SOURCE: Burns, Raymond S. “Introduction.” In John Day's The Isle of Guls, A Critical Edition, edited by Raymond S. Burns, pp. 1-45. New York: Garland Publishing, 1980.

[In the following excerpt, Burns offers a brief account of the publication history of The Isle of Guls, explicates the play's satire of the court of James I, and examines its sources and background.]

PUBLICATION OF THE TEXT

John Day (c. 1574-c. 1640)¹ is a shadowy figure whose name appears with some regularity in the pages of Henslowe's Diary from 1598 to 1603. Of the score or more plays in which he had a hand during this time, only one, The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (1600), survives. Fate has dealt more kindly with his later works, for four additional plays have come down to us from the period 1604 to 1608: Law Tricks (1604), The Ile of Guls² (1606), The Travels of the Three English Brothers (1607), and Humour out of Breath (1607-1608). Moreover, his allegorical treatise, Peregrinatio Scholastica (1617-1625), and collection of colloquies, The Parliament of Bees (1634-1641), are both extant, so that the complete works of Day comprise two volumes in Bullen's edition.

Of the five plays known to be all or partly of Day's authorship, The Ile of Guls is justly the most famous, although Humour out of Breath is probably his best. Most commentaries upon the drama of the period cite the former work to illustrate a given point, generally one related to the notoriety of the productions in the private theatres. Yet, in the absence of a sizable body of critical material on Day, much of what is found in these commentaries seems markedly derivative. (It is a commonplace among critics, for example, to single out the “tennis-match scene” (III,3)³ as an outstanding achievement in double-entendre. Reference to the play would have shown the sport involved to be bowling.) The play deserves to be more widely and more accurately known that it has been.

The Ile of Guls, although third among his extant plays in order of composition, was the first of Day's plays to appear in print. It was also the only one to achieve a second edition within the playwright's lifetime. The precise date of publication of the first quarto is unknown, for the play was not entered in the Stationers' Register. But it is reasonably safe to assume that plays presented by the boys' companies were published very soon after their performance,⁴ and the date of the first performance of The Ile of Guls has been established almost to the day. In a letter dated March 7, 1606, Sir Edward Hoby wrote to Sir Thomas Edmondes:

At this time was much speech of a play in the Black Friars, where, in the ‘Isle of the Gulls,’ from the highest to the lowest, all men's parts were acted of two divers nations: as I understand sundry were committed to Bridewell.⁵

Hoby's letter relates a chronology of current happenings; the mention of the play falls between events of February 15th and 17th. An unmistakable allusion to Eastward Ho!, westward Ho!, and Northward Ho! in the Induction, together with several pointed references throughout the play to the recent hangings of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators at the end of January, 1606, lends support to this mid-February date.

There are several unusual features to the first quarto edition of the play. In the first place, it is an unlicensed publication, the only one of Day's plays lacking official approval for printing. Secondly, the publisher's name was removed from the title page after the press run had begun. And finally, there are a number of alterations in the text itself of “King” and “Queen” to “Duke” and “Duchess” which are so crudely and carelessly made as to leave little doubt that they were the work of the compositor. Although no one of these features is itself extraordinary, in combination and following upon the réclame of the performance, they lend weight to the suspicion that the play was considered hot property. Since an important part of the interpretive criticism of the play begins with such an understanding of its first appearance in print, it is necessary to explore this phase of its history.

The fact that no entry appears in the register proves nothing. As Chambers points out:

Before … 1584, there are hardly any unentered plays. … Between 1584 and 1615 the number is considerable, being over fifty, or nearly a quarter of the total number of plays printed during that period. An examination of individual cases does not disclose any obvious reason why some should be entered and others not.⁶

Fleay's claim for a “surreptitious” printing on the grounds of non-entry⁷ can be dismissed: the presence of the publisher's and bookseller's names on the title page invalidates it. Neither John Trundle, the publisher, nor John Hodgets, the bookseller, had acquired any questionable character in their profession. The former dealt largely in ballads, new books, and plays, the latter largely in plays.⁸

But if there is little to arouse suspicion in an unlicensed edition, there is much in the business arrangement of its publication. The title page of the first quarto reads as follows in seven of the eight extant copies:

Imprinted at London, and are to bee sold by John Hodgets in Paules Church-yard. 1606.

The eighth copy, now in the Pforzheimer Library, bears this imprint:

Printed for John Trundle, and are to be sold by John Hodgets in Paules Churchyard. 1606.

It seems obvious in comparing the two imprints that the first line of the former one has been eked out in order to fill out the space left by the removal of the publisher's name, thus indicating that the latter one is the earlier copy. The possibility of a change in the business arrangement of the publication wherein Trundle entered into partnership after the printing had begun and thus caused a shortening of the imprint to admit his name cannot, of course, be ruled out. The lateness of such a change could explain the disproportionate scarcity of copies with the revised title page. What seriously challenges such an argument, however, is the agreement among the other copies against it with regard to stop-press corrections.

The question why Trundle's name was withdrawn admits of at least two answers. Borish, who minimizes the sensationalism that has characterized much of the commentary upon the play, sees this as the outcome of a business arrangement whereby Hodgets decided to act as publisher himself, thus eliminating Trundle from the transaction.⁹ Of four plays sold by Hodgets between 1604 and 1607 (I The Honest Whore, 1604; The Dutch Courtesan, 1605; A Woman Killed with Kindness, 1607; and Westward Ho!, 1607) no publisher is specified on the title page unless, as in the case of the first two, it happens to be Hodgets himself, the names or initials only of the printers appearing thereon.¹⁰ On the other hand, W. W. Greg accounts for the change in the title page thus:

… the publisher, as the responsible party, seems to have grown nervous, for while the sheets were in the press he rather meanly had his own name removed from the imprint, while leaving that of the bookseller he employed.¹¹

This seems a more convincing explanation of the printing of a play that had already acquired a questionable name.

Finally, the matter of the substitution of “Duke” and “Duchess” for “King” and “Queen” requires some clarification. First pointed out by Fleay,¹² this alteration of identity is evidenced by violations of meter or rhyme (III.1.166, and V.1.41 and 73) and by survivals of the original forms (the latter occurring sporadically in the text, most frequently in Signature G, i.e., IV.3.49 - V.1.38). The likelihood that these were authorial changes is remote, judging from the wrenching of meter and rhyme mentioned above. Conversely, the suspicion that they emanate from the printing house is strengthened by the sequence of changes of the initial stage direction of Act V. In the Pforzheimer copy, the earliest surviving one, it reads “Enter the duke. …” The British Museum copy, however, reads “Enter the king. …” The Folger and Huntington Library copies agree with the Pforzheimer reading. The most obvious explanation is that the changes were the responsibility of the compositor, and that in this case the gathering in which this form appears was one of the first off the press. Who gave the instructions and why he gave them are questions not easily answered. On the one hand, it is possible that they might have been given by Trundle earlier with a view towards entering the play. On the other, they might have been inspired by that same last-minute apprehensiveness which ultimately prompted him to withdraw his name from the venture. Certainly, someone felt—and with good reason—that this was an especially sensitive feature of the play.

The cumulative evidence for a printing about which the interested parties felt strong misgivings seems thus to be almost incontrovertible. Whatever risk it might have involved them in with the civil authorities, its publication would appear to have been a sound financial venture. And certainly a playwright hitherto unknown¹³ and unpublished would have welcomed the opportunity to exploit a success, however questionable that success might be, to see his name in print.¹⁴

SATIRE IN THE PLAY AND ITS BACKGROUND

All of this leads us back to the content of the play to attempt an explanation of why the work should have appeared in a “shady” printing.¹⁵ To judge from the general moral tone of the plays produced at the private theatres at this time, most notably those of Chapman and Middleton, there is little that is singularly salacious about The Ile of Guls. Rather, the offensiveness that committed sundry to Bridewell was personal satire, Hoby's mention of the “two divers nations” being fairly conclusive on this point.

