The Elizabethan translations of Seneca's tragedies [by] E. M. Spearing. / Simpson, Evelyn Mary Spearing, 1885-1963

UC-NRLF 



B 4 D3T 4Sfi 



THE 

ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

OF 

SENECA'S TRAGEDIES 



E. M. SPEARING 

Fellow of Netonham College, Cambridge 



CAMBRIDGE : 

W. HEFPER & SONS LTD. 
1912 



Two Shillings net. 



ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS OF 
SENECA'S TRAGEDIES 






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THE 

ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

OF 

SENECA'S TRAGEDIES 



E. M. SPEARING 

Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge 



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CAMBRIDGE : 

W. HEFFER & SONS LTD. 
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lus 



5 



CONTENTS 



Introduction. 

I. Seneca's Tragedies and the Elizabethan 

Drama. 

II. Heywood's Troas, Thyestes, and Hercules 



ERRATA. 

p. 11, line 1, for wrotigh read wrought. 

p. 52, ,, 23, for vy read vp. 

p. 71, ,, 7, for fauours [? savours] read sauours. 

p. 73, ,, 30, for hoci read hoei. 

p. 75, ,, 3, for N.E. read il/.£. 



Hercules 



e Tragedies. 



VIII. Grammar. 
IX. Vocabulary. 
Bibliography. 



255323 



tus 



•5 

CONTENTS 



Introduction. 



I. Seneca's Tragedies and the Elizabethan 

Drama. 

II. Heywood's Troas, Thyestes, and Hercules 

Furens. 

III. Neville's CEdipus. 

IV. Studley's Agamemnon, Medea, Hercules 

OEJtceus, and Hippolytus. 

V. Nuce's Octavia. 

VI. Newton's TJiebais, and the Tenne Tragedies. 
VII. Metre of the Translations. 
VIII. Grammar. 
IX. Vocabulary. 
Bibliography. 



255323 



INTRODUCTION 

So much attention has been directed of recent 
years to the influence of Seneca's tragedies on the 
Elizabethan drama by such works as Fischer's Kunst- 
entivicklung cler englischen Tragodie and Cunliffe's 
Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy, that it 
is somewhat surprising that the Elizabethan trans- 
lations of Seneca have remained in comparative 
neglect. 

One of the reasons for this neglect has doubtless 
been the difficulty of access to the original editions 
and the la«k-i5f"'aiTy""^atisfactory modern reprint. 
The first editions of the separate translations are 
extremely rare, and in some cases only one copy — 
that in the British Museum — is known to exist. 
The 1581 edition of the collected plays is also scarce. 
At present only one modern edition exists, and that 
not an altogether trustworthy one, viz. the Spenser 
Society's reprint (1887) of the edition of 1581. This 
is now out of print, and can only be obtained with 
difficulty. Professor W. Ban& of Louvain, has, how- 
ever, announced that a reprint of the first editions 
of the translations by Jasper Heywood and John 
Studley will shortly appear in his series Materialmen 
zur Kunde des dlteren englischen Dramas, and this 
should do much to facilitate the study of these plays. 

This difficulty in consulting the original editions 
has rendered most of the work done on the subject 
very unsatisfactory. Thus the Spenser Society were 
content merely to reprint, as an introduction to 



J 



INTRODUCTION. 

their edition, Warton's account of the translations 
in his History of English, Poetry, now more than a 
hundred years old. The articles on the various 
translators in the Dictionary of National Biography 
contain much valuable information, but are not 
always reliable. Thus the article on Studley states 
that no copy of the original edition of his Medea is 
extant, whereas one is to be found in the British 
Museum, and that on Nuce gives 1561 as the date 
both of Studley's Agamemnon and Nuce's Octavia, 
though the former was certainly, and the latter 
probably, produced in 1566. 

In 1909 there appeared a German dissertation on 
the subject, Die englischen Seneca-TJebersetzer des 
16. Jahrhunderts, by E. Jockers, Ph.D. Strassburg. 
It treats very fully the relation of the separate 
translations to their original, and contains a careful 
analysis of the peculiarities of style of the five 
translators, but its value is lessened by its failure to 
discriminate between the early editions and the 
Tenne Tragedies of 1581. This mistake is not of 
great importance in the case of Heywood, Studley, 
and Nuce, since the 1581 edition is practically a 
reprint of the earlier editions, though even in their 
case collation with the original text would have 
removed certain difficulties which confronted Dr. 
Jockers. 1 In the case of Neville's CEdipus, however, 
this mistake vitiates the whole of Dr. Jockers' treat- 
ment, as the text of 1581 differs in almost every line 
from that of 1563. 

Dr. Jockers' account of the lives of the translators 
and the dates of their work is also untrustworthy, 

l e.g. on pp. 84, 85, Jockers expends several lines in proposing 
the emendation Phebe for Thebe (Ag., Tenne Trag., f. 146, 1. 23), the 
reading which actually occurs in the edition of 1566. 



INTRODUCTION. 

and shows too much reliance on the authority of 
Warton, and of the Dictionary of National Bio- 
grapJiy. 1 Moreover, the value of his quotations from 
the Tenne Tragedies of 1581 is considerably lessened 
by the misprints which occur on almost every page. 2 

The greater part of the material in this volume 
had been collected before Dr. Jockers' dissertation 
appeared, and after reading the latter I felt that 
there was still room for another treatise on the sub- 
ject which should pursue a somewhat different line 
of treatment, and should be based on a careful study, 
not of a reprint, but of the original editions. At the 
same time I wish to acknowledge gratefully the help 
which Dr. Jockers has afforded to all future students 
of the translations by his exhaustive treatment of 
their relation to the Latin originals. 

My best thanks are due to Professor P. G. Thomas, 
of Bedford College, London, to whose kindness I am 
greatly indebted, and to Miss M. Steele Smith, of 
Newnham College, Cambridge, who first brought the 
subject before my notice. I owe much to the unfail- 
ing kindness of Dr. W. W. Greg, of Trinity College, 
Cambridge, who generously lent me his copy of .the 
1581 edition, and has given me valuable help and 
advice. I wish also to take this opportunity of 
thanking Dr. J. N. Keynes, Registrary of the Univer- 
sity of Cambridge ; Mr. Aldis Wright, Vice-Master of 

i e.g. on p. 77 he repeats the incorrect assertion of the D.N.B. 
that no copy is extant of the 1566 edition of Studley's Medea. 
Again on p. 76 he states : " John Studley wurde um das Jahr 1545 
geboren. In der Schule von Westminster erzogen, trat er mit 
ungefiihr 16 Jahren in das Trinity College in Cambridge ein," 
though the Register of Cambridge University shows that Studley 
matriculated 12 May, 1563. 

2 e.g. on pp. 93, 94, the following misprints occur in quotations 
from the Tenne Tragedies : — Glance for Glance (p. 93, 1. 5), te for 
the (1. 9), trancling for trancling (1. 27), did for stack (p. 94, 1. 8), 
spayse for paijse (1. 31), craning for cramming (1. 33). 



INTRODUCTION. 

Trinity College, Cambridge ; Dr. Henry Bradley, of 
Oxford, and others who have helped nie in my in- 
vestigations. 

My thanks are due also to the Syndics of the 
Cambridge University Press for permission to re- 
publish certain paragraphs of my article on this 
subject which appeared in the Modern Language 
Review for July 1909 ; and to Professor W. Bang, of 
Louvain, for permission to use material forming 
part of the introduction which I have prepared 
for the reprint of Studley's translations in his 
Materialmen. 



NOTE. 

The system of reference employed throughout this volume 
is a double one. When separate editions of the translations exist, 
reference is made both to the first edition and to the Tenne 
Tragedies, the source from which the exact words of the quotation 
are taken being mentioned first. All variants of any importance 
in the other text are inserted in square brackets. Owing to the 
lack of foliation or pagination in several of the separate editions, 
reference is made in their case to the signature. References to 
the Tenne Tragedies are to the folio and line. When no separate 
edition is extant, the reference to the Tenne Tragedies is preceded 
by the title of the play, unless this has already been made clear 
by the context. 



SENECA'S TRAGEDIES AND THE 
ELIZABETHAN DRAMA. 

In the sixteenth century the popularity of Seneca's 
tragedies was immense. To English dramatists, 
struggling to impose form and order on the shapeless, 
though vigorous, native drama, Seneca seemed to 
offer an admirable model. His tragedies contained 
abundance of melodrama to suit the popular taste, 
whilst his sententious philosophy and moral maxims 
appealed to the more learned, and all was arranged" ' 
in a clear-cut form, of which the principle of construc- 
tion wasTeasy to grasp. The great Greek tragedians 
were little studied by the Elizabethans. Greek was 
still unfamiliar to a large number of students ; and 
it may be doubted whether in any case iEschylus or 
Sophocles would have been appreciated by the Eliza- 
bethan public. The Senecan drama, crjide. and melo- 
dramatic as it seems to us, appealed far more strongly 
to the robust Englishmen of the sixteenth century ^-^l ; 
whose animal instincts were as yet only half sub- > 
dued by civilization. 

The importance of the influence exercised by 
Senecan tragedy upon the development of the Eliza- 
bethan drama is now generally admitted. The extent 



THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

of this influence has been demonstrated by J. W. 
Cunliffe in his Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan 
Tragedy, and by R. Fischer in Kunstentwicklung der 
englisclien Tragodie. It affected both the substance 
and the form of the drama. The division into_fiy_a_ 
acts, and the introduction of the Chorus, as in Gorbo- 
duc, The Misfortunes of Arthur, and Catiline, may be 
taken as examples of the influence of Seneca on the 
form of the Elizabethan drama, whilst in regard to 
matter and treatment Senecan influence was yet 
more important. It was seen in the treatment of 
the supernatural, in the selection of horrible and 
sensational themes, in the tendency to insert long 
rhetorical and descriptive passages, in the use of sticho- 
mythia, in the introduction of moralising common- 
places, and in the spirit of philosophic fatalism. 

Under these circumstances it was but natural 
that students who read Seneca's tragedies with 
delight, and had perhaps taken part in the perform- 
ances which were frequently given in the colleges of 
their own University, 1 should wish to make him 
known to their less learned fellow countrymen, and 
to win fame for themselves by translating into the 
best English verse at their command an author who 
seemed to them so well fitted both to please and 
to instruct. Thus one of the translators states that 
it was at the " ernest requeste " of " certaine familiar 
frendes " that he had " thus rashly attempted so great 
an enterprise," and continues : 



l Professor G. C. Moore Smith in his article Plays performed 
in Cambridge Colleges before 1585 in Fasciculus J. W. Clark dicatus, 
pp. 267 — 270, states that though the records of Cambridge Colleges 
are most imperfect during the early part of Elizabeth's reign, he 
has been able to ascertain that Troas was acted at Trinity College 
in 1551-2, and again in 1560-1, CEdipus in 1559-60, and Medea in 
1560-1, and that Medea was also acted at Queens' in 1563. 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

They . . . willed me not to hyde and kepe to my selfe that 
small talent which god hath lente vnto me to serue my countrey 
withall, but rather to applye it to the vse of suche yonge Studentes 
as therby myght take some commoditie.i 

During the reign of Elizabeth all the ten tragedies 
then ascribed to Seneca were translated into English 
verse. Three of these — Troas, Thyestes, and Hercules 
Furens — were translated by Jasper Hey wood, younger 
son of John Heywood the epigrammatist, and fellow 
of All Souls' College, Oxford. Alexander Nevill^a 
Cambridge_ student an d a friend of George Gascoigne, 
translated (Edipus. John Studley, scholar and 
fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, was responsible 
for the versions of Agamemnon, Medea, Hercules 
(Etazus, 2 and Hippolytus. Thomas Nuce, fellow of 
Pembroke Hall, CanibxLd^e, translated Octavia; and 
the remaining play, or rather fragments of two plays, 
Thebais, or as it is sometimes called Phcenissa 7 , was 
rendered into English by Thomas Newton, who had 
been a student at both Oxford and Cambridge. 

To Heywood belongs the credit of being the 
pioneer in this work. His Troas was published in 
an octavo edition in 1559 ,, and his Thyestes, also in 
octavo, in 15ii0. His Hercules Furens appeared in 
octavo in 1561. Neville's (Edipus was written, so he 
tells us, in his sixteenth year, i.e. in 1560, but it was 
not published till 156^ when it appeared in octavo- 
Nuce's version of Octavia is ill quarto ; it is undated, 
but there is an entry which probably refers to it in the 
Stationers' Register for the year July 1566 — July 1567. 
Studley's Agamemnon appeared in octavo in 1566, 

i John Studley. Agamemnon. (1566.) Preface to the Reader 
[omitted in the Tenne Tragedies.'] See also the passage quoted 
infra, p. 27, from Neville's dedicatory epistle to Dr. Wotton. 

