured: the loss of his daughter's honor means not only that his reputation suffers and that he will not receive money for her hand but also that she cannot hope to live in the noble world to which she had been bred. Cleander's speech, when he discovers Dulipo to be his lost son, explains why he suddenly no longer desires Polynesta. Apparently, he only wanted an heir for his fortunes and saw Polynesta as the most desirable mother. In the light of this explanation, all the others' insulting remarks about his lust and greed seem suddenly shallow, although we cannot help but feel that the author is whitewashing Cleander to some extent.

In this way, by concentrating on the intellectual aspects of their positions, the play avoids the traps of sensuality and eroticism which this type of situation comedy can so easily fall into, and it sets a tone of critical objectivity which influenced English comedy for nearly seventy-five years.

JOCASTA: A POLITICAL EXERCISE

The story of Jocasta, mother and wife of Oedipus, is less well known to us than the story of her husband-son Oedipus or her daughter Antigone. However, the narrative raises several questions which vitally interested Elizabethan artists and which were directly relevant to England—the question of an heir to the throne, the dangers of civil war, and the more eternal problems of ambition, hate, pride, and the workings of fate. Both Oedipus Rex and Antigone were known; and, by the end of the sixteenth century, their purer dramatic character was realized. But they are essentially studies in tyranny and in man against fate, and they did not fulfill the political requirements of the 1560's. Gascoigne's Jocasta, with its emphasis upon the public ruin brought about by private ambition, did.

To a modern audience, Jocasta comes across as an unsuccessful play. Too many major characters have deep-seated problems which, as they are brought to light one by one, reduce the emotional unity of the drama, Jocasta, her two sons, Antigone, and Creon are all focused upon at some time during the play. At the play's start, Jocasta is already reeling under the guilt of having been wife to her own son; and the conditions of Oedipus's disgrace—blindness and internment—are continually before her. Also, her two sons (by Oedipus) have quarreled over the rule of Thebes, and one has raised a Greek army to win Thebes from the other. The inevitability of the death of at least one of them increases Jocasta's grief. In her attempt to create peace, she brings them face to face before the battle, thus initiating the major action of the play.

Eteocles and Polinices, her sons, were to share the rule of Thebes by ruling on alternate years. Eteocles, being first to rule, became ambitious and usurped the kingship entirely to himself, forcing Polinices to seek aid from other cities to restore his right. Polinices, the favored one of the women, is referred to as “sweet” and “gentle Polinices” by Antigone particularly. In the battle before Thebes, Eteocles's army is victorious; but he decides to press the victory and challenges Polinices to single combat. Both are killed; and Jocasta, overcome by the sight, kills herself. Antigone throughout the play has strongly favored Polinices, and we see the extent of Eteocles's treachery mainly through her speeches. After the battle she attempts to bury Polinices, but is prevented by Creon, Jocasta's brother, who assumes kingship upon Eteocles's death. She thwarts Creon's wish that she marry his son and accompanies the now-banished Oedipus into exile at the play's end.

Creon, the other major figure, is a bit more complex. In the opening “argument” of the play, Creon is called “King, the type of Tyranny”; but his tyranny consists only in refusing Polinices burial and in banishing Oedipus. However, Creon has long desired the kingship; Antigone, we find, is more fearful of him than of Eteocles:

Besides all this, a certaine jelousie,
Lately conceyvde (I know not whence it springs)
Of Creon, my mothers brother, appaules me much,
Him doubt I more than any danger else.

(Cunliffe, I, 256-57)

Yet, when the blind seer Tyresias tells Creon that he must sacrifice his son Meneceus in order to become king, Creon refuses and is genuinely grieved when Meneceus takes his own life to save Thebes.