Satire was the stock in trade of the private theatres.

Fifty-five extant plays can be assigned with confidence to the coterie theatres [i.e., Paul's, Blackfriars, and Whitefriars] between 1599 and 1613, two-thirds of them written by half a dozen playwrights—Jonson, Marston, Chapman, Middleton, Beaumont, and Fletcher. The most striking thing about the list is the overwhelming preponderance of satirical comedies, all but about a dozen of the total being classifiable as such.¹⁶

Perhaps the best description of the plays staged at the Blackfriars, the most significant of these private houses, is to be found in the demands of the First and Second Gentlemen in the Induction to the present play:

… ist any thing Criticall? Are Lawyers fees, and Citizens wives laid open in it: I love to heare vice anotomizd, & abuse let blood in the maister vaine, is there any great mans life charactred int?

(lines 53-56)

and

… is there any good baudry int, jests of an ell deepe, and a fathome broad, good cuckolding, may a couple of young setters-up learne to doe well int? Give me a sceane of venery, that will make a mans spirrits stand on theyr typtoes, and die his bloode in a deepe scarlet, like your Ovids Ars Amandi. …

(lines 65-71)

When, as was not uncommon, a combination of the bitter and the bawdy could be achieved, the playwright had hit upon a very rewarding formula.

One measure of the forcefulness of the satire presented at the Blackfriars is that the boys' company, despite its royal patronage,¹⁷ was frequently in trouble, and may even have been temporarily suppressed. The first such incident for the company occurred in November of the first year of its new patent with the presentation of Philotas, ironically enough a play by the Children's own censor and payee, Samuel Daniel. The following year Eastward Ho! caused a furor. What is of special interest with regard to both of these plays is that the authorities were aroused by the political satire in them, by the supposed relevance to the Essex affair of 1601 in the former work, by the ridicule heaped upon the Scots and the new “thirty-pound” knights in the latter. In what must stand as a notable instance of either naiveté or shrewdness, Day's Prologue denies any libellous intent to the play. Yet the fate to which Dametas, in his rage, condemned all poets' lines (“… be by some Dor presented for libelling,” IV.5.113) fell upon The Ile of Guls, to make it the third offending play presented at the theatre in a little over a year.¹⁸

The character established by the Children's productions at Blackfriars derived from a successfully gauged audience. It was a select, sophisticated, jaded, cliquish group. Whatever its actual comportment might have been—and Day's Induction leaves us little to esteem in this—its pretensions, at least, were sophisticated. Its members were courtiers by desire when not so in fact, and their interests were directed towards Whitehall. “They enjoyed gossip about the court and satire upon its members, particularized if possible but generalized if not.”¹⁹ The plays geared to their tastes were those which brought an In-group even further In.

The realistic vein of comedy which Jonson had done so much to inaugurate broadened the possibilities of free discussion of public matters on the stage. Given a political scene that had much of the ludicrous about it and an unpopular sovereign who was not inaccurately dubbed “the wisest fool in Christendom,” the material for public satire was abundantly at hand. The private theatres were quick to exploit it. Several contemporary commentaries on this situation, most of them protests, survive. Heywood, in the Apology for Actors (1612), writes:

Now, to speake of some abuse lately crept into the quality, as an inveighing against the state, the court, the law, the citty, and their governements, with the particularizing of private men's humors (yet alive), noblemen, and others: I know it distastes many; neither do I in any way approve it, nor dare I by any meanes excuse it. The liberty which some arrogate to themselves, committing their bitternesse, and liberall invectives against all estates, to the mouthes of children, supposing their juniority to be a priviledge for any rayling, be it never so violent, I could advise all such to curbe and limit this presumed liberty within the bands of discretion and government.²⁰

Professional resentment might have inspired some of Heywood's observations, but this can hardly be attributed to figures in public life whose complaints were the same.

Consider, for pity's sake, what must be the state and condition of a prince, whom the preachers publicly from the pulpit assail, whom the comedians of the metropolis bring upon the stage, whose wife attends these representations in order to enjoy the laugh against her husband, whom the parliament braves and despises, and who is universally hated by the whole people.²¹

The Plays do not forbear to present upon their Stage the whole Course of this present Time, not sparing either King, State or Religion, in so great Absurdity, and with such Liberty, that any would be afraid to hear them.²²

Both Beaumont and Calvert are explicit about the players' dragging the King onto the stage, and Heywood implies that the Children were the chief offenders.

If we restrict ourselves to Hoby's description of The Ile of Guls—his letter suggests strongly that he is writing from hearsay (“At this time was much speech. …”) not from personal observation—then our understanding of the satiric nature of the play will be necessarily incomplete. His reference is to the performance, not to the text of the play itself. In other words, the responsibility for the offense could be imputed to Evans and Kirkham, the managers of the company, rather than to the playwright. In Evans vs. Kirkham 221, a law suit initiated 1608, the former accused the latter of having ruined the company by “some misdemeanors committed in or about the plaies there. …”²³ It seems entirely possible, then, that the “two divers nations,” the Arcadians and the Lacedemonians, may have been represented as the English and the Scots.²⁴ Certainly Dametas outfitted as one of the “Caledonian Boars” would provide an added dimension of satire to the play and considerable relish to his final undoing. And Aminter and Julio could most fittingly wear the plaid; it is they who, after Lisander and Demetrius have “sweat in the field of invention” for the two princesses, carry off the prizes.

The text of the play will support such an identification. The “impetuous concourse of unruly suters” (I.1.9) Basilius speaks of could describe those countrymen of the King who inundated England after his coronation.²⁵ In a lengthy report (III.3.94-113) of the chaotic conditions in Arcadia during Basilius' absence (too lengthy, one suspects, for mere dramatic purposes) the disguised Aminter and Julio describe a state on the brink of chaos. A similar description of England is given by Sir Francis Osborne in his Traditional Memoirs:

Now by this time the nation grew feeble, and over-opprest with impositions, monopolies, aydes, privy-seales, concealments, permitted customes, & c. besides all forfeitures upon penall statutes, with a multitude of tricks, more to cheat the English subject … which were spent upon the Scots: By whom nothing was unasked, and to whom nothing was denied; who, for want of honester trafique, did extract gold out of the faults of the English, whose pardons they beg'd, and sold at intolerable rates, murder it selfe not being exempted. …²⁶

It is hard to imagine the partisans at Blackfriars letting Aminter's and Julio's statements go by without drawing invidious parallels.

But if this exhausted the satire of the play, one would be hard put to it to explain the trouble taken by the publisher to remove all traces of “King” and “Queen” from the text. The Prologue's insistence that no “great mans life [is] charactred int” (Induction, line 57) notwithstanding, there can be little doubt that Day pointed the general direction of the satire at no less high a target than the throne, an audacity not without precedents. The weight of evidence presented by certain incidents and situations of the play makes such a conclusion a certainty.²⁷ Before turning to a discussion of the character of James and corresponding information from the play, it would be wise to make a few precautionary observations with regard to this point.

Perhaps the most serious mistake one could commit in arguing for or against this identification of Basilius with James is a literalism of interpretation of the “data” of the play, as though it were some kind of forerunner of our modern roman a clef. To assume that every character and episode had its exact counterpart in the royal household is to expect that Day and everyone in the audience knew the most intimate details of the relations of James, Anne, and the Court.