2 The Bodleian Library contains a fragment of an unpublished 
translation of Hercules (Etceus which is attributed to Queen 
Elizabeth. 



THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

and his Medea, also in octavo, later in the same 
year. No separate editions are extant of his Hercules 
(Etceus and Hippolytus, but two entries in the 
Stationers' Register for the year 1566-7 make it 
probable that these two translations appeared in 
quick succession to Agamemnon and Medea. In 1581 
Thomas Newton collected all these versions of sepa- 
rate plays, and published them, together with his 
own Thebais, added to make the edition complete 
in a quarto volume entitled " Seneca His Tenne 
Tragedies. Translated into Englysh." 

Contemporary references show us that the trans- 
lations were widely read and highly esteemed. Some 
lines by a certain T. B., prefixed to Studley's version 
of Agamemnon (published 1566) indicate t hat Hay - 
wood's Troas had enjoyed stri king success — a success 
which apparently exceeded its merits in T. B.'s 
estimation. 1 

When Hehvood did in perfect verse, 

and dolfull tune set out, 
And by hys sniouth and fyled style 

declared had aboute, 
What roughe reproche the Troyans of 

the hardy Grekes receyued, 
When they of towne, of goods, and lyues 

togyther were depryued. 
How wel did then hys freindes requite 

his trauayle and hys paine, 
When vnto hym they haue [?gaue] as due 

ten thousand thankes agayne? 
What greater prayse might Virgill get? 

what more renoume then this, 
Could haue ben gyuen unto hym, 

for wrytyng verse of hys? 
Did Virgill ought request but thys, 

in labouryng to excell? 



i Some allowance must be made for the fact that Heywood 
was an Oxford man, whilst Studley and his friends belonged to 
Cambridge. 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

Or what did fame gyue to him more, 

then prayse to beare the bell? 
May Heywood this [thus?] alone get prayse, 

and Phaer be cleane forgott. 
"Whose verse & style doth far surmount 

and gotten hath the lot ? 
Or may not Googe haue parte with hym, 

whose trauayle and whose payne, 
Whose verse also is full as good, 

or better of the twaine? 
A Neuyle also one there is, 

"in verse that gyues no place 
To Heiwood (though he be full good) 

in vsyng of his grace. 
Nor Goldinge can haue lesse renome, 

whych Ouid dyd translate : 
And by the thondryng of hys verse 

hath set in chayre of state. 
With him also (as semeth me) 

our Edwardes may compare, 
Who nothing gyuyng place to hym 

doth syt in egall chayre. 
A great sorte more I recken myght, 

with Heiwood to compare, 
And this our Aucthor one of them 

to compte I will not spare. 
Whose paynes is egall with the rest 

in thys he hath begun, 
And lesser prayse deserueth not 

then He i woods worke hath done. 

Ascham in his attack on riine in the Scholemaster 
(published 1570, hut written before 1568) includes the 
translators of " Ouide, Palingenius, and Seneca " 
together with " Chauser, Th. Norton of Bristow, my 
L. of Surrey, M. Wiat, Th. Phaer " as examples of 
writers who "have gonne as farre to their great 
praise as the copie they followed could cary them," 
and considers that " if soch good wittes and forward 
diligence had bene directed to follow the best 
examples, and not haue bene caryed by tynie and 
custome to content themselues with that barbarous 
and rude Ryming, emonges their other worthy 



THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

praises, which they haue iustly deserued, this had 
not bene the least, to be counted emonges men of 
learning and sM]^ more like vnto the Grecians than 
vnto the Gothians in handling of their verse." D) 

William AVebbe in his Discourse of English 
Poetrie (1586), mentions " the laudable Authors of 
Seneca in English," and Francis Meres in Palladis 
Tamia (1598) says "these versifiers for their learned 
translations are of good note among us, Phaer for 
Virgils illhieads, Golding for Ovid's Metamorphosis 
. . . . the translators of Senecaes Tragedies." 

Nash's well-known passage in his preface " To the 

Gentlemen Students of both Universities " prefixed 

to Greene's Menaphon (published 1589) is worth 

quoting in this connection : — 

It is a common practise now a daies amongst a sort of shifting 
companions, that runne through every arte and thrive by none, to 
leave the trade of Noverint, whereto they were borne, and busie 
themselves with the indevors of Art, that could scarcely latinize 
their necke-verse if they should have neede; yet English Seneca 
read by candle light yeeldes manie good sentences, as Bloud is 
a begger, and so foorth ; and, if you intreate him faire in a frostie 
morning, he will affoord you whole Hamlets, I should say handfulls 
of tragical speaches. But O griefe ! tempits eclax rerum, what's 
that will last alwaies? The sea exhaled by droppes will in con- 
tinuance be drie, and Seneca let bloud line by line and page by page 
at length must needes die to our stage : which makes his famisht 
followers to imitate the Kidde in ^Esop, who, enamored with the 
Foxes newf angles, forsooke all hopes of life to leape into a new 
occupation, and these men, renowncing all possibilities of credit or 
estimation, to intermeddle with Italian translations. 

This passage from Nash seems to indicate that 
these translations of Seneca proved of great use to 
the popular playwrights, and especially to Kyd, at 
whom the satire was probably aimed. 2 The Spanish 

1 Scholemaster, Bk. II, Sect. V. 

2 See F. S. Boas, The Works of Thomas Kyd. In trod., pp. xx — 
xxiv. Professor Boas states as his opinion that "though Nash 
grossly exaggerates Kyd's debt to ' English Seneca,' it had a strong 
influence upon his dramatic work." (p. xxiv.) 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

Tragedy contains paraphrases of passages from 
Seneca {e.g. Act III, Sc. i, 11. 1 — 11, an adaptation 
of Agam. 11. 57 — 73), h nt these do not show clearl y 
t he influence of the tr anslations, a nd the Latin 
quotations from Seneca which abound in Act ill, 
Sc. xiii of the same play indicate that Kyd may 
have gone straight to the original. 

As with Kyd, so with the other Elizabethan 
dramatists it is almost impossible to distinguish 
how much of the debt which they undoubtedly owe 
to Seneca is due to the plays in the original, and 
how much to the translations. As Cunliffe observes, 
the more learned dramatists would not need the 
help of translations, while the less learned who 
were glad of the aid afforded by Hey wood and his 
fellow-translators, would prefer to disguise their 
obligations by not quoting verbatim. Undoubtedly 
these translations must have jilone much to spr ead 

a general knowWIgja^ of Seneca, and to ..insp ire 

interest in his treatment of the drama, and in all 
probability their influence was much greater than 
any examination merely of parallel passages in 
them and in Elizabethan plays would lead us to 
suspect. 1 

Though it is in this influence that their chief 
value lies, the plays have a certain interest of their 
own. Much of the verse is mere doggerel, but the 
style of the translators has a racy and vigorous 
character which often makes the reader forget its 
metrical i mper fections. In the sixth and seventh 
decades of the sixteenth century Englishmen had 
not yet found a fitting mode of expression for the 



i Cp. Camb. Hist, of Eng. Lit., Vol. V. p. 80. "In any case, their 
influence upon writers for the popular stage is beyond doubt." 



\ 



THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

new life surging within them. Yet the life was 
there, however grotesquely and clumsily it might 
show itself, and even its early manifestations are 
worthy of attention. 

Moreover these translations afford valuable 
testimony as to the grammar, metre, and vocabulary 
used by men of classical learning at the beginning of 
Elizabeth's reign. Some of the words employed 
are very curious and interesting, and the various 
grammatical forms deserve careful study. 

At the same time it must be admitted that the 
intrinsic dramatic worth of the plays is small. The 
translators had before them an original which, 
highly as they esteemed it, was utterly lacking in 
true dramatic quality, and though they felt them- 
selves at liberty to alter and adapt it on occasions, 
their alterations show that they had no perception 
of the essentials of great drama. 

Seneca's plays are hardly drama at all in the 
true sense of the word. They show rhetoric, 
eloquence, and a facility for epigrams, but, in the 
main, have little action and less development of 
character. Seneca's utter inferiority to the Greek 
dramatists, when handling the same themes, te 
abundantly illustrated by the Medea. In certain 
other plays, e.g. in the Hippohjtus, Seneca has 
altered the story in such a way as completely 
to ruin its tragic beauty, but in the Medea he has 
followed Euripides almost exactly in the construc- 
tion of the plot, and yet has contri ved to vu lgarise 
and_ degrade the wh ole con ce ption. In the first 
scene Medea appears as almost a rnyinp ; mfljiin r, 
ca lling down vengeance on her husband, and 



her language is as wild~and extravagant at the 
beginning of the play as at the end. There is none 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

of the subtle development of character which we find 
in Euripides, who shows us Medea as a woman 
whose latent barbaric instincts gradually assert 
themselves under the injuries heaped on her, till at 
last the loving wife and mother becomes the furious 
savage. In Euripides' play, she is by no means 
wholly horrible; at first we sympathise with her 
against her foes, and though at last we shudder at 
her crime, we feel that the guilt is Jason's as much, 
nay perhaps more, than hers. But in Seneca's play 
she awakens no sympathy, for she is nothing 
but a savage from beginning to end, except per- 
haps in one interview with Jason. In t he very 
fir st scene she announces her intention of murder- 
ing her child ren, and th us the sens e of gradually 
g rowing horror with which Euripides leads up to 
that resolve, is entirely lost. The beautiful scene 
in which she suddenly bursts into tears before 
Jason over her children, is wanting in Seneca, 
and finally she _kills the chi]jj|, r^n nn fh^^i^aa 
before their father's eyes — a gratuitous piece of 
t heatricaF horror jcar elully avoided by Euripide s. It 
can hardly be said that the Elizabethan translators 
show any greater sense of dramatic fitness than does 
Seneca himself ^J.n fact, they often accentuate his 
faults and obscure his merits^/ Seneca's speeches, 
though not well adapted to the characters in whose 
mouths they are put, are generally effective from a 
rhetorical point of view, containing much eloquenc e 
an d many strik in g epigrams. Unfortunately Studley 
and his companions exaggerated Seneca's eloquence 
till it became mere rant, and elaborated and 
explained his epigrams till they lost all their point. 
Two examples will show the translators' tendency to 
exaggerate the violence of the original. 



THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

In the (Edipus, 11. 935, 936, 945—948, Seneca writes: 

Haec fatus aptat impiam capulo inanum 
ensemque ducit. 'itane?... 
...Iterum vivere atque iterum rnori 
liceat, renasci semper ut totiens nova 
supplicia pendas — utere ingenio, miser.' 

The corresponding lines in Neville's revised 
translation are (Tenne Tragedies, f. 91b, 11. 27, 28, 
f. 92 a, 11. 7—14) : 

With that his bloudy fatall Blade, from out his sheath he drawes. 

And lowd he rores, with thundring voice. Thou beast why dost 
thou pawse? 

O that I might a thousand times, my wretched lyfe renewe. 

O that I might revyve and dye by course in order dewe. 

Ten hundred thousand times and more : than should I vengeance 
take 

Upon this wretched head. Than I perhaps in part should make 

A meete amends in deede, for this my fowle and lothsome Sin. 

Than should the proof e of payne reprove the life that I live in. 

The choyse is in thy hand thou wretch, than use thine owne dis- 
cretion. 

And finde a meanes, whereby thou maist come to extreame con- 
fusion. 

Again, Seneca puts into Medea's mouth the words 

pelle femineos metus 
et inhospitalem Caucasum mente indue 
quodcumque vidit Pontus aut Phasis nefas, 
videbit Isthmos. effera ignota horrida, 
tremenda caelo pariter ac terris mala 
mens intus agitat. 

This is rant enough surely, hut Studley is deter- 
mined to improve on his original. His version runs 
thus : 

Exile all foolysh Female feare, and pity from thy mynde, 

And as th' untamed Tygers use to rage and raue unkynde, 

That haunt the croking combrous Caves, and clumpred frosen 

cliues ; 
And craggy Rockes of Caucasus, whose bitter cold depryues 
The soyle of all Inhabitours, permit to lodge and rest, 
Such saluage brutish tyranny within thy brasen brest. 

10 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

What euer hurly burly wrough doth Phasis understand, 
What mighty monstrous bloudy f eate I wrought by Sea or Land : 
The like in Corynth shal be seene in most outragious guise, 
Most hyddious, hatefull, horrible, to heare or see wyth eyes, 
Most divelish, desperate, dreadfull deede, yet neuer knowne 

before, 
Whose rage shall force heauen, earth, and hell to quake and 

tremble sore. 

(Tenne Tragedies, 120b, 9—20.) 

Two examples will illustrate how much some of 
Seneca's concise and pointed lines lose in the trans- 
lation. Seneca makes Creon say to Medea ' i, querere 
Colchis.' Studley translates this by 

Auaunt, and yell out thy complayntes at Colchis, get thee hence. 

(Tenne Trag., 124a, 12.) 