Gascoigne's play, in fact, contains many contradictions which are posed rather than answered. On the political level, both brothers share blame for the tragic war. Eteocles, of course, committed the first offense by usurping the throne in a tyrannical fashion; his crime is compounded by his increasing hatred of Antigone and Oedipus. But, as Eteocles points out, Polinices is bringing foreign troops to wage war against his own people; he is willing to destroy Thebes so that he may rule it. To compound the crime, Polinices has taken a foreign wife—that is, made a foreign alliance—to raise his army for such an attack. Thus, both brothers are guilty. Certainly Polinices has been wronged, but is he justified in destroying his city, in causing many innocent deaths, to right his own personal wrong? The comment implicit in the English version is that death and destruction are the necessary results of pride and ambition. The question of right and wrong is superficial. Rather, English lords and politicians should learn the lesson of history and avoid the original causes.

Another problem, one which has theological overtones, is the guilt attached to Jocasta. I say “theological” rather than “philosophical” because the English dramatists did not show much understanding of Greek concepts of destiny and free will until Marlowe's time in the 1590's. Generally, the vicissitudes of man's fate were blamed on the turning Wheel of Fortune, as the translators' additions to the play demonstrate. However, the unfairness of Jocasta's position, that of being punished for a sin of which she was completely unaware when she committed it, brought forth some objections similar to the ones Milton used to ameliorate Adam's guilt in Paradise Lost. In the original play, Jocasta's guilt and grief must remain unmitigated even though she is essentially a gentle and loving woman who refuses to blame any other person for the evil besetting Thebes. Tyresias tells us of the extent of her guilt when speaking to Creon:

The incest foule, and childbirth monstruous
Of Jocasta, so stirres the wrath of Jove
This citie shall with bloudy channels swimme,
And angry Mars shall overcome it all
With famine, flame, rape, murther, dole and death:
These lustie towres shall have a headlong fall,
These houses burnde, and all the rest be razde,
And soone be sayde, here whilome Thebes stoode.

(Cunliffe, I, 287)

Yet, the English version, through Creon, makes the distinction that her sin was unwilled:

O Jocasta, miserable mother,
What haplesse ende thy life alas hath hent?
Percase the heavens purveyed had the same,
Moved therto by the wicked wedlocke
Of Oedipus thy sonne yet might thy scuse
But justly made, that knewe not of the crime.

(Cunliffe, I, 310)

Such a sentiment could only arise from a theology which presupposes punishment in another world, not the Grecian theology which poses the inexplicable problem of life rather than death. This one statement, unimportant in a dramatic context, seems to echo the Anglican position in opposition to the Puritan dogma of Election: that certain men are doomed to damnation from birth and that others are elected to salvation in spite of the lives each may lead. To an Anglican, Jocasta's crime could not lead to her damnation because her crime was not self-willed; and the misery and grief in her life are attributable to the turns of fortune which all mankind must bear. It was for later dramatists such as Webster, Tourneur, and Shakespeare to realize the greater dramatic and poetic possibilities of the Greek tragic view.

The question of why the men of Gray's Inn produced Jocasta rather than, perhaps, Oedipus Rex may be answered on several grounds. Jocasta plays upon the evils of civil war and the troubles inherent in the breakdown of ordered authority. Remembering that the ravages of the War of the Roses were still apparent in England and that Queen Elizabeth was unmarried and thus had no apparent heir, we can understand how concerned Englishmen were over the orderly succession of the throne. Sackville's and Norton's Gorboduc, produced at Gray's Inn a few years earlier, portrayed the evils of a divided kingship. Statesmen, scholars, and artists all besieged the queen to marry in order to avoid civil disorder in the event of her death. All were afraid of the results of an unscrupulous ambition and were aware of the force the throne held to offset it. Jocasta, if nothing more, was another appeal to settle the issue of succession by demonstrating the lesson of history. In marginal notes and poetic appendices to the play, the view of Jocasta as a “mirrour for magistrates” is urged upon the reader and spectator.