This is, of course, absurd and leads to the most gratuitous sort of literary detection, in this case to the Who-is-Dametas? game. Such an approach will prove nothing either way. Actually, it must be borne in mind that Basilius is a character taken over from an acknowledged source, Sidney's Arcadia, with many of his characteristics intact. What Day has done is to develop around him and his household parallels to the royal personages, court issues, and contemporary events with much the same effect that Arthur Miller achieved when he took some principals and issues of the Salem witch hunts and, while remaining in Colonial Massachusetts, established salient relevance to the contemporary political and moral scene. In other words, Basilius, and very likely Gynetia, are dramatic characters with a satiric extension. The reader who recognizes this but does not push it too far will be closest in spirit to the audience that gathered at Blackfriars over three hundred years ago.

The character of James I was an almost inexhaustible subject for gossip and satire. His ungainly appearance, Scottish accent, his pedantry, his passion for the hunt to the exclusion of his kingly office, his prodigality, imperiousness, his indiscreet fondness for handsome young favorites, his strained relations with his family, his indulgence of the Scots, his almost pusillanimous quest for peace with Spain, his temporizing with the religious problem, his indecisiveness—these and other foibles, whether real or rumored, served to supply Court and Commons and dramatists with almost daily wonders. None of it would have counted for very much if he had somehow managed, in spite of it all, to ingratiate himself with his new subjects. But he lacked the talent for this; and so, in addition to providing the material for the satirists, he predisposed an audience to savor it.

The Venetian ambassador has given us a fairly comprehensive description of James.

He is sufficiently tall, of a noble presence, his physical constitution robust, and he is at pains to preserve it by taking much exercise at the chase, which he passionately loves, and uses not only as recreation, but as a medicine. For this he throws off all business, which he leaves to his Council and to his Ministers. And so one may truly say that he is Sovereign in name and in appearance rather than in substance and effect. …

His Majesty is by nature placid, averse from cruelty, a lover of justice. … He loves quiet and repose, has no inclination to war, nay is opposed to it, a fact that little pleases many of his subjects, though it pleases them still less that he leaves all government to his Council and will think of nothing but the chase. He does not caress the people nor make them that good cheer the late Queen did, whereby she won their loves; for the English adore their Sovereigns, and if the King passed through the same street a hundred times a day the people would still run to see him; they like their King to show pleasure at their devotion, as the late Queen knew well how to do; but this King manifests no love for them but rather contempt and dislike. The result is he is despised and almost hated. In fact his Majesty is more inclined to live retired with eight or ten of his favourites than openly as is the custom of the country and the desire of the people.²⁸

Day manages to allude to an impressive number of James' weaknesses, sometimes by casual innuendo, at others by fairly explicit dramatization. The basic situation of the Arcadia, wherein a king abdicates his royal responsibilities in order to gratify a personal wish (i.e., to escape his doom), is receptive to satiric application, although, if the case for veiled commentary rested upon nothing stronger, it would fall apart. Complaints of the inaccessibility of James, of his too frequent removal to the parks at Royston and Theobalds, are numerous. Chamberlain writes to Ralph Winwood from London on January 26, 1605:

The Kinge went to Roiston two dayes after Twelfetide, where and thereabout he hath continued ever since, and findes such felicitie in that hunting life, that he hath written to the counsaile, that yt is the only meanes to maintain his health, (which being the health and welfare of us all) he desires them to undertake the charge and burden of affaires, and foresee that he be not interrupted nor troubled with too much busines.²⁹

Kingship for Day's Basilius is more rhetoric than function. His occasional assertions of authority in between hunting deer and pursuing the disguised Lisander seem almost fatuous. In one notable instance (III.3.118-119), when report of the ruinous state of affairs in Arcadia has been made to him, he assumes an imperiousness reminiscent of Shakespeare's Richard II; but in his very next appearance on stage (IV, 2), he is once more forcing his attentions upon the Amazon, having let the whole matter of government drop. Whether the audience would have seized upon this with the same delight in recognition that a student of the plays feels some three hundred years later is an open question.

The first of several thrusts made in passing occurs in Violetta's observation that the “Presence” is “exceeding empty-stomackt” (I.1.52-53). James' prodigality was such that his reign became one long quest for additional funds to finance his own extravagances and those of Anne.³⁰ Two very unpopular means he resorted to in order to fill the exchequer were imposts and the granting of patents (see I.3.76), the former term occurring with amusing frequency in the play. His council, urging economy rather then new revenues, attempted to solve his financial problems by instituting household budgetary reform.

The proceedings of the Lords of the Privy Council in household causes:—First to know his Majesty's pleasure whether the diet issued to himself and the Queen shall continue in as ample manner for number of dishes. And if the same continue, then what abatements may be made in spice, napery, wood, coals, etc.³¹

By restricting diet alone, the council hoped to save £9,600.³²

Again, for all his pompous theorizing about “king-craft,” James had not one tithe of the political acumen of Elizabeth. One of the lessons that Parliament was to teach him and his descendants was that autocracy was not an English concept. When Philanax replies to Kalander's question about the removal to the island, “… it pleasd the Duke, and becomes not subjects to examine his actions” (I.2.4-5), he is only mouthing James' own sentiments. In his first collision with Parliament in 1604, the King and Commons fought this issue out over the seating of duly elected members; James, after asserting his authority, was forced to retreat on the question.³³ This was only the beginning of the struggle between the Stuarts and Parliament.

Still another aspersion upon James' policy of governing may be seen in the character of his chief advisor. Dametas, whom we shall discuss later, is the object of such scorn as to suggest an almost pathological hatred for him on the part of the author. The ridicule heaped upon him begins in the very first scene, continues in the second with increased severity, and never relents until the end of the play. He is both advisor to Basilius and intermediary between him and the people. As such he had numerous counterparts at the court of James. Without fully understanding (or perhaps caring) who belonged to the Scottish faction, who to the Cecil-Howard one, and who was simply out for himself, the satirists of the time could categorically condemn them all as responsible for what they considered the mess in Whitehall. Although the spectacular careers of Somerset and Buckingham were still in the future, by 1606 the English had had sufficient time and experience under James' council and personal advisors, especially those from north of the Tyne, to nurture an ill will against almost all of them. In Dametas all of this rancor against their rapacity seems to have found expression.³⁴

Passing comment is also made upon the impoverished state of the unemployed soldier (and scholar) in Act I, Scene 3, a situation aggravated by James' peace with Spain, which is alluded to in IV.1.11-12. His critics would allow no noble motive in James' quest for peace; for them it was a cowardly capitulation to England's traditional enemy.³⁵ It is quite probable that there is a double edge to Dametas' observation that soldiers and scholars “dare not come in the great Chamber alreadie, for want of good clothes” (I.3.67-69). James, although careless himself about such matters, preferred elegance of fashion in those about him.

… he doth admire good fashion in cloaths, I pray you give good heed hereunto; strange devices oft come into man's conceit; some one regardeth the endowments of the inward sort, wit, valour, or virtue; another hath, perchance, special affection towardes outward thinges, cloathes, deportment and good countenance. I would wish you to be well trimmed; get a new jerkin, well bordered, and not too short; the King saith, he liketh a flowing garment; be sure it be not all of one sort, but diversely colourd, the collar falling somewhat down, and your ruff well stiffend and bushy. We have lately had many gallants who failed in their suits, for want of due observance of these matters. The King is nicely heedfull of such points, and dwelleth on good looks and handsome accoutrements. Eighteen servants were lately discharged, and many more will be discarded, who are not to his liking in these matters.³⁶

In V.1.60-64, Manasses, outlandishly costumed as an Amazon, makes a reference to the ostentatious wearing of clothes which may not be without significance.