Ill Here. GEt. 641, % where the Latin has two short 

lines : 

quos felices Cynthia vidit, 
vidit miseros enata dies, 

the English has six long ones : 

Whom Moone at morne on top of Fortunes wheele 

High swayed hath seene, at fulnesse of renowne, 

The glading sunne hath seene his Scepter reele, 

And him from high fall topsy turuey downe. 

At morne full merry, blith, in happy plight, 

But whelmde in woes and brought to bale ere nyght. 

{Tenne Trag., 198a, 19—24.) 

It is unnecessary to linger over the dramatic 
weakness of the Tenne Tragedies. From one point 
of view their very faults are a merit. The imper- 
fections of Senecan tragedy did good service hy 
preventing unduly close imitation. Had the master- 
pieces of iEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides become 
the models of Elizabethan playwrights, we might 
have lost our national drama, for the English genius 
is far removed from the Greek in character. As it 

11 



ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS EROM SENECA. 

was, when the Elizabethans had learnt what they 
could from Seneca, they realised the dramatic 
weakness of his tragedies and struck out a new line 
for themselves. It is curious to remember that only 
thirty years elapsed between the publication of even 
the earliest of these translations and that of 
Marlowe's Tamburlaine and Faust us, and that 
within fifteen years of the appearance of the 
collected edition, Shakespeare had written Romeo 
and Juliet. 1 It throws a light on the extraordinarily 
rapid development of the English drama in those 
thirty or forty years. It seems a far cry from the 
broken-backed lines, bombastic rhetoric, and puppet 
figures of these Senecan translations to the perfect 
harmony of thought and expression, to the ageless 
and deathless creations of Shakespeare's plays; but 
great poets can never be isolated from their pre- 
decessors, and every one of the forces which had 
been at work in English literature had its part in 
the perfecting of the Elizabethan drama. Even 
Shakespeare might not have been quite himself as 
we know him, had it not been for the work of the 
obscure translators of Seneca. 



i It should be remembered that as late as the production of 
Hamlet, Shakespeare was in touch with the Senecan tradition. 
There is a close parallel between the Ghost in Hamlet and the 
Ghost of Thyestes in Seneca's Agamemnon , who vjsps a,t the 
beginning of the play to incifco hi e aon -iEgisthus to revenge the 
wrongs. inflicted on him by his brother Atreua. 



12 



II. 

HEYWOOD'S TROAS, THYESTES, AND 
HERCULES FURENS. 

Jasper Heywood, the first of the translators, came 
of a literary family. He was the younger son of 
John Heywood, the epigrammatist and writer of 
interludes, and through his mother he was connected 
with Sir Thomas More 1 , whilst his sister Elizabeth 
was the mother of John Donne. His life was more 
varied and adventurous than that of the other 
translators, and his plays show (more originality) 
and, on the whole, more poetic power, than do the 
other versions included in the Tenne Tragedies. 

He was born in 1535, and sent to Oxford in 1547, 
at the early age of twelve. In 1554 he was elected a 
probationer fellow of Merton College, but in 1558 he 
was obliged to resign his posi^-and late in the same 
year he was elected to a fellowship at All Souls'. It 
was while he was a fellow of All Souls' that his 
Senecan translations appeared — Troas in 1559, 
TJujcstes in 1560, and Hercules Fureiis in 1561. 

It must have been immediately after the pro- 
duction of the last-mentioned play that Heywood 
was obliged to resign his fellowship at All Souls'. on 
acco unt of th e changes in relig ion. The Heywood 
family was staunchly Catholic ; Jasper's elder 

i Jasper Heywood' s mother, Elizabeth Rastell, was the 
grand-daughter of Elizabeth, sister of Sir Thomas More. 

13 



THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

brother Ellis had already retired from Oxford to 
Rome, and in Iftfifl „wp fin d Jasper himself in 
the Jesuit community at Rome . After teaching 
philosophy and theology there for two years he was 
sent to the Jesuit College of Dillingen in Bavaria. 
where he was appointed professor of moral theology 
— a post which he held for seventeen years.. 

In 1581 he returned to England as superior of the 
English Jesuit Mission. In 1583 he was recalled to 
^ the Continent, hut a violent gale on the voyage 
drove him back to the English coast, where he was 
arrested and carried t o Lond on in 0^°^^" A few 
months later he was tried with five other priests, hut 
while they were condemned and executed, he was 
remanded to the Tower, and after a year 1 of strict 
imprisonment he was e xiled to Fran rp, on pain of 
death if he ever again set foot in England. He spent 
the remaining thirteen years of his life in Burgundy, 
Rome, and Naples, dying at the last mentioned on 
January 9, 159|.« 

Hey wood's three translations seem to have been 
very favourably received, and Uis Troas was the only 
one of the Tenne Tragedies which passed through two 
separate editions (1559 and 1563j) The other translators 
speak of his work with evident admiration. Studley 
goes so far as to say that "the other Tragedies which 
are set furthe by Jasper Heiwood and Alexander 
Neuyle, are so excellently well done that in reading 
of them it semeth to me no translation, but euen 



i The Diet, of Nat. Biog. states that he endured seventeen 
months of imprisonment in the Tower, but according to the dates 
given in the same article, he cannot have spent a full year in the 
Tower. 

2 I regret that the edition of Heywood's translations, with an 
introduction by H. de Vocht, which Prof. Bang bas promised us in 
his Materialien, has not yet appeared, as it will doubtless throw 
fresh light on Heywood's adventurous career. 

14 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

Seneca hymselfe to speke in englysh." 1 The praises 
which T. B. in his introductory verses to Studley's 
Agamemnon (see above, p. 4) bestows on Hey wood's 
" perfect verse " and " smouth and fyled style" seem 
somewhat excessive, but it must be remembered that 
Troas appeared in the first year of Elizabeth's' reign, 
when English versification had not yet mastered the 
lessons which Wyatt and Surrey had tried to teach 
it, and when Sidney and Spenser were still in their 
infancy. There is much that is grotesque in 
^Heywood's work, but he compares very favourably 
with his fellow translators, and in one play at least 
-the Troas — he shows real poetic feeling. Amid all 
the rant and fury of Hercules, (Edipus, Medea, and 
their companions, the scene between Andromache, 
her little son, and Ulysses in Act in of the Troas is 
conspicuous for its ten dernes s and p ath os ; and 
though this may be due in part to the fact that the 
play itself is one of Seneca's best, credit must be 
given to Heywood's judgment in selecting it for his 
first attempt. " I have," he says in his preface, 
"privately taken the part which pleased me best of 
so excellent an author, for better is tyme spent in 
the best then other." 

Heywood's style is much more free from words of 
a colloquial, dialectal, or archaic character than that 
of Studley, Nuce, or Newton. His English is on the 
whole that of the ordinary Elizabethan translator, 
though he has some striking Latinisms, such as 
' freate,' 'frete' = 'sea' (Lat fretum), and ' roge ' = 
'funeral pyre' (Lat. rogus), which in one passage 
of the 1581 edition (T. T. 99a, 27) has been misunder- 
stood by the printer and appears as ' rage.' 

i Studley. Agamemnon. Preface to the Reader. 
15 



THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

It is interesting to note the change in Heywood's 
attitude towards his original in his successive transla- 
tions. <^u the Troas, the earliest of the three, he dealt 

^ with it very freely, adding a chorus of sixty lines of 
his own invention at the end of Act I, a new scene 
•consisting of a speech of ninety-one lines by the 

3 ghost of Achilles at the beginning of Act n, and 

three additional stanzas at the end of the chorus 

> which concludes Act II. He also substituted a 

chorus of his own for the Senecan chorus at the 

) close of Act in. In his preface ' To the Reader 
(T. T., 95 b, 96 a), Hey wood speaks of these alter- 
ations in the following terms : — 

Now as concerninge sondrye places augmented and some altered 
in this niy translation. First forasmuch as this worke seemed unto 
mee in some places vnperflte, whether left so of the Author, or parte 
•of it loste, as tyine devoureth all things, I wot not, I haue (where I 
thought good) with addition of myne owne Penne supplied the wante 
■of some thynges, as the firste Chorus, after the fyrste acte....Also in 
the seconde Acte I haue added the Speache of Achilles Spright, 
rysing from Hell to require the Sacrifyce of Polyxena....Agayne the 
three laste staues of the Chorus after the same Acte : and as for the 
thyrde Chorus which in Seneca beginneth thus, Que vocat S3des? 
For as much as nothing is therein but a heaped number of farre and 
straunge Countries, considerynge with my selfe, that the names 
of so manye vnknowen Countreyes, Mountaynes, Desertes. and 
Woodes, shoulde have no grace in the Englishe tounge, but bee 
a straunge and vnpleasant thinge to the Readers (excepte I should 
•expound the Historyes of each one, which would be farre to 
tedious), I haue in the place thereof made another beginninge in 
this manner. O love that leadst, etc. OVhich alteration may be 
borne withall, seynge that Chorus is nopart of the substaunce of 
the matter. In the rest I haue for my slender learninge endeuored 
to keepe touch with the Latten, not worde for worde or verse for 
verse, as to expounds it, but neglectynge the placinge of the wordes, 
•obserued their sence\ 

Iii the Tlnjestes Heywood has only added one 
•original speech, the soliloquy of Thyestes at the 
close of the play, in which the unhappy father 
invokes on himself all the torments of hell. 

16 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

In the Hercules Furens, published in 1561, there 
is no addition of original matter, and it is clear from 
the character of the translation itself that Heywood 
no longer " endevored to keepe touch with the Latten, 
not worde for worde or verse for verse, but neg- 
lectynge the placinge of the wordes, observed their 
sence," but that his aim was to reproduce the Latin 
much more closely. On the title-page he states, first 
in- Latin, then in English, that the tragedy is "newly 
perused and of all faultes whereof it did before abound 
diligently corrected, and for the profit of young 
schollers so faithfully translated into English metre, 
that ye may se verse for verse tourned as farre as the 
phrase of the English permitteth." 

It may be doubted whether this change in 
Heywood's method of translation was really bene- 
ficial to his work. In striving to keep the Latin 
order of words, his English becomes clumsy and 
frequently obscure, e.g., Here. Fur., D 1, T. T., 5a, 9, 10 : 

Nor handes that well durst enterprise his noble travayles all 
The filthy labour made to shrynke of foule Augias hall, 

where ' labour ' is the nominative, and ' handes ' the 
accusative. Or Here. Fur., I 1, T. T., 13a, 31- 34 : 

As gret as when comes houre of longer night, 
And willyng quiet sleepes to bee extent, 
Holds equal Libra Phoebus Chariots light, 
A sorte the secrete Ceres doo frequent, 

where the meaning is difficult to grasp without the 
Latin : 

quanta, cum longae redit hora nocti 
crescere et somnos cupiens quietos 
Libra Phoebeos tenet aequa currus, 
turba secretam Cererem frequentat. 

The attempt to reproduce exactly Latin con- 

17 



THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

structions is not always very happy, e.g., T. T., 5b,. 
8—10, Here. Fur., D 3, 6: » 

and beaten with thy stroake 

The mount, now here, now there fell downe : and rampier 

rente of stay, 
The raging brooke of Thessaly did roon a newe found way, 

whore the last clause is an attempt to follow the 
Latin : , 

et rupto aggere 
nova cucurrit Thessalus torrens via ; 

and T. T., 7a, 16, 17, Here. Fur., e 3 : 

what should I the mothers speake 

Both suffring, and aduentring gyltes? 

which represents the Latin 

. . , . . quid matres loquar 
passas et ausas scelera? 

and T. T., 14a, 15, 16, Here. Fur., i3: 

Hee ouer Foordes of Tartare brought 
Beturnde appeased beeinge Hell, 

which represents : 

Transvectus vada Tartari 
pacatis redit inferis. 

This close attention to the construction of the 
original has influenced Heywood's metre, for the 
attempt to represent one Latin line by one English, 
whilst keeping the Latin order of words, has resulted 
in much enjambement, and in a consequent placing 
of the caesura earlier in the line than is its normal 
position. One passage from Megara's speech at the 
beginning of Act n (T. T., 4b, 3—10, Here. Fur., c 6) 
will illustrate this : 



l A mistake has been made in the binding of the 1561 edition, 
D 6 occupies the place of d 4. 

18 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

To mee yet neuer day 

Hath careles shin'de: the ende of one affliction past away 

Beginning of an other is : an other ennemy 

Is forthwith founde, before that hee his joyfull family 

Retourne vnto: an other fyght hee taketh by behest: 

Nor any respite ginen is to him nor quiet rest : 

But whyle that he commaunded is : straight him pursueth shee 

The hatefull Iuno. 