Another reason the play was chosen lies in its Senecan flavor. To the Inns of Court dramatists, Seneca offered new and exciting drama techniques, and they imitated him in such plays as Gorboduc and translated him directly. Senecan characteristics are well known, but it is worthwhile noting those used in Jocasta. The “dumme shewe” is the first characteristic offered to the audience. In it, the actors pantomime an action, such as a pope removing his crown and robes and putting on armor. In Jocasta there are five dumb shows. The one preceding the third act gives a good example of how elaborate they could become:

Before the beginning of this.iii. Act did sound a very dolefull noise of cornettes, during the which there opened and appeared in the stage a great Gulfe. Immediatly came in.vi. gentlemen in their dublets & hose, bringing upon their shulders baskets full of earth and threwe them into the Gulfe to fill it up, but it would not so close up nor be filled. Then came the ladyes and dames that stoode by, throwing in their cheynes & Jewels, so to cause it stoppe up and close it selfe: but when it would no so be filled, came in a knighte with his sword drawen, armed at all poyntes, who walking twise or thrise about it, & perusing it, seing that it would nether be filled with earth nor with their Jewells and ornaments, after solempne reverence done to the gods, and curteous leave taken of the Ladyes and standers by, sodeinly lepte into the Gulfe, the which did close up immediatly: betokning unto us the love that every worthy person oweth unto his native countrie, by the historye of Curtius, who for the lyke cause adventured the like in Rome. This done, blind Tyresias the devine prophete led in by hys daughter, and conducted by Meneceus the son of Creon, entreth by the gates Electrae, and sayth as followeth.

(Cunliffe, I, 283)

The appeal of the dumb shows to Englishmen stems from the long tradition of mumming. However, it was through Seneca's influence that it became a major dramatic technique, one used with great effect by later Renaissance dramatists such as John Webster.

Another device is the long set speech, such as Jocasta delivers at the beginning of the play and the one Nuntius gives near the play's end. Such speeches allow the full exploitation of the playwright's rhetorical ability; and in the hands of Marlowe, this characteristic developed into a superb dramatic instrument used by all the major dramatists. It is also a major factor in the development of the soliloquy, to which Renaissance drama owes much.

Seneca also inspired interest in violence and horror. Because Senecan plays were written to be read, not to be acted, bloody or horrible events occurred away from the action of the play and then were described to the reader in great detail by a “Nuntius.” In this way, rhetoric conveyed the desired impact of violence and terror to the reader who otherwise would not be able to visualize it from reading the bare dialogue. In Jocasta, we see this interest reflected in the speech of the Nuntius describing the battle and the deaths of Jocasta and her two sons. One of the dramatic weaknesses of Jocasta, as a play made to be acted on stage, is the large proportion of reported action as against staged action. However, subsequent dramatists learned from these early experiments and brought violence and horror onstage in increasing degrees, turning their rhetoric into other areas.

THE GLASSE OF GOVERNEMENT

Gascoigne's only original play, The Glasse of Governement, is a highly moralistic drama illustrating the “prodigal son” theme.² Since the play was written in 1575 after Gascoigne had spent time soldiering in the Netherlands, it undoubtedly was influenced by Dutch plays on the same subject; but Gascoigne's contributions to this type of play are original and interesting. The typical prodigal-son story tells of a young man who leaves his family and spends his inheritance in riotous living. He descends into ruin and ill health, and he loses all his fortune. His family, however, forgives him and takes him back into the fold. The essential parts of the story are the young, proud, undisciplined son and the forgiving father. If we regard the youth as mankind, the father as Christ, and the family as the Christian community, we have the substance of the Christian moral.