Dametas' claim to being a gentleman “of the best and last edition, of the Dukes owne making” (I.3.58-59), is an obvious slur on James' “carpet” knights. In his progress from Scotland to London, the new monarch named over three hundred knights, an unprecedented gesture of kingly favor.³⁷ On July 17, 1603, a royal edict decreed that “all persons that had Ł 40 a year in land [were] either to come and receive the honour, or to compound with the King's Commissioners.”³⁸ It was a completely satisfactory arrangement: the crown received some much needed revenue, every butcher's son could acquire a title, and the satiric dramatists had a field day.

The most conclusive single instance of a parallel between Basilius and James occurs in Act II, Scene 2, the “hunt scene.” The King's passion for the hunt and for his hounds was notorious; no critic of the reign consulted for this study omitted mention of it. Significantly enough, Sidney's Basilius does not hunt. Day's scene corresponds to the attack upon Philoclea and Pamela by a lion and a bear. His substitution has a contemporary relevance which is reenforced by the condemnation of deer-hunting by the two princesses. Whereas most of the criticism of James' excesses in the field is written from the point of view of the neglected government or the inconvenienced farmer,³⁹ Hippolita and Violetta see them from the point of view of the deer (lines 44-62).

Violetta strikes a strange keynote for the criticism of the kingly sport when she prefaces it with the statement “As I love vertue I pittie these poore beastes” (line 44). From the beginning of the play until the end, she and her sister wear their virtue like hair shirts. Unless this exclamation was a momentary lapse on Day's part, which seems rather unlikely, the passage stands out from any relevance either to character or plot development as a set piece. Only one consideration tempers such an interpretation: a similar passage occurs in Humour out of Breath (II.2.) wherein two sisters (from whom, incidentally, such a sentiment is convincing) lament the lot of fish at the hands of anglers. These two passages might argue simply for a tender regard for animals on Day's part. However, the two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, and the second one might account for the seriousness of the first. At any rate, the scoring of the tyranny of the cruel hunter seems so gratuitous in the play as to justify an interpretation of it as topical criticism.

There is considerably less certainty as to Day's satiric intentions with regard to Basilius' amorous pursuit of the disguised Lisander, which begins in Act III. The simplest explanation is that the playwright is merely following his source. James' fondness for and excessive doting upon handsome young men was a court scandal.

… for the kings kissing them after so lascivious a mode in publick, and upon the theatre, as it were, of the world, prompted many to imagine some things done in the tyring-house, that exceed my expressions. …⁴⁰

Their handsome faces and calculated indulgence of the King's affections were the making of Somerset and Buckingham. Yet, the fact remains that Basilius takes Lisander to be a woman; and to expect an audience to recognize a situation that the dramatist does not develop is to overlook the comedy inherent in the one that he does. As was said above, there is not a narrative continuity to Day's satire on the King.

The rivalry between Basilius and Gynetia for the love of Lisander-Zelmane might be another story altogether. This same situation in the Arcadia provided the playwright with a parallel to what was assumed to be the estranged relationship of James and Anne. As is the case with any public figure, especially one popularly disliked, only a little truth was necessary to inspire a great deal of speculation. The French ambassador commented upon the King's contempt for women as early as 1603.⁴¹ And the gossipy Weldon repeats the charge⁴² and says James was “ever best when furthest from his queene. …”⁴³ It is not improbable that the lost play Gowry, presented by the King's Men in 1604, alluded to some such domestic difficulties between the royal pair.⁴⁴ If Day is ridiculing the domestic situation of the King and Queen in the strife over Lisander-Zelmane, then the audience must have derived considerable relish from those scenes where each tries to gull the other and especially from Act V, Scene 1, where the two exchange insults. Furthermore, the lecherous character given their parents by Violetta and Hippolita (III.2.88-89) becomes, in this sense, inflammatory.

Twice in the course of the play (III.1.69, V.1.5-6) Basilius comments upon his meager literary talents, comments which would elicit knowing laughter from an audience. Whether or not the gallants at Blackfriars had read any of James' compositions is unimportant; the King's pride in them was such that their existence must have been generally known. General opinion of the merit of these works, it may be assumed, was no higher than they deserved.⁴⁵

Whatever remaining correspondences have been found between the two royal personages have been treated in the Explanatory Notes to the play. Admitting that surmise and inference have operated in the interpretation of all of these correspondences, we feel that the notoriety of the play's production and the history of its printing justify making them and that the passages cited from the play warrant the conclusion we have reached: that Day has adapted a character from Sidney's Arcadia to make him a parody of King James, a parody that his audience would recognize and enjoy.

There are no grounds for postulating a corollary to this proposition that, because Basilius represents the King, the other characters are representatives of recognizable members of the Court. Except to compete hostilely with Basilius for the love of Lisander-Zelmane, Gynetia has little to do in the play. (This is particularly noteworthy since most modern readers of the Arcadia consider the tormented Queen the most interesting feature of the work.) If Day intended Gynetia to be a caricature of Anne, he did very little to fill it out with recognizable detail.

The problem in identification that has vexed commentators upon the play and teases the reader who has been prepared for the Basilius-James equation is the prototype of Dametas. The attention and loathing Day has turned upon this character give him a prominence which just about eclipses everyone else in the play. Fleay saw the person of Samuel Daniel behind him,⁴⁶ but offers such tenuous substantiation that this claim need not detain us. (For a possible allusion to Daniel in the play see IV.1.173-176 and note.) E. K. Chambers sees Robert Carr (Somerset) as the original,⁴⁷ but the tournament which brought the handsome young Scot to James' attention was not held until at least six months after the appearance of the play.⁴⁸ This should leave the field wide open to a host of contenders. We may eliminate any of James' minions, however, for they were chosen for features which Dametas manifestly lacks, good looks and charm. A number of royal advisors come up for consideration (Sir James Hay, Sir Roger Ashton, Sir Thomas Lake, Sir George Hume, Sir Thomas Murray, Sir Philip Herbert—even Cecil himself); but the particulars assigned to Dametas' background, character, and appearance are so specific that the only salvable figure is the Dametas of the Arcadia. Day has in fact brought him and his family over from the latter without significant change; to suit his comic and satiric purposes, he has merely enlarged their roles.⁴⁹ We should also bear in mind that Count Lurdo, the villain of Law Tricks, is an adumbration of Dametas. Much of the satire that is directed against Dametas and his household is actually fairly extraneous to the play; while the possibility of veiled comment might organize much of it, these attacks on ruthless ambition, malfeasance in office, and the like can be explained as so much filler for an audience Day had pretty accurately sounded. We have no real reason to dismiss the Prologue's assurance that Dametas is an embodiment of “the monstrous and deformed shape of vice” (Induction, lines 58-59); his particular viciousness is the venality of those surrounding the King coupled with the stigma of humble origin.

As to the remaining characters in the play, there has never been any question about their ultimate derivation. They are all to be found, under one name or other, in any number of comedies from that period.

The Ile of Guls does not limit its attacks to the person of the King. Indeed, Day's is such a broadly dispersed satire that it manages to cover a wide spectrum of the social, economic, and political issues of the age. The playwright has assumed most of the prejudices of the select group for which he wrote, and thus much of his ridicule is directed against the rising middle class, the assumed avarice of these new men and the pretentiousness of their wives and daughters. It was always open season at the private theatres on these

unnecessarie wormes, whō the son of greatnes
creates of the grosse and slimie multitude,
as soone as they recover strength, they eate
into the credite of true borne gentrie,
undermine and worke out the true nobilitie,
to inroote & establish themselves.