The extent of the alteration produced in 
Heywood's rhythm may be gauged by the different 
proportion of lines with the main pause after the 
second or third foot to be found in the Hercules 
Furens as compared with the Troas. Metrically, 
the ear requires the caesura after the fourth foot, 
and there is usually a slight pause at that place, 
but the main pause (or, as it may be called, the 
logical caesura as distinct from the metrical) often 
occurs earlier in the line, and in the Troas the 
proportion of lines in which it is to be found after 
the second foot is under six per cent, of the total 
number of fourteeners, whilst in the Hercules Furens 
it is over twenty-two per cent. Again, in the Troas 
the number of lines with the logical caesura after 
the third foot is under two per cent., whilst in the 
Hercules Furens it is over six per cent. Thus in 
the latter play, the number of normal lines in which 
the logical and metrical caesuras coincide in falling 
after the fourth foot, has enormously decreased. 



19 



III. 



NEVILLE'S (EDIPUS. 

Alexander Neville, the translator of the (Edipus, 
was born in 1544. He was the son of Richard Neville, 
of South Leverton, Nottinghamshire, and his mother 
was the daughter of Sir Walter Mantell and sister of 
Margaret, the mother of Barnabe Googe. Alexander's 
younger brother, Thomas Neville, had a distinguished 
career, becoming Dean, first of Peterborough, then of 
Canterbury, and Master of Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge. 

Alexander seems to have entered at Cambridge at 
the early age of twelve, for we find that he graduated 
B.A. in 15£§. It was in 1560 that he translated the 
(Edipus according to his prefatory letter to Wotton, 
though it did not appear in print till 1563. 1 After 
leaving Cambridge he studied law in London, where 
he made the acquaintance of George Gascoigne. He 
was one of the "five sundry Gentlemen" who required 
Gascoigne " to write in verse somewhat worthye to 
bee remembred, before he entered into their fellow- 
shippe," and he proposed the Latin motto, Sat cito, 



i In 1563 Neville also contributed commendatory verses to the 
Eglogs of Barnabe Googe, who was his cousin, not his uncle, as the 
Diet, of Nat. Biog. erroneously states. 

20 



ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS FROM SENECA. 

si sat bene, on which Gascoigne composed " seven 
Sonets in seq [u] ence." 

Neville became secretary to Archbishop Parker, 
and remained in the service of Parker's successors,. 
Grindal and Whitgift. In 1575 he published a Latin 
account of Rett's rebellion of 1549, to which he 
appended a description of Norwich and its anti- 
quities, and in 1587 there appeared Academics Canta- 
brigiensis lacrymce tumulo ... P. Sidney sacratce 
per A. Nev ilium. The Diet, of Nat. Biog. suggests 
that he may be identified with the Alexander Neville 
who sat in Parliament as M.P. for Christchurch, 
Hampshire, in 1585, and for Saltash in 1601. He died 
in 1614, and was buried in Canterbury Cathedral, 
where Thomas Neville, then Dean of Canterbury, 
erected a monument to commemorate his brother 
and himself. 

The title page of the first edition of Neville's 
GUdipus runs thus: — 

" The Lamentable Tragedie of CEdipus the Sonne 
of Laius Kyng of Thebes out of Seneca. By Alexander 
Neuyle. Imprynted at London in seint Brydes 
Churchyarde : ouer-agaynst the North doore of the 
Churche : by Thomas Colwell. 1563. 28 Aprilis." 

Then follows a dedicatory epistle " To the ryght 
Honorable Maister Doctor Wotton : One of the 
Queues Maiesties priuye Counsayle," which occupies 
four pages. This is followed by " The Preface to the 
Reader," occupying seven pages, after which comes 
the list of dramatis persona. The translation 
occupies eighty-three pages, and is followed by a page 
containing a list of errata, and the colophon. 

i See Gascoigne. Posies. Flowers. Gascoigne' s Memories. 

21 



THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

The volume 1 is a small octavo with the collation 
a 8 A — E 8 F 2 . 

Neville's translation of the (Edipus possesses 
particular interest for us, since it is the only one of 
the Tonic Tragedies of 1581 which had undergone a 
thorough revision since its first appearance. A care- 
ful comparison of the text of the first editions of 
Hey wood, Studley, and Nuce's versions with that of 
these plays as they appeared in the Tenne Tragedies 
shows that the 1581 edition was merely a reprint of 
the earlier text. With Neville's (Edipus the case is 
otherwise. It is true that no hint is given of the 
changes which have been made, and the title, which 
would lead the reader to imagine that he had here a 
faithful reproduction of Neville's early work, runs 
thus : — " (Edipus. The Fifth Tragedy of Seneca, 
Englished. The yeare of our. Lord M.D.L.X. By 
Alexander Nevyle," and is followed by the dedication 
to Wotton and the " Preface to the Reader," which 
had appeared in the edition of 1563. Yet there are 
changes even in the dedicatory "epistle to Wotton. 
It now opens with a reference, absent in the earlier 
edition, to " this sixtenth yeare of myne age " [i.e. 
1560] . 

The translation itself has been practically re- 
written. Those critics who have consulted only the 
edition of 1581 have often praised the excellence of 
this translation of Oedipus when considered as the 
work of a youth of sixteen. Thus Warton says, 
"Notwithstanding the translator's youth, it is by far 
the most spirited and elegant version in the whole 
collection, and it is to be regretted that he did not 



i The copy here described is that in the British Museum. 
34 . a . 9 (1). 

22 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

undertake all the rest," and this verdict was repub- 
lished in the introduction to the Spenser Society's 
reprint of the Tenne Tragedies in 1887. It is echoed by 
E. Jockers in his Die englischen Seneca-Uebersetzer 
des 16. Jahrhunderts — "Nevyle ist ohne Zweifel der 
begabteste von samtlichen Uebersetzern. Seine 
Uebersetzung zeigt dichterischen Schwung unci 
jugendliche Lebendigkeit," 1 and in a foot-note Jockers 
quotes Warton's judgment, and opposes Collier's less 
favourable estimate of Neville. Neither Jockers nor 
the writer of the article on Neville in the Dictionary 
of National Biography shows any knowledge of 
the difference between the two editions of the 
CEdipus. 

Almost every line of the translation contains 
some alteration from the earlier version. In the 
edition of 15(33 Neville's versification had been ex- 
tremely irregular ; intermingled with the regular 
fourteeners which formed the staple metre of his 
translation were lines containing twelve or sixteen 
syllables, unrhyming fourteeners, or even short un- 
rhyming lines of four or six syllables. In the later 
edition the versification runs much more smoothly, 
and the greater number of the irregularities have 
been removed, though one or two examples remain. 2 

Changes other than metrical are also abundant. 
Speeches are altered and assigned to different 
characters, 3 lines are inserted or omitted, 4 and 



1 Die englischen Seneca-Uebersetzer. p. 43. 

2 e.g. Tenne Trag. 79 b, 7, 82 b, 14, 92 b, 10. 

3 e.g. Iocasta's speech in Act I, 1. 22 is given to (Edipus, and 
' you ' is accordingly changed to ' I,' and ' that ' to ' this.' 

4 Act I, 1. 4 is an insertion. 

23 



THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

there are a large number of purely verbal altera- 
tions. 1 

The extent of the alterations may be gauged by a 
comparison of some passages from Act I — 



1563 Edition. 



11. 1—5. 



The night is gon. & dredfull 

day begins at length to 

appeare 
And Lucifer beset wt Clowds, 

hymself aloft doth reare. 
And gliding forth with heavy 

hewe. A doleful blase doth 

beare (in Skyes). 
Now shal the houses voide 

be sene, with Plagues de- 

uoured quight : 
And slaughter yt the night 

hath made, shall daye 

brynge forth to lyght. 



1581 Edition. 



11. 1—6. 



The Night is gon : and dredfull 

day begins at length t'ap- 

peere : 
And Phoebus all bedim 'de with 

Clowdes, himselfe aloft 

doth reere. 
And glyding forth with deadly 

hue, a dolefull blase in 

Skies 
Doth beare 

dismay 

Eyes. 
Now shall the houses voyde 

bee seene, with Plague 

deuoured quight ? 
And slaughter that the night 

hath made, shall day bring 

forth to light. 



Great terror & 
to the beholders 



11. 10—13. 

For as the mountaynes houge 
and hie, the blustryng 
windes withstand, 

And craggy Rocks, the belch- 
ing fluds do dash and beate 
fro land. 

Though that the seas in quiet 
are and nought at all do 
fome : 

So kingdoms great submytted 
lye, to Fortunes doulfull 
Dome. 



11. 11—14. 

For as the Mountaynes huge 

and hie, the blustring 

windes withstand. 
And craggy Rocks, the belching 

fluds do dash, and driue 

fro land : 
Though that the Seas in quiet 

are, and calme on euery 

side : 
So kingdoms great all Windes 

andWauesof Fortune must 

abide. 



i e.g. ' remayne ' in Act I, 1. 62 for ' abyde,' ' woe ' in 1. 94 for 
'grief.* 



24 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 



1563 Edition. 
11. 28—34. 

This feare and only this my 
[read, me] dryues from 
fathers kingdoms great. 

Not lyke a wanderyng Vaca- 
bounde the wayes un- 
knowen I beate, 

But all mystrustfull of my 
selfe thy lawes (O Nature) 
for to keape 

I sought the meanes. Yet 
feare I stil and fear into 
rny mynde doth creape 

Though cause of Dread not one 
I se yet feare and dread I 
all. 

And scante in credit with my- 
self, I seke my fatal fall 

(ByDomeof doulful Destinies.) 

For what shuld I suppose the 
cause ? A Plage that is so 
generall .... 



1581 Edition. 
11. 29—41. 

This feare, and onely this me 

causde my fathers king- 
dome great 
For to forsake. I fled not 

thence when fear the 

minde doth beat. 
The restlesse thought still dreds 

the thing, it knows can 

neuer chaunce. 
Such fansies now torment my 

heart, my safety to ad- 

uaunce, 
And eke thyne euer sacred 

lawes (O Nature) for to 

keepe 
A stately Scepter I forsooke, 

yet secret feare doth 

creepe 
Within my breast : and frets 

it still with doubt and 

discontent, 
And inward pangues which 

secretly my thoughts a 

sunder rent. 
So though no cause of dred I 

see, yet feare and dred I 

all, 
And scant in credit with my 

selfe, my thoughts my 

mind appall 
That I cannot perswaded be, 

though reason tell me no, 
But that the Web is weauing 

still of my decreed wo. 
For what should I suppose the 

cause '? a Plague that is so 

generall .... 



The reason for these changes is evident. In the 
eighteen years which had elapsed since the first 
publication of Neville's translation, English poetry 
had made marvellous progress. The standard of 

25 



THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

versification had been raised, and the halting metre 
which had been tolerated 1 in 1563 would in 1581 no 
longer pass muster, even as the work of a youth of 
sixteen. It may be urged that the same reason 
ought to have produced revised versions of the work 
of Heywood and Studley, but the difference between 
their case and that of Neville must be borne in mind. 
When the Tenne Tragedies appeared, Heywood was a 
Jesuit priest, exiled from England, and Studley, who 
was no longer a Fellow of Trinity, may also have 
been absent from England. In both cases the 
translators had been forced to give up their university 
careers, and had devoted themselves to the promulga- 
tion of their religious opinions, widely different as 
these were from each other. Neither would have 
desired to spend time over the revision of what he 
would have deemed a trifling production of his less 
serious youth, even if, as seems unlikely, the editor 
of the 1581 volume consulted them in the matter. 
Neville, on the other hand, had remained a scholar 
and was now Secretary to the Archbishop of 
Canterbury. He was the author of various Latin 
works, and his brother was one of the most distin- 
guished Cambridge dignitaries. A drastic revision of 
the early translation was necessary, but even when 
this was complete Neville seems to have felt that the 
result was not altogether creditable to his mature 
scholarship, and he therefore sheltered himself 



IT. B. in his commendatory verses prefixed, to Studley 's 
Agamemnon (1566) says when enumerating the translators who can 
rival Jasper Heywood : 

"A Neuyle also one there is, in verse that gyues no place 
To Heiwood (though he be full good) in vsying of his grace." 

26 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

behind the title and dedication which ascribed the 
work to his sixteenth year. 1 

In both its original and its revised form the 
translation is decidedly free. In his dedicatory epistle 
to Dr. Wotton, Neville excuses this freedom on the 
plea that he had made the translation only for the 
use of a few friends, who apparently wished to act it. 

For I to none other ende rernoued him [i.e. Seneca] from his 
naturall and lofty style, to our corrupt and base, or as some men 
(but vntruly) [1563 al men] affyrme it, most barbarous Language : but 
onely to satisfy the instant requests of a few my familiar trends, who 
thought to haue put it to the very same use, that Seneca himself e 
in his Inuention pretended : Which was by the tragicall and 
Pompous showe vpon Stage, to admonish all men of their fickle 
Estates, to declare the vnconstant head of wauering Fortune, her 
sodayne interchaunged and soone altered Face : and lyuely to 
expresse the iust reuenge, and fearefull punishmets of horrible 
Crimes, wherewith the wretched worlde in these our myserable 
dayes pyteously swarmeth. This caused me not to be precise [1563 
to precise] in following the Author, word for word : but sometymes 
by addition, somtimes by subtraction, to vse the aptest Phrases in 
geuing the Sense that I could inuent. Whereat a great numbre (I 
know) will be more offended than Reason or Wysedome woulde 
they should bee. 