Both on the Continent and in England, the Christian story is twisted somewhat because humanist playwrights focused on techniques of education. Prodigality became the result of an undisciplined mind; and, to humanist dramatists to whom theories of education were of primary concern, a prodigal-son play offered the most appropriate setting for discussions of proper educational methods. The emphasis on forgiveness, repentance, and grace was considerably less pronounced. The inherent drama of pride, despair, and salvation was overlooked, and the plays for the most part resembled moral sermons and pedagogical essays. Although both of these characteristics are apparent in The Glasse of Governement, Gascoigne added to the play dramatic qualities which he had learned while translating Ariosto and Euripides. These additions include conventional scene divisions which dictate that the onstage actors leave naturally at the scene's close; logical act divisions following the five-act structure; the use of a subplot and comic figures; the more complex technique of paralleling characters on different dramatic levels; the establishment of plausibly motivated situations and characters. I do not intend to discuss all of these aspects, but certain ones clearly indicate Gascoigne's important position in breaking away from the trite approach to this theme and in making it acceptable material for the drama.

Gascoigne's play is concerned with the careers of the sons of two families, Phylautus and Phylomusus in one family, and Phylosarchus and Phylotimus in the other. The two elder sons, Phylautus and Phylosarchus, with their desire for experience and their weariness with instruction, contrast to the two younger ones, Phylomusus and Phylotimus, who study diligently and do the tasks assigned them by their tutor, Gnomaticus. The older brothers' boredom is given relief by Lamia, a harlot, who becomes the catalyst to their rebellious acts. When Lamia's influence is discovered by the two fathers, all four sons are sent away to the university at Douai. Once there, the two elder sons leave school entirely and go their separate ways: Phylautus, eventually executed for robbery; and Phylosarchus, whipped and banished for fornication. The two younger brothers, who complete their education honorably, accept favorable positions in the community. There is an attempt by both the younger brothers and the fathers to save the errant sons. The fathers forgive their sons and send a servant, Fidus, to bring them home. The younger brother, Philotimus, pleads to save Phylosarchus from whipping. The interesting twist on the prodigal-son theme is that, although the fathers forgive the prodigals, they still receive the severest penalties for their crimes.

The characters of the harlot Lamia, Pandarina her “aunt,” and her gentleman helpers, Dick Droom and Eccho, add considerable substance to the play. Lamia is quite a sympathetic character; she is, like the two elder brothers, rebelling against a restrictive, moralistic society. She says:

if I could have bene contented to be so shutte up from sight and speech of such as like me, I might have lived gallantly and well provided with my mother, who (though I say it) is a good old Lady in Valentia, but when I sawe that I must weare my good apparell alwayes within doores, and that I must passe over my meales without company, I trussed up my Jewelles in a casket, and (being accompanyed with my good Auntie here) I bad Valentia farewell, for I had rather make hard shifte to live at lyberty, then enjoy great riches in such a kind of emprisonment.

(Cunliffe, II, 23-24)

The final point in this speech is the basic irony of the play and certainly one of the central ironies of Gascoigne's life: life does not offer freedom and riches both; a young person must give up one. Unfortunately, the society frowned on the value of freedom for a young person; for such freedom led to excesses which led to degeneration. Thus, a youth choosing to go his own way was almost always severed from his family. Gascoigne's own youth contained many elements of prodigality, and in many respects Lamia's career is like his. Lamia's mistake is to accept the advice of Pandarina too easily; but Lamia, young, attractive, willful, wishes to have some fun out of life. Thus, her punishment, which is three days on the “cucking stoole” and banishment, seems a bit too harsh even though she did play a part in starting the two elder brothers on the road to their destruction.

The play turns on a series of parallels or contrasts. The obvious and unexceptional contrast is between the good and the bad sons; but the more subtle parallel is between the bad sons and Lamia. She has already rejected established authority and morality, and they do so during the course of the play. Their reasons are the same: boredom with accepted social roles and a desire to pursue their own interests. None of the three carries any hard feelings toward his parent: indeed, Lamia even says, “I might have lived gallantly and well provided with my mother, who (though I say it) is a good old Lady in Valentia.” It is rather that, like many young people, they are stifled by parental authority and must get away.