(I.3.130-135)

One need look no further than the city comedies of Jonson and Middleton to find the counterparts of Dametas, Miso, and Mopsa. The “coterie” dramatists seem to have hit upon an unbeatable theme in the gulling of “base upstarts” by their social superiors.⁵⁰ Day's handling of this, while done with relish and rich humor, the latter especially in those scenes where the indomitable Miso displays her lady-ship, admits of a certain basic confusion that we suspect was inherent in his audience. This was a confusion of class and conduct. The description of Dametas and his kind cited above is provided by a prince who, with his prince companion, is in collusion with the rogue to seize the princesses and carry them off. The two conclude the scene thus:

AMIN.
And let our discourse goe so smoothly apparrelled, that it move not the patience of the most tender eare.
JULIO.
About it then, though his intent be base, Our enterprise shall weare a noble face.

(I.3.151-154)

“True-borne gentilitie” is equated with integrity in this somewhat naive (or is it really highly sophisticated?) morality. Apparently the parvenu of the age could not even sin in the same league with the gentry.

It must be pointed out, however, that the character of the gallants of the age does not escape unscathed. The picture of them that emerges from the Induction and from the mockery cast upon them by the Page (II.1.7-11) is not a flattering one.⁵¹ The wholesale granting of knighthoods (see above, p. 23) provided both a source of vexation to the “established” gentry, since it equalized the social odds when it did not upset them unfavorably, and a rich vein of satire for the dramatists.

We also find the expected number of aspersions on lawyers and usurers, generally embedded in similes, throughout the play. Day had already combined these two popularly despised professions in the person of the malevolent Lurdo of Law Tricks. In The Ile of Guls (IV.5.43-59) Dametas proposes putting out his gold to use at excessive rates of interest. He also plans to use part of it to buy into the aristocracy through the marriage of his daughter. In his ecstasy over the promise of wealth, he succeeds in telescoping all of the vices attributed to his class.

Yet another target of the satirists' pens was the Puritan, and Day has provided a memorable one in the sly Manasses and his wife. The Puritan persuasion generally found its strongest adherents among the middle class,⁵² a situation which strengthened the case against them. The mounting opposition to the theatres from the Puritan divines only incited the dramatists to more outrageous parodies of them. And finally, it must be confessed that the popular stereotype of the Puritan, substantiated by the incidence and eccentricity of zealots among this sect, admitted of highly amusing stage possibilities. One thinks of Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, the genius of the type, from Bartholomew Fair, Tribulation Wholesome and Ananias from The Alchemist, and Languebeau Snuffe from The Atheist's Tragedy as outstanding achievements of Puritan caricature. If Manasses is not quite in their company, he is not far behind. He stands with Miso as the most vivid character in the play. All of these stage Puritans share certain basic vices: hypocrisy, avariciousness, ignorance, lechery, and a penchant for speaking scriptural nonsense, generally in this order.⁵³ Their wives, who are at least their equals in pietistic cant, are eager to be seduced.⁵⁴ Manasses has all of these characteristics, but he carries them off with such verve and good humor, singular virtues for a stage Puritan, that he escapes one category only to settle in another, that of the stage rogue.

Manasses' explanation of his pulpit technique (IV.1.144-155) manages to crystallize the religious controversy of the time very cynically, as it pits one camp against the other in a litany of names that must have prompted a mixture of laughter and indignation at his levity.⁵⁵ The sermon on the lost sheep (IV.1.184-199), with its endless and pointless “divisions,” its scriptural incantation, its exhortations to a conduct never really clarified, and its overall inanity, is amusing enough. Manasses' leering innuendo makes it more so.

A more sensational aspect of the religious strife of the age is referred to in several parts of the play (Induction, lines 5-6, I.3.27-29, 72-73,76, II.1.30-34, and V.1.193). Each of these passages alludes to hanging or hangmen. The trial and execution of the conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot had taken place only some two weeks before the appearance of the play. Two of these references (from the Induction and I.3.72-73) refer to the wit of the condemned, obvious satiric commentary upon the principle of equivocation or dissimulation which was so hotly discussed in relation to this event.⁵⁶ Whatever these allusions lacked in comic impact, they made up for in immediacy; and the delight of recognition can often be confused with aesthetic pleasure.

Still another satiric thrust may be noted. The Prologue (Induction, lines 137-139) and Dametas (IV.5.108-113) both refer to the presence of what we may assume to be professional spies in the audience waiting to detect anything libelous in the play.

                                                                                          If portick rage
Strike at abuse, or ope the vaine of sinne.
He is straight inform'd against for libelling.
May their intents tho pure as christall glasses,
Be counted falts and capitall trespasses,
O may their lines and labourd industrie,
Though worthy of Apolloes plaudit be
The cleerest thought in loyalty excelling
Be by some Dor presented for libelling.

Certainly, the history of Blackfriars alone, and the fate of the play at hand, would attest to their very active existence. These lines, together with sly allusions to Eastward Ho! and The Isle of Dogs (Induction, lines 16, 36-38), must have amused all but one or two in the audience.

After calling attention to the possibilities of political satire in the play on the basis of the substitution of titles for Basilius and Gynetia, Fleay proceeded to construct an argument for literary satire.⁵⁷ He saw the plays of Jonson behind the First Gentleman's request for something critical (Induction, lines 53-56), those of Chapman behind the Second Gentleman's request for something bawdy (lines 65-72), and those of Marston behind the Third Gentleman's request for something stately (lines 77-79). But most incredibly he saw Dametas as a parody of Samuel Daniel. The fact that there is something inbred about the drama of the private theatres and something insularly professional about the playwrights, which the so-called War of the Theatres demonstrates, cannot be questioned. Given the same playwrights writing for a repertory company playing before a homogeneous audience, the results could hardly be otherwise. This self-conscious familiarity manifested itself in a recognizable personal satire involving competitors in the craft, and thus Fleay's first three identifications seem possibilities. The last, however, would have depended upon an intimate knowledge of the company's business affairs for recognition of the satire, and on that point alone collapses. If Day had particular playwrights in mind when composing the passages cited, there is no reason why they might not have been the three Fleay says. But why not Middleton instead of Chapman or even of Jonson? One could go through the list of poets for Blackfriars and assign all of them to one or another of the three classifications.

There is, however, a strong element of literary allusiveness in the play, especially in the Induction. Those instances that have been detected have been mentioned in the Explanatory Notes. It is my own suspicion that several of the more satiric ones are aimed at Ben Jonson. Whether he was the model for the critical playwright—if there was a model at all—cannot be proved, but there is at least an indication that Day had him in mind when the Prologue speaks of the envy operative in the theatre⁵⁸ (Induction, lines 99-103) and of those who are ignorant of the “rules of Poesie” (line 143). What might have prompted this assumed hostility, it is impossible to say, but there is no need to imagine a personal animus. It is almost axiomatic that a rewarding source of professional publicity is the public quarrel with a more outstanding figure in the field. The entertainment industry of today presents us with almost daily proof of this. Jonson, for his part, held a low opinion of Day, claiming that “Sharpham, Day, and Dicker were all Rogues …”; “that Markham … was not of the number of the Faithfull. j. Poets and but a base fellow that such were Day and Midleton.”⁵⁹ Another reference to Day may exist in The Case is Altered (I.2.60-62): “mary you shall have some now (as for example, in plaies) that will have every day new trickes, and write you nothing but humours: indeede this pleases the Gentlemen. …”

LITERARY BACKGROUND

The ultimate source of The Ile of Guls is, of course, Sidney's Arcadia. Day has taken over the main plot situation, the chief character, and a considerable amount of the phrasing from his original.⁶⁰ Day's most important contributions to his version are Manasses and the bowling scene (III, 3). His success with the latter two (to which we need add only his handling of the character of Miso, the Induction, and his expansion of the final gulling scene to single out the best parts of the play) prove that he used the Arcadia but was not slavishly dependent upon it. As Borish says, “Day is not a mere reproducer of another's work, but a dramatist who is concerned with the appropriate presentation of the material he has decided to employ.”⁶¹

The most notable feature of Day's use of the Arcadia is the changes he has made. The first of these to impress the reader is that the play is only incidentally a pastoral drama. There is no conscious effort, Basilius' explanation in Act I, Scene 1 notwithstanding, to show the principals as fleeing from the cares and stress of a more complex society. The play opens in Arcadia, and that is all there is to it. Moreover, there is nothing like a celebration of the joys of Arcadian life. The only one who seems to enjoy the removal is Basilius, apparently because the deer are more plentiful on his island. But if Day's purpose was satiric, then the choice of so neutral a setting and the employment of what is so patently a fiction were auspicious: both provide an effective veil behind which almost anything can be said. Unfortunately, the veil proved too thin.