It is in the choric portions that Neville has 
treated his original most freely. He has expanded 
^ the chorus IrTthe first act from ninety-two lines to a 
hundred and seventeen, whilst he has entirely 
omitted the chorus of a hundred and six lines in 
praise of Bacchus at the close of Act II. He has 
replaced the chorus of fifty-five lines in Act h i by a. 

n e w plinrnc q£ - twentv-t wjo__lin£g_ _ d e al i n g w i tli— -a 

>•> d ifferen t subject; and similarly in Act IV he has 
substituted a short original chorus of fourteen lines 



l The edition of 15S1 insists strongly on the fact, scarcely 
mentioned in that of 1563, that the translation was made in 1560. In 
the list of plays and translators at the beginning of the Tenne 
Tragedies, the only play of which the date is mentioned is Neville's 
(Edipus, to which ' 1560 ' is added. 

27 



t? 



vvv 



6< 



f 



1 

THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS f ' 

for the Senecan one of thirty lines. The chorus 
in Act V is substantially the same as Seneca's, 
though Neville, who has a liking for moral maxims, 
adds four lines quite in the Senecan manner : 

And thou that subiect art to death. Regard thy latter day. 
Thinke no man blest before his ende. Aduise thee well and stay. 
Be sure his lyfe, and death, and all, be quight exempt from mysery . 
Ere thou do once presume to say : this man is blest and happy. 

(Tenne Tragedies. 92b, 30-33.) 

Iii the dramatic portions Neville follows his 
original much more closely, but he has a tendency to 
expand it by adding unnecessary reflections. Thus 
he enlarges the last speech of CEdipus from twenty 
lines to fifty-two by making such additions as the 
following : 

O OZdipus accursed wretch, lament thine own Calamity, 
Lament thy state, thy griefe lament, thou Caitife borne to misery. 
Where wilt thou now become (alas '?) thy Face where wilt thou 

hyde : 
O myserable Slaue, canst thou such shamefull tormentes byde ? 

(Tenne Tragedies. 94a, 7-10.) 

After the messenger's description, a little earlier 
in the same act, of the despair of CEdipus and his 
plucking out of his own eyes, Neville puts these 
moral lines into the messenger's mouth : 

Beware betimes, by him beware, I speake vnto you all. 
Learne Justice, truth, and feare of God by his vnhappy fall. 

{Tenne Tragedies. 92b, 11, 12.) 

A full account of Neville's divergences from the 
Latin in the revised edition of 1581 will be found in 
Jockers Die englischen Seneca-TJebersetzer,\)\).-i-i — 62. 

It will be seen from the extracts already given 
that Neville has all the Elizabethan readiness to 
point a moral, accentuated by his extreme youth 
when he first undertook the translation of the 

28 



OP SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

CEdipus. The 'Preface to the Reader' which 
appeared in the edition of 1563, and was reprinted 
verbatim in that of 1581, shows that he approached 
his task with the moral severity and censoriousness 
of sixteen years' experience of life. Moral in their 
aims as are the other translators of Seneca, they 
cannot equal Neville, who sees in the unfortunate 
CEdipus only " a dredfull Example of Gods horrible 
vengeance for sinne ", and a suitable warning for 
" our present Age, wherein Vice hath chiefest place, 
& Vertue put to flight, lies as an abiect, languishing 
in great extremity." 



29 



IV. 

STUDLEY'S AGAMEMNON, MEDEA, HER- 
CULES CETJEUS, AND HIPPOLYTUS. 

John Studley's career presents in some respects a 
curious parallel to that of Jasper Heywood. Both 
translators were University men, fellows of colleges, 
whose versions of Seneca were their first essays in 
literature. Though their religious opinions were 
widely different — Hey wood being a Roman Catholic 
and Studley a Puritan — they both lost their fellow- 
ships on account of those opinions, and in after life 
both abandoned classical scholarship for theological 
controversy. 

John Studley was one of the original scholars of 
Westminster School, 1 and the first to be elected to 
Cambridge. In the Cambridge University Register 
it is stated that he matriculated as a pensioner at 
Trinity College, 12 May, 1563, and proceeded B.A. 
156f, and M.A. 1570. According to the books of 
Trinity College, he became a minor fellow, 8 Sept., 
1567, and a major fellow, 7 April, 1570. 

At this time the Master of Trinity was the 
famous Dr. Whitgift, afterwards Archbishop of 
Canterbury, a High Churchman and strict dis- 
ciplinarian, who was chiefly responsible for certain 
new statutes of the University which were aimed 

i Alumni Westmonast., p. 45. See also Studley's Agamemnon 
(1566), dedicatory epistle to Sir W. Cecil. 

30 



ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS FROM SENECA. 

against the Puritans. Trinity College also contained 
the leader of the Puritan faction, Thomas Cart- 
Avright, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, and 
party feeling must have been extremely bitter within 
the college. 

Strype's Life of Whitgift, which gives us a lively 
picture of the internal dissensions of the University 
at this time, tells us that there was " a great faction 
in Trinity College of such as were disaffected to the 
j>resent ecclesiastical settlement, which created the 
Master no small trouble and disquiet." It appears 
that in 1572 Whitgift thought of resigning his post 
on account of these dissensions. In Strype's words, 
" as he [Whitgift] was an impartial executor of the 
statutes of the college; so he had hereby raised the 
stomachs of some of the Fellows against him, who 
contended unkindly with him ; they had treated him 
with so much slander, and such reviling terms, as 
wholly discouraged him to tarry any longer among 
them."i 

It is clear that Studley belonged to this section 
among the Fellows. His name appears in a list of 
one hundred and sixty-four signatures appended to 
a declaration issued in 1562 in connection with the 
disturbances directed against the new statutes. 2 On 
1 February, 157J, Studley and Booth, another 
fellow of Trinity, became sureties in the sum of £10, 
for John Browning, 3 also a fellow of the same 

1 Strype, Life of Whitgift, p. 51. 

2 Hey wood and Wright, Cambridge University Transactions, 
Vol. I, p. 61. 

3 Baker MS., iii, p. 392 (Harl. 7030). "Febr: 1 Johes 
Brownyng M: A: Socius Col: Trin: — et Hugo Boothe et Jo: Studley 
M" A: et socii ejusdem Coll: veneruut coram Tho: Bynge vicecan: 
et recognoverunt se debere Dnae Reginae viz Jo: Br: centuru luarcae 
— et praed: Hugo et Jo: 40'it> solvend: — sub conditione sequenti ..." 
(Then follow the conditions which Browning was to observe.) 

31 



THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

college, who had been committed to the Tolbooth for 
" uttering in St. Mary's certain doctrines tending to 
the heresy of Novatus," and for disobeying the 
consequent command of Whitgift and the heads of 
houses to abstain from preaching " till his further 
purgation." 

By 1573 Whitgift had been persuaded to remain 
at Trinity, and was determined to exercise strict 
discipline over the refractory Fellows. Those who 
would not submit were obliged to leave their 
posts. It appears from the college books that 
Studley ceased to be a Fellow at the end of 1573, for 
according to the Bursar's book for the year Michael- 
mas 1573-1574, he received his stipendium only for 
the quarter from Michaelmas to Christmas, 1573. 
No reason is there given for his withdrawal, but 
among the "extraordinary expenses" for the same 
year there is an item "to Mr. Studley at his 
departure v lb ," which seems to indicate that some 
compensation was made him for the determination 
of his Fellowship. 1 

Little is known of Studley's after life.- In 1574 he 
produced a translation of Bale's " Acta Pontificum 
Romanorum," under the title of " The Pageant of 
Popes, Contayninge the lyues of all the Bishops of 



1 For this information I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. 
Aldis Wright, Vice-Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. 

2 Richard Robinson, in his Rewardc of Wickednesse (1574), 
mentions Studley in such a way as to imply that the latter belonged 
to the Inns of Court. After seeing Helen of Troy, Medea, Pope 
Alexander the Sixth, and others in hell, and " Skelton and Lydgat, 
Wager, Hey wood, and Bamabe Googe " in the garden of the Muses 
on Helicon, Robinson is commanded by the Muses to write what 
Morpheus has shown him in a book. He excuses himself by saying : 

Your Honours haue in Th'innes of Court, a sort of Gentlemen, 
That fine would fit your whole intentes, with stately stile to Pen. 
Let Studley, Hake, or Fulwood take, that William hath to name, 
This piece of worke in hande, that bee more fitter for the same. 

32 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

Rome, from the begiiminge of them to the yeare of 
Grace 1555 .... Shewing manye straunge, 
notorious, outragious, and tragicall partes played by 
them the like whereof hath not els bin hearde : both 
pleasant and profitable for this age. Written in 
Latin by Maister Bale, and now Englished with 
sondrye additions by I. S." 

Chetwood states that Stndley was "killed in 
Flan ders at the Siege o f Bre da^haying a_c_ommand 
un der JPri nce Maurice, in 1587." l Not much reliance 
can be placed on this statement. The siege of Breda 
took place in 1590, and it is clear that Chetwood's 
information with regard to Studle} T was not very 
accurate, for the latter is described as having boon 
educated at Oxford, and only two of his translations 
are mentioned. 

Studley's translations of Seneca's Agamemnon 
and Medea both appeared in 1566, though it is clear 
that Agamemnon must have preceded Medea by 
some months. The introductory verses and dedica- 
tion prefixed to Agamemnon show that this was, as 
Studley terms it, "The fyrst frutes" of his "good 
will and trauaile." Thomas Nuce, Thomas Delapeend, 
W. R., H. C, and the other writers who contribute 
prefatory verses to the translation, all implore the 
reader's indulgence on account of Studley's youth 
and inexperience. Apparently Agamemnon was 
favourably received, for the introductory matter 
prefixed to Medea is much shorter, and in his 
" Preface to the Reader " Studley says " If I had not 
gentle Reader a better truste in thy gentlenesse, 
then affyaunce in myne own weakenesse, I had 



i The British Theatre. Containing the Lives of the English 
Dramatic Poets (1750), p. 7. 

33 



THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

not assayed thys second attempte, to bewraye my 
rudenesse and ignoraunce unto thy skilfull iudge- 
mente." Both Agamemnoyi and Medea were entered 
to Thomas Colwell the printer in the Stationers' 
Register for the year July 1565— July 1566, but the 
mention of Medea occurs seventy entries after that 
of Agamemnon. 

The title of Agamemnon runs thus : — 

The Eyght Tragedie of Seneca. Entituled Agamemnon. 
Translated out of Latin in to English, by Iohn Studley, Student 
in Trinitie Colledge in Cambridge. Imprinted at London in 
Fletestreat, beneath the Conduit, at the signe of S. Iohn 
Euangelyst, by Thomas Colwell. Anno Domini, M. D. LXVI. 

The volume is a small octavo with the collation 
<T, A 4 , B— G 8 . The first twenty-four pages are 
occupied by commendatory verses in Latin and 
English, by Thomas Newce (or Nuce), W. R., H. C, 
Thomas Delapeend, W. Parkar, and T. B. These are 
followed by a dedication to Sir William Cecil, and a 
preface to the reader. The text occupies ninety-six 
pages, and is followed by a list of errata. 

In the edition of 1581 Agamemnon occupies the 
eighth place among the translations. All the intro- 
ductory matter is omitted, and a short Argument in 
prose takes its place. The text is evidently reprinted 
from that of the 1566 edition. A few misprints have 
been corrected, but others have been introduced, and 
there is no change of any inrportance. 

Medea appeared as a small octavo volume, similar 
in size to Agamemnon. The title-page runs thus : — 

The seuenth Tragedie of Seneca, Entituled Medea: Translated 
out of Latin into English, by Iohn Studley, Student in Trinitie 
Colledge in Cambridge. Imprinted at London in Fleetestreate, 
beneth the Conduit, at the Signe of Sainct Iohn Euangelist, by 
Thomas Colwell. Anno Domini M. D. LXVI. 

34 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

The volume has the collation [A 4 ] B— G\ The 
first eight pages are occupied by the title, the dedica- 
tion to the Earl of Bedford, the preface to the reader,, 
a poem by W. F. " in the Translatours behalfe," the 
argument (in verse), and the list of dramatis personcc. 
The text occupies ninety-five pages, and the last page 
is occupied by a wood-cut. 