In the context of the play, their decisions and actions are evil because they conflict with society's laws. The two sons are forgiven by their fathers but are cruelly punished by society, but Lamia finds no forgiveness from any side. Her position, in fact, causes the Servus, a police officer, some difficulty as he admits to the two fathers: “and though I desire (as much as you) to see them condingly corrected, yet with out proofe of some offence I should therin commit a wrong. … I have no proofe of evill wherwith to burthen her” (Cunliffe, II, 82). Yet, when the news of the older sons' bad careers comes to his ears, he does not hesitate to commit her to public humiliation.

To some extent, Gascoigne seems to be sympathetic to Lamia's position. When the civil authorities are intent on prosecuting her, he has Nuntius, a news carrier, say to Gnomaticus:

NUNTIUS:
Good lord what a world is this? Justice quoth he? mary this is Justyce of the new fashion.
GNOMATICUS:
And what Justice good fellow I pray thee.
NUNTIUS:
Nay none at all Sir, but rather an open wronge, an honest old gentlewoman with her kinswoman are commaunded to the coupe, onely because they suffered an honest youngman (and Sonne to a welthy Burgher) to suppe with them yesternight, … I have seldome heard of such rigor used, especially since they proffer good suretyes to be alwayes forth comming untill their behaviour be tryed.

(Cunliffe, II, 70)

The women are not even to be allowed bail. But an additional detail exposes the plight of Lamia. At the first suggestion of trouble, her servingmen-protectors leave her to her fate. As Eccho, the parasite, says earlier:

Tush Dyck hold thy peace, if we have not them, we shall have others as good as they, thou mayst bee sure that as long as Lamia continueth bewtifull, she shall never be without Sutors, and when the Crowes feete groweth under her eye, why then no more adoe but ensineuate thy selfe with another. Yea and in the meane time also, it should be no bad councell, if a man had foure or five such hauntes in store, that evermore when one house is on sweeping, another spytte may cry creake at the fire: store is no sore as the proverbe saith, and now adayes the broker which hath but one bargaine in hand, may chaunce to weare a thred bare coate.

(Cunliffe, II, 66)

Finally, we learn that Lamia may even be in love with Phylosarchus, as Eccho again suggests: “Fye fie, what meaneth shee? Will she cast away her selfe on this fashion for his sake? She beareth but evill in remembraunce the good documentes of that vertuous olde Lady her Aunte. I warrant you it would be long before that Messalina would dye for love. Tush tush shall I tell you? It is folly to stand meditation of these matters, every man for himselfe and I for one …” (Cunliffe, II, 61). Lamia, it seems, is caught in the snares of her youth. Being beautiful, she is condemned as a temptress; being young, she is foolish enough to fall in love, and sufficiently inexperienced to be used by her Aunt, Eccho, and Dick Droome as their source of income. Certainly, Lamia had few scruples, but Gascoigne gives us more than just the surface portrait of a scheming woman. We come to understand, through her, the barriers put in the way of youth and the mortal danger waiting for those who trespass across those barriers.

If Lamia and the two elder brothers are not completely evil, the results of their actions usually are. What, then, we must ask, is it that turns young people into or allows them to become criminals? The answer is highly ironic: their teachers! Gnomaticus and Pandarina, who are equally guilty for the tragedy of Lamia and the two elder brothers, are placed in obvious parallel positions early in the play. Gnomaticus delivers a sermon to the four youths in which, in elaborate and typically humanistic fashion, he instructs them to fear, love, and trust God: “I say, Feare God for he is might, love God, for he is mercifull, and trust in God for he is faithfull and just” (Cunliffe, II, 21). In the following scene, Pandarina counsels Lamia with almost parallel phrases, but of course with different intent: “I pray you learne these three pointes of me to governe your steppes by. First Trust no man how faire so ever he speake, next Reject no man (that hath ought) how evil favored so ever he be. And lastely Love no man longer than he geveth, since lyberall gyfts are the glewe of everduring love” (Cunliffe, II, 25). And Lamia replies in a tone of humility paralleling that of the four youths: “Well Aunt, I were worthy of great reprehension, if I would reject the good documents of such a frende, and if I have heretofore done contrary, impute it to my youth, but be you sure that hereafter I will endevour my selfe to follow your precepts” (Cunliffe, II, 25).