Hand in hand with this alteration is the complete abandonment of Sidney's moral sentiment. Those lofty passages wherein Sidney's characters weigh the ethical import of their conduct and suffer exquisitely over lapses in morals and manners have been replaced by the most buoyant and cynical sort of lubricity and in-fighting. Pamela and Philoclea as well as their suitors have lost more than their names by the translation. The idealized discussions of their lovers between Sidney's princesses have been replaced, in III.2. 1-109, by an extraordinary piece of prurience. It must be said, however, that certain parts of the Arcadia admit of comic treatment, and Day has realized much of this. There is something inherently absurd about Pyrocles' disguise as an Amazon, and the playwright has made the most of it.⁶² By removing all traces of meanness and truculence from Miso and Mopsa and by enhancing their stupidity and pretentiousness until these achieve almost epic proportions, he has bettered Sidney. His general expansion of the roles of Dametas' household is perhaps the wisest thing he did in converting his source to a stage comedy.

Less specific literary relations may be found in the vogue of the gulling theme that emerged in the last decade of the sixteenth century in the works of Greene, Nashe, Donne, Lodge, and Jonson among others. The last-named had scored quite successfully in Every Man in his Humour. Thereafter the character of the gull and the art of gulling became standard fixtures in the drama, especially in that of the private theatres. Such entertainment, where everything depended upon prodigious feats of wit, complex disguises, and dazzling stage business to conceal what was often a thinness and sameness of subject, proved diverting for a sophisticated audience.⁶³ When Dekker set about collecting material for his Gull's Hornbook (1609), he had a rich tradition at hand from the drama as well as from society.⁶⁴

Finally we may consider Day's Induction and its background. This somewhat self-conscious stage convention was temporarily revived by Jonson, Marston, and others about the beginning of the century.⁶⁵ Actually the drama under Elizabeth had evolved to a point where the plays no longer needed an explanatory prologue or induction. Contrast, for example, the ancillary devices of The Spanish Tragedy with the dramatically abrupt opening of Hamlet. But playwrights wishing to communicate directly with their audience saw in the induction and prologue an ideal vehicle for self-expression.⁶⁶Every Man out of his Humour (1599), for example, has an induction of 292 lines between the “second sounding” and the “third,” after which there is a formal prologue. It is quite likely that Jonson's achievement here had much to do with the revival of the device. It is certainly of interest that the other playwright who used it with noteworthy frequency is Marston, his adversary during the theatre war.

The induction which Day's most closely resembles is Webster's for Marston's Malcontent (1604). Both present a satiric picture of the gallants' behavior in the theatre as they pompously invade the stage and order stools the better to see and be seen.⁶⁷ The discussion ranges from fashions in clothes and conduct to dramatic criticism, after which the stage is cleared. How much the resemblance between the two stems from a common origin in observation and how much from borrowings by the later playwright is not at all clear. As pieces of social criticism, they are perhaps equally vivid. As documents of dramatic criticism, Day's seems to have the edge. “Day's induction … gives us the neatest summary of the demands of the spectators at Blackfriars—for bitterness, bawdry, and ‘strong lines.”’⁶⁸ Unfortunately, as Swinburne has pointed out,⁶⁹ the Induction achieves a distinction in Day's writing that the remainder of the play never really equals. Only in Humour out of Breath was he even to approach it.

If any one word can describe a man's art, then “clever” does it for Day's. What impresses us most about The Ile of Guls, a play representative of his work for the private theatres, is the adroitness with which he has contrived the almost geometric plot, the intricate character relationships, and the marked neatness of the dialogue. There is, furthermore, a breath-taking pace about the handling of these that discourages critical reflection. The author's own references to a “prettie Court comedie” (III.2.98-99) and to a “rare scean of myrth” and “gullery” (IV.3.62, 86-87) are adequate summations of his own play. He suggests, in other words, Lyly with a Jacobean twist.⁷⁰

Part of this “twist” is a strange remoteness about The Ile of Guls that goes beyond the pastoral setting. The cleverness of Day's art does not succeed in submerging it. While this strain in Lyly's plays is directly related to their mythological character, there is nothing ethereal about Day's. It is instead as though, watching the single-minded pursuit of maidenheads, bedfellows, and gold, we behold the scramblings of another species. Our amusement, even our laughter, is aloof. Lacking the moral seriousness of a Jonson or the magnificent disdain of a Middleton, the comedy seems to be nothing more than a re-working of a formula.⁷¹

This stands out most sharply in the two chief scenes of gulling in the play (IV.5 and V.1), the first equally a demonstration of Day's inadequate dramatic instinct. The exposure of Dametas is surprisingly unmoving. There is nothing spectacular about it as there is about the undoing of Shylock, Malvolio, Volpone, Quomodo, or Sir Giles Overreach, even though the plot has been working towards it from the beginning, right, as a matter of fact, from the Induction. None of the principals have been brought together to witness it. Furthermore, the scene itself is only a stratagem, subservient to a more important purpose. Thus, anything like a moral spectacle is missing.

But of greater note is the final scene, the gulling of the gullers. This is unquestionably a dramatic demonstration of the malaise often cited as an undercurrent in Jacobean comedy and tragedy, for it seems to be the result of a mindless reduction of everything to the theme of gulling. Certainly, Lisander and Demetrius have earned the princesses, and our sympathies have been so directed from the beginning. The substance of the play has been their clever schemes to win them according to the terms set by Basilius. They alone attest lyrically to the ardor of their passions, are themselves loved in turn, actually win the sisters by “sweating in the field of invention,” and engineer the dazzling coup of the last act—only to lose them to two plodding rivals. Even the wildest sense of humor must recognize in this outcome the sacrifice of dramatic inevitability to a theatrical gimmick. The stunning solution to the ethical problem played with in A King and No King (1611) seems hardly more arbitrary.

There is, however, enough vitality in the comic situations, the saucy badinage of the heroines, and the gusto of the lovers, together with the stupidity of Miso and Mopsa and the effervescent cynicism of Manasses to carry even a much weaker play. Day's was not a first-rate talent, but it appears to have been an adaptable one. He could write with equal facility for the popular theatres and for the private ones. Assuming his having had at least an equal hand in the composition of The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green and The Travels of the Three English Brothers, we find him capable of producing just the sort of play that the more sophisticated playwrights could ridicule.⁷² And given the opportunity, he could shake off all traces of ingenuousness and compose a coterie play of the most blasé kind. Perhaps it was this chameleon-like quality to his talent that prevented him from developing his own colors and led him instead to assume the most garish shades about him.