In the Tenne Tragedies of 1581 Medea has the 
seventh place. The text is the same as that of 
the 1566 edition, save for unimportant variants in 
spelling and punctuation, with the solitary exception 
of Act II, 1. 43, which has "it redresse " for "remedye 
it " of the earlier edition. 

Studley also translated Seneca's Hippohjtus and 
Hercules CEta>us, and his versions of these plays 
occupy the fourth and tenth places respectively in 
the Tenne Tragedies of 1581. No separate edition of 
either translation is extant, but it seems probable 
that such existed, as in the case of Agamemnon and 
Medea ; and there are entries in the Stationers' 
Register which lend colour to such a supposition. 
The second entry for the year July 1566 — July 1567 
runs thus — 

" Recevycl of henry Denham for his lycence for the pryntinge 
of a boke intituled the IXth and Xth tragide of Lucious Anneus 
[Seneca] oute of the laten into englisshe by T W fellowe of 
Pembrek Hall in Chambryge." 

We know that "the IX th tragide," i.e. Octavia, was 
translated by T. N., and was published by Henry 
Denham in quarto. Copies of this quarto exist in the 
British Museum and the Bodleian Library, but they 
are undated. This version was reprinted in the 1581 
collected edition of the Tenne Tragedies, where it was 
ascribed to Thomas Nuce, at one time Fellow of 

35 



THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. No other Elizabethan 
translation of the Oct a via is extant. 

It seems probable that T. W. in the Stationers' 
Register is a mistake for T. N., and that this entry 
refers to a contemplated issue of Octavia, and of 
Hercules Q^tceus — the latter being generally known 
as the tenth tragedy of Seneca. The title of Here. 
CEt. in the 1581 edition states that it was "translated 
out of Latin into Englishe by I. S."; and the list at 
the beginning of the volume ascribes it, together 
with Hippolytus, Medea, and Agamem)io)i, to John 
Studley. We know from Nuce's commendatory 
verses prefixed to Studley 's Again, that the two men 
were on friendly terms, and the translations may 
both have been entered as his by mistake. In 1570 
"the iij parte of Hercules Oote " was entered in the 
Stationers' Register to Thomas Colwell, who had 
printed Agam. and Medea for Studley. Does this 
imply that Colwell had in some way interfered with 
the printing of Here. CEt. by Denham, and is the 
mention of the "third part" an indication that this 
was the third of Seneca's tragedies which Colwell 
published? 1 

No separate edition of HippoJytus is extant. 
There is an entry in the Stationers' Register, July 
1566-7, considerably later in the year than the entry 
of the " IX th and X th Tragedie," which runs : " Recevyd 
of henry Denham for his lycense for ye pyrntinge of 
the iiij th parte Seneca Workes." Hippolytus is de- 
scribed in the 1581 quarto as " The fourth and most 
ruthful tragedy of L. Annseus Seneca," and it seems 
probable that this entry refers to an early edition of 
the translation, especially as for Aug. 31, 1579 we find 

l For this suggestion I am indebted to Dr. W. W. Greg. 
36 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

the following entry : " Ric. Jones. John Charlwood. 
Allowed unto them by the consent of henry 
Denham these copies folowing which they bought of 
him. The Arbor of Amytye. Turberville's songes 
and sonnettes. The fourthe Tragedie of Seneca." 

If these surmises are correct as to the identity of 
Here. CEt. and Hipp, with the works entered in the 
Stationers' Register, Studley's four translations 
must have been published within a short time of 
each other. This inference is strengthened by their 
similarities in style and diction, Avhilst it is inter- 
esting to observe the development in Studley's use 
of the fourteener. In the later plays there is an 
increasing number of lines in which the fourth foot 
ends in the middle of a word, so that it is impossible 
for the caesura to retain its normal place, e.g. 

Bryng in your scratting pawes a bur- i 
uyng brande of deadly fyre. 

{Medea (1566), Blv.) 

Agamemnon has 7 such lines out of a total of 1148 
fourteeners, Medea 10 out of 1257, Hercules (Etcrus 
36 out of 1688, and Hippohjtus 37 out of 1271. 

Studley's poetical style differs widely from that 
of Heywood. The diction of his four translations is 
extremely interesting ; there is a homely and popular 
character about it which is quite foreign to Hey- 
wood's, though we find it again in some measure in 
Newton's Thebais. His dramatic powers and sense 
of poetic fitness do not seem to have been of a high 
order. He often falls into bathos exactly in the 



i So printed in the 1566 edition, which always divides the four- 
teener into two lines of print, generally at the end of the fourth 
foot. When that foot ends in the middle of a word, in some cases 
as here the word is divided, in others the division takes place after 
the word. 

37 



THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

passages where he wishes to be impressive ; in fact, 
his translations offer more examples of bathos than 
any of the others included in the Tenne Tragedies. 

It is difficult to make a selection where the choice 
is so wide, but the following lines may be quoted 
from Cassandra's vision of the murder of Agamem- 
non (T. T., 156a, 15—26. Ag., F 7 V -) : 

The King in gorgyous royall robes on chayre of State cloth sit, 
And pranckt with pryde of Pryams pomp of whom he conquerd it. 
Put of this hostile weede, to him (the Queene, his Wyfe gan say,) 
And of thy louing Lady wrought weare rather thys aray. 
This garment knit. It makes mee loth, that shiuering heere I 

stande. 
O shall a King be murthered, by a banisht wretches hande ? 
Out, shall Th' adulterer destroy the husbande of the Wyfe? 
The dreadfull destinies approcht, the foode that last in lyfe 
He tasted of before his death, theyr maysters bloud shall see, 
The gubs of bloude downe dropping on the wynde shall powrcd 

bee. 
By traytrous tricke of trapping weede his death is brought 

about, 
Which being put upon his heade his handes coulde not get out. 

After an interview with Jason, Medea is made to say: 

What is he slily slypt and gon? falles out the matter so? • 

Iason dost thou sneake away, not hauing minde of mee, 
Nor of those former great good turnes that I haue done for thee ? 

T. T., 131a, 24—26. Medea, E3v. 

Hercules when recalling his former prowess exclaims : 

1 that returnde from dennes of death, and Stigian stream e defycd 
And ferryed ouer Lethes lake, and dragd up, chaind, and tyde 
The tryple headded mastiffe hownd, when Tytans teeme did start 
So at the ougly sight that he fel almost from his cart. 

Here. (EL, T. T., 206a, 7—10. 

It seems unkind to dwell on Studley's poetical fail- 
ings. He is certainly no great poet, but occasionally 
he has some fine lines. In the last scene of the 
Hippolytus the Chorus says {Hipp., T. T., 74 b, 27): 

O Theseus to thy plaint eternall tyme is graunted thee, 

38 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

and there is pathos in Theseus' cry over the dead 
body of his son : 

Lo I enioy my fathers gift, O solitarinesse. 

Such lines however are rare, and the chief attrac- 
tions of Studley's verse seem to he its quaintness 
and its exuberance. Both these qualities have been 
exemplified in the quotations already given, but one 
quotation more may be adduced, from the description 
of Medea practising her magic arts : 

She mumbling coniures up by names of ills the rable rout, 
In hugger mugger cowched long, kept close, vnserched out : 
All pestlent plagues she calles upon, what euer Libie lande, 
In frothy boyling stream doth worke, or muddy belching sande 
What tearing torrents Taurus breedes, with snowes unthawed stii 
Where winter flawes, and hory frost knit hard the craggy hill, 
She layes her crossing hands upon each monstrous coniurde thing, 
And ouer it her magicke verse with charming doth she sing : 
A mowsie, rowsie, rusty route with cancred Scales Iclad 
From musty, fusty, dusty dens where lurked long they had 
Doe craull. . . . 

T. T., 133a, 9—19, Medea, E 7v , 8. 

With regard to Studley's treatment of his original, 
it may be noted that in no play has he made such 
extensive alterations as were effected by Heywood in 
the Troas, N*4iilst on the other hand he nowhere 
follows the Latin as closely as Heywood does in the 
Hercules Furen&ZS His chief additions of original 

/matter are in Medea (T. T., 121a, 1— 122a, 9), wheL / 
he substitutes a Chorus of his own for the SenecaA \~ 

\Chorus; in Agamemnon (T.T., 159b, 17— 160b, 20)\ 
where he adds a speech by Eurybates in which the 
death of Cassandra, the flight of Orestes, and the 
imprisonment of Electra are narrated ; and in 
Hippolytus (T. T., 73b, 15 — 31), where he introduces a 
curious passage in which Phaedra implores the spirit 
of Hippolytus to take her living body in exchange for 
his own mutilated corpse. 

39 



ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS FROM SENECA. 

In general, Studley follows the meaning of the 

Latin fairly closely, but docs not try to reproduce 

the Latin order as Heywood does, and he frequently 

expands, and explains wherever he considers it 

necessary, e.g., where Seneca makes Medea say of 

Jason : 

merita contempsit mea 
qui scelere flammas viderat vinci et mare'? 

Studley has {T. T., 122a, 16—23, Medea, b 5-, 6) : 

hath he such a stony heart, that doth no more esteeme, 
The great good turnes, and benefits that I imployde on him ? 
Who knowes that I have lewdly used enchauntments for his sake, 
The rigour rough, and stormy rage, of swelling Seas to slake. 
The grunting firy foming Bulles, whose smoking guts were stuft, 
With smoltring fumes, that from theyr Iawes, and nosthrils out 

they puft. 

1 stopt their gnashing mounching mouths, I quencht their burning 

breath, 
And vapors hot of stewing paunch, that els had wrought his death. 

In one or two cases it seems evident that Studley 
has mistranslated the Latin through haste or care- 
lessness, e.g., in T. T., 149a, 3, 4, Ag., d4, he translates 
Seneca's — 

tu pande vivat coniugis frater mei 
et pande teneat quas soror sedes mea 

Declare if that my brothers wyfe enioy the vytall ayre 
And tel me to what kind of Coast my sister doth repayre. 

In Here. (Et., T. T., 202a, 13— 

Nocens videri qui petit mortem cupit 

is represented by — 

He doth condemne himselfe to dye that needes will guylty seeme. 



40 



V. 

NUCE'S OCT AVI A. 

Thomas Nuce, or Newce, as his name is sometimes 
spelt, was educated at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. 
He graduated B.A. in 1561, M.A. in 1565, B.D. in 1572.* 
The Diet, of Nat. Biog. states that in 1562 he was a 
Fellow of Pembroke, and that some time after 1563 
he became* rector of Cley, Norfolk. In course of time 
he was appointed to several other livings, all of them 
in Norfolk and Suffolk, and from February 158f till 
his death he was a Prebend of Ely Cathedral. He 
died in 1617, and was buried in Gazeley Church. 

Nuce contributed fourteen Latin hexameters and 
a hundred and seventy-two lines of English verse in 
praise of Studley's version of the Agamemnon (1566). 
He himself published a translation of the Octavia, of 
which the title runs thus : 

The ninth Tragedie of Lucius Anneus Seneca, called Octauia, 
Translated out of Latine into English, by T. N. Student in Cam- 
bridge. Imprinted at London, by Henry Denham. 

The volume is a small quarto, with the collation 
A 4 (a 1 wanting), B — G 4 , one leaf unsigned ('? A 1). The 
translation is preceded by a dedicatory epistle "To the 
Right Honorable, the Lorde Robert Dudley, Earle of 
Lecester," which begins "After that I had waded, right 
honorable, in the translating of this Tragedy called 
Octauia, written first in Latine by that notable and 
sententious Poet Seneca" and describes the transla- 
tion as a "smal combrous trifle" and as the "rude and 



i For this information I am indebted to J. N. Keynes, D.Sc, 
Registrary of the University of Cambridge. 

41 



THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

vnsauorie first fruits of my yong study/' This is 
followed by a short and modest preface " To the 
Reader," and by a rhymed "argument" of the play; 
and a list of dramatis persona?. The translation 
occupies 49 pages, and is followed by a list of errata. 
The colophon, like the title-page, gives no indication 
as to date. 1 

The only evidence which we possess with regard 
to the date of this edition is an entry in the 
Stationers' Register for the year July 1566 — July 
1567, which has already heen mentioned in the 
chapter on Studley's translations. It runs thus : 

Recevyd of henry Denham for his lycence for the pryntinge of 
a boke intituled the IXth and Xth tragide of Lucious Anneus [Seneca] 
onte of the laten into englisshe by T W fellowe of Pembrek Hall 
in Chambryge. 

The Octavia was always known as the ninth 
tragedy of Seneca, and T Wis probably a misprint 
for T. N., the initials which stand on the title-page 
of the Octavia, and which are explained in the 1581 
edition as representing T. Nuce. An explanation of 
the " X th tragide " mentioned in the entry has 
already been suggested. Hence this translation may 
be assigned with some probability to 1566-7. I have 
been unable to find any foundation for the con- 
jectural date 1561 assigned to it in the article on 
Nuce in the Diet, of Nat. Biog.; and as in the same 
article the date of Studley's Agamemnon (1566) is 
wrongly given as 1561, it seems probable that in 
Nuce's case also 1561 is merely a slip for 1566, the 
year assigned to the Octavia by Warton, who is one 
of the authorities mentioned at the close of the 
article. 

i The copy here described is that in the British Museum, 
C. 34, e. 48. 