Pandarina gives Lamia evil counsel that is actually contrary to Lamia's nature (for she falls in love), and thus her counseling leads Lamia into the life of a criminal. Pandarina has some difficulty guiding Lamia, but society is ultimately on Pandarina's side, and, by the end of the play, it literally makes a hardened prostitute out of what at first was only a willful girl. Gnomaticus, on the other hand, aims at moral perfection for his four charges. The two parents retain him to instill the highest religious and civic ideals in their sons, and he virtually guarantees success. He chooses to teach four topics—their duty to God, to their king, to their country, and to their parents: His methods are to deliver sermons, to give them reading assignments, and to have them write poems and essays on the four subjects. His methods, in effect, are those of the humanist scholar-teacher. But Gnomaticus's major fault is that he does not understand human nature. He cannot recognize the signs of boredom and incipient rebellion in Phylautus and Phylosarchus, the two older sons; and he cannot, therefore, prevent their ruin. He believes in the essential goodness of the boys, and in this he is correct, for Phylosarchus, far from being a lustful seducer, wishes to write love poems to Lamia and to court her in a fairly conventional way. But in his instruction, Gnomaticus relies too much on familiar proverbial wisdom and thereby disappoints the expectations of the elder brothers whose quick wits had already mastered this stage of education.

The content of instruction, as an exercise in abstraction and entirely without material relevant to the boys' daily lives, fails to satisfy the older brothers' desire for experience. So they search for it themselves, aided only by the corrupt servant, provided by Gnomaticus. Thus, both the humanistic education and the humanist educator fail to prevent the tragedy.

Another error, more directly fatal, is Gnomaticus's naïve trust of other human beings. Unable to recognize a corrupt servant, he trusts Ambidexter to watch over the four brothers at the university. Ambidexter, the bad servant, is directly responsible for leading the elder brothers to their ruin. Significantly, when the news of their disgrace and death is brought back, Gnomaticus is the first to receive it, perhaps because it is his failure more than anyone else's.

We found earlier that Gascoigne's early life somewhat followed the pattern of a prodigal son, so we must recognize that he understood their attitudes quite well. Perhaps this explains the absolute irreconcilability of the prodigals to society. Unlike other prodigal-son plays, neither the boys nor Lamia return to their parents' forgiving arms. Their parents certainly would take them, but somehow the real world does not operate so benevolently. Gascoigne, himself, although the son of a wealthy man, had to struggle for a living, and the experience left him without a neat formula for happiness and success, a point often made in his lyric poetry, such as “Gascoignes wodmanship.” Thus, underneath the apparent respect he shows for Gnomaticus's teachings, there are notes of dislike for the two good sons. Their characters are flat and lifeless, they do their assigned tasks without question, and they often do more than is required in order to win Gnomaticus's approval. They frown upon their brothers' unconventionality, and in general show few human qualities, except when Phylotimus pleads to save Phylosarchus from a whipping. In one instance, when the two elder brothers have been rebuked by the Markgrave, the contrast in attitudes between the two sets of brothers is most marked:

PHYLAUTUS:
Where have we bene quoth you? why we have bene with that good olde gentleman the Markgrave, unto whome we were as welcome as water into the ship, the olde froward frowner would scarce vouchsafe to speak unto us, or to looke upon us, but he shall sit untill his heeles ake before I come at him againe.
PHYLOMUSUS:
brother, use reverent speach of him, principally bycause he is a Magistrate, and therwithal for his greye haires, for that is one especiall poynt of our master traditions.
PHYLAUTUS:
Tushe what you tell me of our masters traditions? if a Magistrate, or an elder would challendge reverence of a young gentleman, it were good reason also that they should render affabilitie, and chearefull countenance to all such as present them selves before them with good will. When we came to him he knewe us not,

(Cunliffe, II, 46)

This one incident illustrates one source of the conflict the elder brothers have with society, the literal denial of equality to the young by the elders; but it also summarizes the younger brothers clearly. In effect, they represent all those whose success in life springs from following a course laid out for them by others, from obeying unquestioningly those in authority, and from maintaining the traditional roles of society.