At any rate, The Ile of Guls provides as good an illustration as any play contemporaneous with it of the artful portrayal of moral anarchy which prepared the way for the closing of the theatres. Its satire is so all-embracing and undiscriminating that there is no yardstick left by which to measure the villainy of a Dametas or the gaucherie of a Mopsa: the Duke himself is a lecherous old fool, and his wife and daughters are only technically virtuous. Just how sophisticated the drama of the private theatres became, how much it accepted pose as action and repartee as thought, is demonstrated by a contrast of Mucedorus (c. 1598) and The Ile of Guls, both of them derived from the Arcadia. “The sophistication [of Day's play] becomes evident: yet Mucedorus has more life in it, as time demonstrated.”⁷³ The fashionable plays were ceasing to observe the fundamental purpose of drama—to imitate significant human action. In The Ile of Guls life has given way to theatre. Once this happens, the end is almost predictable.

Notes

1. The fullest accounts of Day's life are to be found in A. H. Bullen's contribution to The Dictionary of National Biography and M. Eugene Borish's John Day (unpublished dissertation, Harvard, 1931), pp. 1-8. The most useful discussions of his works are in Bullen's edition of The Works of John Day (2 vols., London, 1881), I, 5-33; E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage (4 vols., Oxford, 1923), III, 284-289; Gerald E. Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage (5 vols., Oxford, 1941-1956), III, 238-240; and most comprehensively in Borish's lengthy dissertation.

2. The spelling used throughout is that of the title page of the 1606 quarto.

3. The act and scene divisions cited are those of the present edition.

4. Chambers, II, 50.

5. Thomas Birch, The Court and Times of James the First (2 vols., London, 1849), I, 60-61.

6. Chambers, III, 176. Among these unentered plays stands the anonymous and immensely popular Mucedorus, sufficient argument that failure to secure official approval was not always prompted by fear of not getting it.

7. Frederick G. Fleay, A Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama (2 vols., London, 1891), I, 109.

8. R. B. Mc Kerrow, A Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers in England … 1557-1640 (London, 1910), pp. 139, 269.

9. Borish, pp. 140-141. The alteration occurred while the outer form of the first sheet was passing through the press, for there is no sign of a cancel in any of the subsequent copies. The fact that only one copy survives with Trundle's name on it suggests that the alteration was made shortly after the printing had begun.

10. Idem. See also Chambers, III, 294, 295, 341, 430.

11. W. W. Greg, “The Two Issues of Day's Isle of Gulls, 1606,” The Library, 4th Series, III (March, 1923), 307.

12. Fleay, I, 109. A similar situation occurs in Beaumont and Fletcher's Cupid's Revenge (1612), coincidentally enough derived from the Arcadia, wherein Leontus, Bacha, and Leucippus have been altered from “King,” “Queen,” and “Prince” to “Duke,” “Duchess,” and “Marquis.” Again the substitutions are not complete. See Chambers, III, 225-226.

13. Day, with Haughton, was one of the few mainstays from Henslowe's stable who were not mentioned by Meres in his survey of 1598. Ronald Bayne, Cambridge History of English Literature, ed. A. Ward and A. R. Waller (15 vols., Cambridge, 1932), V, 312.

14. That the poets of the boys' companies were in a position to influence publication of their plays is attested to by Chambers, II, 50, III, 182. See also Shakespeare's England (2 vols., Oxford, 1916), II, 291.

15. Greg, p. 307.

16. Alfred Harbage, Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions (New York, 1952), p. 71. See also pp. 346-350.

17. In February, 1604, the Children of the Chapel received by patent the protection of the new Queen and became known as the Children of the Queens Revels. (Chambers, I, 326.) Chambers suggests that, as the result of several indiscreet productions, Anne's patronage was withdrawn. (Ibid., II, 50-51.) The title page of The Ile of Guls speaks only of the Children of the Revels.

18. It is interesting to note that Day makes several disclaimers with regard to satire, the two most interesting occurring after The Ile of Guls episode. In the 16th Tractate of the Peregrinatio Scholastica, he dismisses “nimble-pated poets” and those who “write satires against the time or invectives against the state …” (Bullen ed., II, 69). In The Parliament of Bees, Poetaster refuses to write a satire against Mr. Bee:

                                                                          I will not wade in ills
    Beyond my depth, nor dare I plucke the quils,
    Of which I make pens, out of the Eagels claw.
    Know I am a loyall subject.

    (Bullen ed., I, 36)

    One wonders whether Day intended any relevance to The Ile of Guls.

19. Harbage, p. 56. “… there was far more personality behind Elizabethan comedy, and especially comedy written for the boy players, than has always been realized.” G. B. Harrison, Elizabethan Plays and Players (Ann Arbor, 1956), p. 292.

20. Thomas Heywood, An Apology for Actors, Shakespeare Society Publications III, 1841, 61.

21. Beaumont, French Ambassador, to King Henry IV, June 7 and 14, 1604, in Friedrich von Raumer, History of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. H. E. Lloyd (2 vols., London, 1835), II, 206-207.

22. Mr. Calvert to Mr. Winwood, March 28, 1605, in Sir Ralph winwood, Memorials of Affairs of State in the Reigns of Q. Elizabeth and K. James I, ed. Edmund Sawyer (3 vols., London, 1725), II, 54. Both Fleay, I, 109, and Evelyn May Albright, Dramatic Publications in England, 1580-1640 (New York, 1927), p. 117, by positing an earlier date for the play, suggest that Calvert had The Ile of Guls in mind.

23. Chambers, II, 55, n. 1.

24. This possibility is urged by Borish, pp. 186-188, as the cause of the action taken against the play. He rejects Fleay's, and the present writer's, explanation of the provocation as hardly likely (Ibid., pp. 176-177).

25. Sir Francis Osborne's Traditional Memoirs, The Secret History of the Court of James the First (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1811), I, 217, reproduces the following anonymous verses about the Scots in England:

    They beg our lands, our goods, our lives,
    They switch our nobles, and lye with their wives;
    They pinch our gentry, and send for our benchers,
    They stab our sargeants, and pistoll our fencers.

26. Ibid., pp. 194-195. In what seems to have been a widely circulated anecdote, James is supposed to have replied to some Scots who complained that they were rightly called beggarly, “Content yourselves, I will shortly make the English as beggarly as you, and so end that controversie.” Sir Anthony Weldon, The Court and Character of King James, Secret History, I, 370.

27. In the most detailed survey of this point to date, Borish (see Note 24 above) is strongly disinclined to accept such an interpretation of the character of Basilius. The chief weakness of his argument is that he fails to investigate the evidence for this interpretation in the play itself.

28. Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice, ed. Horatio F. Brown (London, 1900), X, 510-513.

29. John Chamberlain, The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. Norman E. Mc Clure (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1939), I, 201. See also Chambers, I, 22.

30. See Samuel R. Gardiner, A History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War (10 vols., London, 1883-1884), I, 293-296.

31. Entry for October 22, 1605, Historical Manuscript Commission, The Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Hon. The Marquess of Salisbury, Preserved at Hatfield House Hertfordshire (18 vols., London, 1883-1940), XVII, ed. M. S. Giuseppi (1938), 463.

32. Ibid., pp. 463-464.

33. See Godfrey Davies, The Early Stuarts, 1603-1660, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1959), pp. 4-7. See also Osborne, p. 193: “The court-sermons informing his majesty, he might, as Christs vice-gerent, command all, and that the people, if they denied him supplement, or inquired after the disposer of it, were presumptuous peepers into the sacred arke of the state. …”

34. “… the new King … seems to have almost forgotten that he is a King except in his kingly pursuit of the stags, to which he is quite foolishly devoted, and leaves them [his council] with such absolute authority that beyond a doubt they are far more powerful than ever they were before. …” Calendar of State Papers … Venice (July 30, 1603), X, 70.