42 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

The Octavia occupied the ninth place in the 
collected edition of 1581. The text is the same as 
that of the earlier edition. The Argument is 
retained, but the dedicatory epistle and the preface 
to the reader are omitted. It is a curious fact that 
the black-letter type used in the Octavia is larger 
and clearer than that of the other plays in the 
volume. 

The Octavia is an interesting play, both for its 
metre and language. Unlike the rest of the Tenne 
Tragedies, it doe s^ not employ the fourteener at_all._ 
Nuce apparently perceived that theTourteener was by 
no means an ideal metre for tragedy, and he had the 
courage to discard it, and to use in its place the 
fi ve-foot or decasyllabic line rhyming in couplets, 
occasionall^iiTtrlpl ets, and the o ctosyllable rhyming 
altejaiafely- In Nuce's hands, as in those 6T~6ther 
Elizabethans, the decasyllabic couplet produces a 
totally different effect from the ' heroic couplet ' of 
Dryden and Pope, though it is identically the same 
in structure, except that it has no regular pause at 
the close of the couplet. A passage from T. T., 162 b, 
5 — 17, Oct., Bl v , 2 will illustrate Nuce's use of this 
metre : 

Lo see of late the great and mighty stocke, 
By lurking Fortunes sodayne forced knocke, 
Of Claudius quite subuert and cleane extinct : 
Tofore, who held the world in his precinct ; 
The Brittayne Ocean coast that long was free, 
He raid at wil, and made it to agree, 
Their Romaine Gallies great for to embrace. 
Lo, he that Tanais people first did chase, 
And Seas unknowen to any Romayne wight 
With lusty sheering shippes did overdight, 
And safe amid the savage freakes did fight, 
And ruffling surging seas hath nothing dread, 
By cruel spouses gilt doth lye all dead. 

43 



THE ELIZABETHAN TEANSLATIONS 

The following passage illustrates Nuce's use of 
the octosyllable (T. T., 171a, 1—8, Oct. Dl*) : 

The flasshing fiawes do flappe her face, 
And on her speaking mouth do beate, 
Anone shee shakes a certayne space, 
Depressed downe with surges great : 
Anone shee fleetes on weltring brim, 
And pattes them of with tender handes 
Through faynting feare then taught to swim 
Approaching death, and fates withstandes. 

Nuce's language, as will he seen from these 
extracts, differs somewhat both from Heywood's 
and from Studley's. It has fe wer Latinism s than 
Heywood's, and is slightly l ess colloqu ial and more 
archaic than Studley's. Nuce has a partiality for 
archaic words like ' freake,' and 'make' (meaning 
' spouse '), which the other translators neglect, and 
he employs very largely the prefix y- before the past 
participle and sometimes before other parts of the 
verb. 

Nuce follows the Latin fairly closely, though he 
makes no attempt to reproduce the Latin order, as 
Heywood does in the Hercules Furens. He has no 
additions of original matter of any length, and he 
does not abridge or alter the choruses, as Neville 
does. The opening lines of the play may be taken as 
an example of his method of translation : 

Now that Aurore with glitteryng streames, 
The glading starres from skye doth chase, 
Syr Phoebus pert, with spouting beames, 
From dewy neast doth mount apace : 
And with his cheerefull lookes doth yeeld, 
Unto the world a gladsome day. 

T. T., 161b, 1—6, Oct., Bl. 

44 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

The Latin is : 

lam vaga caelo sidera fulgens 
Aurora fugat, 

surgit Titan radiante coma 
mundoque diem reddit clarum. 

Occasionally, however, Nuce deals with his 
original much more freely, e.g., T. T., 174a, 21, 22, 
Oct., D 4v : 

Ner. If that I were a meacocke or a slouch 

Each stubborne, clubbish claw would make mee couch. 
Sen. And whom they hate, with force they overquell, 

which represents the Latin : 

Ner. Calcat iacentem vulgus. Sen. Iuvisum opprimit. 



45 



VI. 

NEWTON'S THEBAIS, AND THE TENNE 
TRAGEDIES. 

Thomas Newton, the editor of the 1581 edition 
of the Tenne Tragedies, and the translator of the 
Thebais, was born about 1542, and went to Trinity 
College, Oxford, which he left for a time to study at 
Queens' College, Cambridge, l though he afterwards 
returned to his old college at Oxford. About 1583 he 
became rector of Little Ilford, Essex. He wrote 
books on historical, medical, and theological subjects, 
and made several translations from Latin. He trans- 
lated the Thebais in order to make the 1581 volume 
complete. It is somewhat difficult to judge of his 
poetical powers from this play, since he undertook 
it from necessity and not from choice. It is no 
wonder that the other translators of Seneca had let 
it alone, for it is not a single complete play, but 
consists, apparently, of two fragments of plays on 
the CEdipus legend — the first fragment being an 
intolerably wearisome dialogue between CEdipus and 
Antigone, in which CEdipus expresses his determin- 
ation to die and Antigone dissuades him, whilst the 
second deals with the strife between the two sons of 
CEdipus, and Jocasta's efforts to reconcile them. 

i There is no entry in the University records to show that 
Newton took any degree at Cambridge. According to Anthony a 
Wood, he became so much renowned, whilst at Cambridge, for his 
Latin poetry, that " he was numbered by scholars of his time among 
the most noted poets in that language." 

46 



ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS FROM SENECA. 

The dialogue between (Eclipus and Antigone occupies 
in Seneca about three hundred and twenty lines, 
which Newton expands into five hundred, all in the 
fourteener measure. The weary reader can only 
wish that CEdipus, who is continually announcing 
that he means to kill himself by some horrible death, 
would really put his intentions into practice instead 
of describing so minutely the tortures he wishes to 
inflict on himself, or dwelling with such insistence 
on the crimes he has unwittingly committed, which 
render him worthy of death in his own eyes. 

It was impossible for Newton to make much of 
such dramatically unpromising material without 
cutting it down mercilessly, but he does not seem 
to have felt that his original needed compression. 
On the contrary, he has a tendency to expand the 
Latin considerably, and to insert explanatory 
remarks which, though useful doubtless to the reader 
unlearned in classical story, scarcely add to the 
dramatic effect. He is not a slavish translator by 
any means ; his rendering is often very free, but 
unfortunately he never seems to have noticed that 
his original needed not expansion but compression. 
Two examples will illustrate this. Seneca makes 
CEdipus say : 

quantulum liac egi manu? 
non video noxae conscium nostrae diem, 
sed videor. 

Newton expands this to the following (T. T., 41a, 
11— 1G) : 

Alas, what litle triffling tricke hath hitherto bene wrought 
By these my hands ? what f eate of worth or maistry have I sought '? 
Indeede, they have me helpt to pull myne eyes out of my head : 
So that ne Sunne, ne Moone I see, but life in darknesse lead. 
And though that I can nothing see, yet is my guilt and cryme 
Both seene and knowne, and poyncted at, (woe worth the cursed 
tyme). 

47 



THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

Again Seneca lias (11. 40—43) : 

sequor, sequor, iani parce. sanguineum gerens 
insigne regni Laius rapti furit ; 
en ecce, inanes manibus infestis petit 
foditque vultus. nata, genitorem vides? 

which Newton expands thus (T. T., 41 b, 37— 42a, 6) : 

Father myne I come, I come, now father ceasse thy rage : 

1 know (alas) how I abus'd my Fathers hoary age : 

Who had to name King Laius : how hee doth fret and frye 
To see such lewd disparagement : and none to blame but I. 
Wherby the Crowne usurped is, and he by murther slayne 
And Bastardly incestuous broode in Kingly throne remayne. 
And loe, dost thou not playnly see, how he my panting Ghost 
With raking pawes doth hale and pull, which grieves my conscience 

most '? 
Dost thou not see how he my face bescratcheth tyrant wyse? 
Tel mee (my Daughter) hast thou seene Ghostes in such griesly 

guyse ? 

Newton's language has considerable affinity with 
that used by Studley. It has a distinctly c olloquial 
character in many places, is less dignified than 
Heywood's, and prefers native words to Latinisms. 
A striking example of Newton's employment of 
colloquialisms may be found in Polynices' speech 
in Act IV (T. T., 53a, 25—38) : 

But tell mee whyther shall I go '? Assigne mee to some place : 
Bylike, you would that brother myne should still with shamelesse 

face 
Possesse my stately Pallaces, and reuell in his ruffe, 
And I thereat to holde my peace, and not a whit to snuffe, 
But like a Countrey Morue to dwell in some poore thatched Cot : 
Allow mee poore Exyle such one : I rest content, God wot. 
You know, such Noddyes as I am, are woont to make exchaung 
Of Kingdomes, for poore thatched Cots, beelike this is not straung. 
Yea more : I, matcht now to a Wyfe of noble ligne and race 
Shall like a seely Dottipoll live there in seruile case, 
At becke and checke of queenely Wyfe, and like a kitchen drudge 
Shall at Adrastus lordly heeles, (my Wyues owne Father) trudge. 
From Princely Port to tumble downe into poore seruile state, 
Is greatest griefe that may betyde by doome of frouncing fate. 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

Newton speaks very modestly of his own transla- 
tion in the letter of dedication to Sir Thomas 
Henneage which he prefixed to the whole volume. 
After mentioning Henneage's generosity and love of 
learning, he goes on to say — 

And yet (all this notwithstandinge) well durst I not haue geuen 
the aduenture to approach your presence, vpon trust of any 
singularity, that in this Booke hath vnskilfully dropped out of 
myne owne penne, but that I hoped the perfection of others 
artiflciall workmaship, that haue trauayled herein aswell as my 
selfe should somewhat couer my nakednesse and purchase 
my pardon. And hard were the dealing, if in payment of a good 
rounde gubbe of Gold of full wayght and poyse, one poore peece 
somewhat clypped and lighter then his fellowes may not be 
foysted in among the rest, and passe in pay for currant coigne. 
Theirs I know to be deliuered with singuler dexterity : myne, 
I confesse to be an vnflidge nestling, vnhable to flye : an vnnatural 
abortion, and an vnperfect Embryon : neyther throughlye laboured 
at Aristophanes and Cleanthes candle, neither yet exactly waighed 
in Critolaus his precise ballauce. Yet this dare I saye, I haue 
deliuered myne Authors meaning with as much perspicuity, as 
so meane a Scholler, out of so meane a stoare, in so smal a time, 
and vpon so short a warning was well able to perform e. 

The Tenne Tragedies of Seneca appeared in 1581 
under Newton's editorship. The title runs thus :— 

Seneca His Tenne Tragedies, Translated into Englysh. Mercu rij 
n a trices, horce. Imprinted at London in Fleetstreete neere vnto 
Saincte Dunstans church by Thomas Marsh. 1581. 

The volume is a quarto in eights with the colla- 
tion A--4B — Ee s Ff 3 . It opens with a dedicatory 
epistle by Newton to "the Right Worshipful, Sir 
Thomas Henneage Knight, Treasurer of Her 
Maiesties Chamber." This is followed by a list of 
the Tragedies and the names of their translators. 
The text occupies 438 pages, 1 and on the last page 



i The foliation begins with the text on Bl. Nos. 64, 6o occur 
twice in the foliation, so that there appear to be only 217 ff . instead 
of 219. 

49 




ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS FROM SENECA. 

there is a motto from Ovid " Omne genus scripti 
gravitate Tragedia vincit," followed by the colophon. 
The plays are arranged in the traditional order, 
beginning with Hercules Furens, and ending with 
Hercules (Etccus. 



•50 



VII. 

METRE. 

The metre of these Elizabethan translations is an 
interesting, but hardly an inspiring, subject. The 
period in which they were written was the quarter 
of a century between Surrey and Spenser, when 
poets were busy practising the lesson of order and 
regularity in metre, and were not as yet sufficiently 
masters of their craft to try experiments in it. 

The staple metre used by the translators is the 
fourteener, and most of them handle it with 
monotonous regularity. The caesura generally 
occurs after the fourth foot, and the break in the line 
is so marked that the printers of the octavo editions 
regularly make a division there, and print the 
fourteener in two parts, the first containing four 
feet and the latter three. 1 Any passage taken at 
random from Studley's translations shows clearly 



i When, as sometimes happens, the fourth foot ends in the 
middle of a word, the printers generally divide the word, as in the 
following example from Studley's Agamemnon — 

The ruthfull ruin of our na- 
tyue countrey we beheld. 

Ag., E5, T. T., 152a, 26. 

but occasionally the division takes place after the word, as in 

Now peepes she vp agayn, with drouping 
eyes sonke in her head. 