Gnomaticus, also, is given an unpleasant trait. When the Nuntius tells him of Pandarina's and Lamia's arrest, he is not even remotely concerned that they are held without the slightest bit of real evidence; even the Nuntius is astonished by this lack of concern for justice. But, of course, Gnomaticus is worried over his pupils, and the fate of someone on a lower social level does not concern him.

Yet, despite the undercurrents of trouble, the play is designed to depict humanistic concepts and techniques of education. During the first two acts, Gnomaticus delivers lectures on duty and morality and discusses concepts of philosophy with his four pupils. Then he assigns them tasks in reading, in memorizing, and in versifying. The view that poetry aids memory is voiced by Gnomaticus: “and here I deliver the same unto you, to be put in verse everie one by himself and in sundrie device, that you may therein take the greater delight, for of all other Artes Poetrie giveth greatest assistaunce unto memorie, since the verie terminations and ceasures doe (as it were) serve for places of memorie, and helpe the mynde with delight to carie burthens, which else would seeme more grievous” (Cunliffe, II, 47-48). The content of their study also is humanistic: they are to learn their duties to God, king, country, and parents; and they are to learn how to express themselves well in rhetoric and poetry.

Another humanist attitude, one expressed by Queen Elizabeth's tutor Roger Ascham in The Schoolmaster, is that quick wits learn quickly but do not retain what they have learned, that they delight in pleasant studies but do not advance to more difficult labors, and that they usually come to a bad or inconsequential end. It seems almost that Ascham wrote the script, for the career followed by the two prodigals compares closely to his description of quick wits. The two prodigals have read extensively in the “pleasant” writings of Terence and Tully. They do the assigned work quickly and are bored by it, but they do not then apply themselves to more difficult material. Rather, they desire diversion and relaxation. And, of course, they come to a bad end.

Gnomaticus is aware of the quicker wits of the elder sons. When his servant praises their intellectual capacity: “and the two eldest could even then (in maner) record without booke as much as you had taught them,” Gnomaticus replies: “Yea but what is that to the purpose? the quickest wits prove not alwayes best, for as they are readie to conceive, so do they quickly forget, & therewithall, the finenesse of their capacitie doth carie such oftentimes to delight in vanities, since mans nature is such, that with ease it inclyneth to pleasure, and unwilling it is to indure pain or travell, without the which no vertue is obteyned” (Cunliffe, II, 38). The conservative, less active, and less volatile mind was the preferred one; for it was less rebellious, less likely to stir up civil discord or religious doubts. It is difficult to take Gnomaticus's view on quick wits seriously, for it condemns his own teaching. Yet, the entire play is an exemplum of his and Ascham's view; and, in this respect, the prodigal-son story becomes really the one about rebels against traditional education. Education, after all, is the main perpetuating device of a culture or society; and one who rejects it is, in the eyes of that society, necessarily dangerous and must be either reclaimed or broken. In The Glasse of Governement, the two who choose to follow their own courses rather than those laid down by society are broken.

As I mentioned earlier, Gascoigne himself suffered the effects of prodigality. As a result, his attitude toward Phylosarchus and Phylautus is mixed. He sympathizes with their dilemma, but he feels forced to uphold the standards of his society. The subsequent conflict resulted in certain touches of character—to Lamia, to Gnomaticus, and to the two prodigals—which give the play strength and reality.

Notes

1. See especially F. S. Boas, University Drama in the Tudor Age (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914); J. Cunliffe, The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy (London: Macmillan and Company, 1893); and F. L. Lucas, Seneca and Elizabethan Tragedy (Cambridge, at the University Press, 1922).

2. The most useful study of this type of play is C. H. Herford, Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: at the University Press, 1886).