35. “… the very name of our peace with their enemies is so unpleasing as that it seems in short time all pleasures past that we have done with them will be more than half forgotten: I would we had kept the old pathway of our late Queen, for then our old enemy, and now new reconciled friend, would have been at death's door, and Christendom no more have feared his usurping ambitions.” Sir William Browne to Cecil, August 29, 1604, Salisbury Papers, XVI, ed. M. S. Giuseppi (1933), 269-270.

36. Sir Thomas Howard to Sir John Harington, 1611, Sir John Harington, Nugae Antiquae, ed. Thomas Park (2 vols., London, 1804), I, 391-392. Osborne (I, 274-275) writes, “Now, as no other reason appeared in favour of their [his favorites'] choyce but handsomnesse, so the love the king shewed was as amorously convayed, as if he had mistaken their sex, and thought them ladies: which I have seene Sommerset and Buckingham labour to resemble, in the effeminatenesse of their dressings. …”

37. See Sir Roger Wilbraham, The Journal of Sir Roger Wilbraham … for the Years 1593-1616, ed. H. S. Scott (Camden Miscellany, X, London, 1902), 56, and Shakespeare's England, I, 106-107.

38. John Nichols, The Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festivities of King James the First. (4 vols., London, 1828), I, 203.

39. “… he dedicated … faire [weather] to his hounds … which was, through the whole series of his government, more acceptable, then any profit or conveniency might accrue to his people.” Osborne, I, 168. “… I wish less wasting of the Treasure of the Realm, and more Moderation of the lawfull Exercise of Hunting, both that the poor Mens Corn may be less spoiled, and other his Majestie's Subjects more spared, & c.” Archbishop of York to Cecil, December 23, 1604, Winwood, II, 40.

40. Osborne, I, 275.

41. Raumer, II, 196.

42. Weldon, I, 443.

43. Ibid., II, 5.

44. See Winwood, II, 41, and Chambers, I, 328, and II, 211.

45. See The Dunciad, IV, 175-180:

    ‘Oh’ (cried the Goddess) ‘for some pedant Reign!
    Some gentle James, to bless the land again;
    To stick the Doctor's Chair into the Throne,
    Give law to Words, or war with Words alone,
    Senates and Courts with Greek and Latin rule,
    And turn the Council to a Grammar School!’

    See also, John Heneage Jesse, Memoirs of the Court of England (6 vols., Boston, n. d.), I, 93-106.

46. Fleey, I, 110-111.

47. Chambers, III, 286.

48. The tournament has been variously dated: July 25, 1606, by Lucy Aiken, Memoirs of the Court of King James the First (2 vols., 2nd ed., London, 1822), I, 270; August 5, 1606, by Nichols, II, 414, n. 2; and March 24, 1607, by Chambers, III, 220.

49. Reference to Sidney's Arcadia will show that Day has lifted Dametas almost intact from that work. See Borish, pp. 189-194.

50. I am especially indebted to Harbage's Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions and L. C. Knights' Drama & Society in the Age of Jonson (New York, 1936) for information about the class-consciousness of the plays produced at the private theatres.

51. For a strikingly similar criticism of their behavior, see Everard Guilpin's “Of Gnatho,” Skialetheia, ed. G. B. Harrison (Shakespeare Association Facsimiles No. 2, London, 1931), Sig. A 8 V:

    My Lord most court-like lyes in bed till noone,
    Then, all high-stomackt riseth to his dinner,
    Falls straight to Dice, before his meate be downe,
    Or to digest, walks to some femall sinner.
    Perhaps fore-tyrde he gets him to a play,
    Comes home to supper, and then falls to dice,
    There his devotion wakes till it be day,
    And so to bed, where untill noone he lies.
              This is a Lords life, simple folke will sing.
    A Lords life? what to trot so foule a ring?
    Yet thus he lives, and what's the greatest griefe.
    Gnatho still sweares he leads true vertues life.

    (B)

52. See R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (London, 1926).

53. See William P. Holden, Anti-Puritan Satire, 1572-1642 (New Haven, 1954). Harbage (p. 187) points out that attacks upon the sect were infrequent in the popular theatres, but quite conspicuous in the works of the coterie playwrights.

54. Manasses' wife is accused rather than guilty of adultery, but the attack upon her (IV, 4) is no less severe for that. A memorable picture of Puritan wives is to be found in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, II, 3. and III, 2.

55. See Holden, p. 108. See also a similar instance in Eastward Ho!, V.2.30-34: “Papist, Protestant, Puritane, Brownist, Anabaptist, Millenary, Famely o' Love, Jewe, Turke, Infidell, Atheist, Good Fellow, & c.”

56. The trial of Father Garnet, during which the principle received its widest attention (see Macbeth, II.3. 9-12), occurred after the production of the play (March 28, 1606); but the issue had been current at least since the appearanoe of Father Parsons' Brief Apology or Defense of the Catholic Hierarchy, 1602.

57. Fleay, I, 110-111.

58. The Induction to Poetaster is delivered by Envy.

59. Ben Jonson, Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden in Ben Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson (11 vols., Oxford, 1925-1952), I, 133, 137.

60. Borish, pp. 150-171, provides an extensive list of parallels and borrowings in the play. See also Herbert W. Hill, “Sidney's Arcadia and the Elizabethan Drama,” University of Nevada Studies, I, (January, 1908), 1-59. The most useful discussions of pastoral drama are Hector Genouy, L'Element pastoral dans la poésie narrative et le drame en Angleterre de 1579 à 1640 (Montpellier, 1928) and W. W. Greg, Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama (London, 1906).

61. Borish, p. 171.

62. Marston had already employed the Amazonian disguise for a man in Antonio and Mellida (1599). See also Victor Freeburg, Disguise Plots in Elizabethan Drama (New York, 1915), pp. 101-112.

63. See Mary C. Hyde, Playwriting for Elizabethans, 1600-1605 (New York, 1949), pp. 36-38, Harbage, pp. 71, 86, and M. C. Bradbrook, The Growth and Structure of Elizabethan Comedy (London, 1955), p. 165.

64. See Kate L. Gregg, “Thomas Dekker: a Study in Economic and Social Backgrounds,” University of Washington Publications, (Seattle, 1924), vol. II, no. 22, pp. 55-112.

65. Chambers, II, 547, n. 1. The author cites a passage from the Prologue to The Woman Hater (1606) which shows that not all subscribed to the fashion: “Gentlemen, Inductions are out of date, and a Prologue in Verse, is as stale as a black Velvet Cloak, and a Bay Garland.”

66. Of a total of 48 plays traced by Harbage, pp. 346-349, to the private theatres between 1599 and 1608, 10 feature inductions and 15, including some of the latter, prologues. Of the 10 inductions, 4 are in plays by Marston and 2 each in ones by Jonson and Middleton.

67. See also Dekker's “How a Gallant should behave himself in a Playhouse,” The Gull's Hornbook, Chap. VI.

68. Harbage, p. 83.

69. Algernon Charles Swinburne, Contemporaries of Shakespeare, ed. Edmund Gosse and Thomas Wise (London, 1919), 217-218.

70. Felix Schelling, Elizabethan Drama (2 vols., New York, 1959), I, 140. Bayne, p. 214, sees in Day a forerunner of the Restoration dramatists.

71. See Bradbrook, p. 170.

72. See Beaumont's slighting reference to the second of these plays in The Knight of the Burning Pestle, IV.1.46.

73. Bradbrook, p. 168. See also Harbage, p. 177.