Ag., F4, T. T., 15b, 22. 
51 



THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

the (lunger of flatness and monotony to which such 
verse was subject: 

With belowinges, & yellynges lowd, 

the shores do grunt and grone, 
The craggye clyues, & roryng rockes, 

do howle in hollow stone. 
The bublyng waters swelles vpreard 

before the wrastling winde, 
When suddenlye the lowryng lyght 

of moone is hid and blynde. 
The glymsyng starres do go to glade, 

the surgyng seas are tost 
Euen to the skyes, among the clowdes 

the lyght of heauen is lost. 

More nyghtes in one compacted are, 

wyth shadow dym and blacke, 
One shade vppon another doth ■ 

more darknes heape and packe, 
And euery sparke of lyght consumd 

the waues and skyes do mete, 
The ruflyng wynds range on the seas, 

through euerye coast they flytt. 
They heaue it vy wyth vyolence, 

ouerturnd from bottom low, 
The westerne wynde flat in the face 

of easterne wynd doth blow. 

Ag., D7, T. 7'., 150a. 4—15. 

Heyw 7 ood and Newton try to vary the extreme 
monotony of such verse by frequently making the 
main pause in the sense occur elsewhere, so that 
the logical and metrical caesuras may not coincide. 
This leads to frequent enjambement, as in the 
following passage by Newton : 

Apollo by his Oracle pronounced sentence dyre 
Upon mee being yet vnborne, that I unto my Syre 
Should beastly parricide commit : and thereupon was I 
Condemned straight by Fathers doome. My Feete were by 

and by 
Launcde through, & through with yron Pins : hangde was I 

by the Heeles 
Upon a Tree : my swelling plants the printe thereof yet feeles. 

Thrb., T. T., 45b, 39— 46a, 4. 

52 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

The versification of Neville's CEdipus is more 
nearly akin to that of the period before Wyatt and 
Surrey, when the number of syllables and even of 
feet was of little account to the poet, and accent 
could be shifted at will. The metrical chaos of the 
first edition of CEdipus has already been illustrated 
in the extracts given in Chap. Ill, but even in the 
revised form in which the play appeared in 1581 such 
lines occur as — 

What colour it wants, or what it hath, to me is like vncertayne. 
Now is it black, now blue, now red, and euen now agayne 
Quight out it is. 

T. T., 84a, 5—7. 

or— 

Be sure his lyfe, and death, and all, be quight exempt from 

mysery : 
Ere thou do once presume to say : this man is blest and happy. 

T. 1\, 92b, 32, 33. 

Iii the latter example the unaccented syllables of 
' mysery ' and ' happy ' are allowed to constitute a 
rime. 

ANALYSIS OF THE METRE OF THE TENNE TRAGEDIES. 

The metre used in the non-choric portions of the 
translations (with the exception of Nuce's Octavia) 
is the fourteen-syllable iambic line, or fourteener, 
sometimes called septenary. The only exceptions of 
any length are the following :— 

Scene between Hecuba and Chorus. 

Troas, T. T., 99a, 17— 100b, 20. 
Speech of Andromache to Astyauax. 

Troas, T. T., 111b, 12— 112a, 20. 

Soliloquy of Thyestes. Thy., T. T., 36a, 6— 36b, 26. 

Speech of Achilles. Troas, T. T., 101b, 19— 103 a, 21. 

Soliloquy of Iole. Here. (Et., T. T., 191a, 22— 192a, 10. 

Of these the first three passages are in decasyllabic 
lines riming alternately, the fourth is in rime royal, 

53 



THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

and the fifth in the mixed fourteen ers and alex- 
andrines, sometimes known as poulter's measure. 
In Nuce's Octavia the decasyllabic couplet, and 
octosyllabics riming alternately are used instead of 
the fourteener throughout the non-choric portions. 
In the Choruses the following metres are used : 

1. Fourteener. Hipp., T. T., 66a, 1— 67a, 27. 

Medea, T. T., 131b, 13— 132b, 26. 

Ag., T. T., 155a, 19— 155b, 40. 

Here. (Kt.. T. T., 211a, 15— 212a, 21. 

Throughout the Choruses of Neville's (Edipus. 

2. Alexandrine. Ag., T. T., 142a, 10— 143a, 8. 

ibid., 147a, 16— 148b, 4. 

3. Poulter's measure (alternate fourteeners and alexandrines). 

Here. (Et., T. T., 204a, 3— 205a, 20. 

4. Decasyllabic iambic lines, arranged 
(a) with alternate rime. 

Throughout the Choruses of Hey wood's Thyestes, and 
Hercules Parens (except at the close of Act III.), and 
Studley's Medea (except the passage in fourteeners 
mentioned above). 

Also Hipp. T. T., 60 a, S— 61b, 22, 69 b, 16— 70 a, 23. 

Troas, T. T., 100b, 21— 101b, 18. 

Here. (Et., T. T., 189b, 29— 191a, 21. 

(i) in six-line stanzas, riming a babe c. 

Hipp., T. T., 72b. 1— 73a, 12. 
Here. (Et., T. T., 197a, 20— 199a, 36, 217a, 23— 217b, 5. i 

(c) in seven-line stanzas, riming ababbec (rime royal). 

Troas, T. T., 106b, 1— 107b, 16, 116a, 6— 117a, 10. 

5. Octosyllabic iambic lines, riming alternately. 

Here. Fur., T. T., 14a, 1—20. 

Troas, T. T., 113b, 11—26. 2 

Oct., T. T., 169a, 1— 171b, 26, 182a, 13— 182b, 13. 

Occasionally single short lines occur at the end of 



i These lines are preceded by a ten-line stanza in which the 
rimes are arranged ababbebedd. 

2 Here it is printed in long lines of sixteen syllables. 

54 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

a scene, e.g. Hipp., T. T., 57 a, 3, 75 a, 24; Thy., T. T., 
36 b, 26. 

Neville's CEdipus, especially in the 1563 edition, 
offers numerous examples of short unriming lines in 
the middle of a scene, e.g. Act I, 1. 33. 

A few of these remain in the 1581 edition, e.g. 
T. T., 92b, 10; 94b, 3.. 



55 



VIII. 

GRAMMAR. 

The inflexions found in these translations of 
Seneca are, in the main, those common to other 
early Elizabethan works. 

Verbs. 

The verbal forms are the most interesting, and 
among them the following deserve special notice : — 
Pres. ind. 

2nd pers. sing. The usual form is the normal one 
in -est, -st, but there are several examples of the 
Northern form in -s, e.g. 

Thou beares as big and boystrous brawnes as Hercules. 

Hipp., T. T., 67 a, 1. 1. 

O double dealing life, thou clokes deceiptful thoughtes in brest. 

Hipp., T. T., 69a, 1. 

Let not thy grief e be greater then the sorrow thou sustaynes. 

Here. (Et., T. T., 195b, 5. 

Thou God that sits in Seate on high, and all the world dost 
guide. (Ed., B 4v, T. T., S2b, 6. 

Thou, that in Lacidoemon dwelles, and honorst Castors grace. 

Theb., T. T., 43 b, 35. 

3rd pers. sing. The forms in -s and -th are used 
indifferently, e.g. 

Euboea that doth rise, 
With hauty crest ringes euery where, and Caphar rocke likewyse 
Deuydeth Hellesponus sea and turnes that side to south. 

Here. (Et., T. T., 200b, 12—14. 

As chaunce allots, so falles it out : this dome abydeth free. 

Theb., T. T., 53b, 38. 

56 



ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS FROM SENECA. 

3rd pers. plar. In the majority of cases this has 
the usual uninflected form, e.g. 

The ruflyng wynds range on the seas, 

through euerye coast they flytt. 
They heaue it up with vyolence. 

Ag., D7, T. T., 150a, 13, 14. 

All the translators, however, have examples of the 
form in -s. In some cases this may be due to the 
necessities of rime, e.g. 

I do aduise you to beware, beware (I say) of kynges, 
(A kyndred in whose cancred hartes olde pryuy grudges spryngcs.) 

Ag. F2, T. T., 154 a, 7, 8. 
Hangde was I by ye Heeles 
Upon a Tree : my swelling plants the printe thereof yet feeles. 

Theb., T.T., 46a, 3, 4. 

See also Theb., T. T., 46b, 5, ib. 50a, 25, ib. 52a, 30; Here. 

(Et., T. T., 191a, 25. 

There are, however, a considerable number of 

examples for which no such reason can be given, e.g. 

What secrets daughter deare 
Unknowen, makes you to look so drouselye? 

Oct., F2v. T. T., 180b, 8, 9. 

And blustring winds and [T. T. of] daungers depe setts Death 
before theyr eyes. (Ed., D8 V - T. T., 91a, 4. 

In some cases the form in -s is used when the subject 
consists of two singular nouns united by 'and', e.g. 

Lo, both the fruites, that vice and virtue giues. 

Here. (Et., T. T., 217b, 5. 

And it and heat together makes, great straunge, and ruddy, 
bumps. ' (Ed., Blv, T. T., 81a, 27. 

There are a few examples in which ' is ' and ' was ' are 
used with plural subjects, e.g. 

Wherwyth my golden crispen lockes is wonted to be crounde. 

Medea, E4v, T. T., 131b, 6. 
Such plagues and vengeance is at hande. 

Medea, E 7, T. T., 132b, 2. 

. . . those Nimphes that wonted was to staye The shyppes. 

Medea, Dlv, T. T., 127a, 27. 

57 



THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

All the translators also offer examples of the use of 
the form in -th in the 3rd pers. pi., e.g. 

Whose songes the woodes hath drawen. 

Troas, B3, T. T., 101a, 9. 

But loe two shynyng Sunnes at once in heauen appereth bryght. 

Ag., P2, T. T., 154a, 3'. 
What sharpe assaultes of cruell Cupydes flame 
Wyth gyddie liede thus tosseth to and froe, 
Thys bedlem wyght. 

Medea, F 8, T. T., 136a, 22—24, 

Nor hansome houses pleaseth him. 

Hipp., T. T., 59a, 11, 

Those wordes through all my lims, hath stifnesse spred. 

Oct., G2v, T. T., 184b, 6. 

And clottred lumps of flesh the place doth strow. 

(Ed., E4v, T. 1\, 92b, 9. 

The misteries whereof the hearers understandeth not. 

Theb., T. T., 43b, 30. 

In some passages forms both in -s and -th are used 
with a plural subject, e.g. 

Some from the highest mowntaynes top, aloofe beholdeth all 
Some scale the buyldings hallfe yburnte, and some the ruynous 

wall ; 
Ye [T. T., yea] some there werre (O mischief e loe) that for the 

more despyght, 
The tombe of Hector sitts upon, beholders of the sight. 

Troas, Pi, T. T., 117b, 8— 11. 

or — 

The roring seas doth drown their voyce and cares [T. T., caryes] 
their cries awaye. 

Ag., E lv. T. T., 151a, 8. 

The 3rd pers. pi. in -n is also found, though rarely, 

e.g. 

Except they shed her blood before they gone. 

Troas, A 6, T. T., 97b, 5. 

By al my Countrey Gods that bene in Temples closely kept 
[1563, close I kept] . 

T. T., 82b, 35, (Ed., B5v- 

. . . these Mates ben meetst of all 
For me. 

(Ed., F2, T. T., 94b, 14. 

58 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

Pres. sitbj. 

2nd per s. sing. In one passage 'arre' is used for 
' be ' : 

Thou Gods (though tierce and valiant) perforce dost chase, and 

farre 
Dost ouermatch in length of limmes, though yet but young 

thou arre. 

Hipp., T. T., 66b, 39, 40. 

Pret. ind. 

Weak forms sometimes occur in the preterite of 

strong verbs, e.g. 

Feare shaMe of rest 
From me. 

Oct., F3v., T. T., 181b, 9, 10. 

He shyned biasing brim. 

Here. (Et., T. T., 199b, 17. 

A few archaic or dialectal forms occur, e.g. ' yode ' 
(O. E. eode) for 'went': 

Of mates with hir to sea that yode. 

Oct., Dlv, T. T., 171a, 14. 

'mought' (M. E. mohte, a variant for mihte, mahte, 
formed perhaps on the analogy of dohte, another 
pret. present verb) for ' might ' : 

And for the nones my hawty hart, and Princely courage stout 
I did abate, that humbly thee with teares entreate I moiight. 

Hipp., T. T., 64d,i 31, 32. 

Other forms now obsolete are fiang = fiung (Hipp., 
T. T., 71b, 36), stacks stuck {Med., F4v, T. T., 135a, 1), 
molt = melted (Here. (Et., T. T., 199a, 20, 21). 

Past part. 

The archaic prefix y- (O. E. 'ge-) is used several 
times by Studley, only twice by Heywood, three 
times by Neville, once by Newton, and very fre- 



i In the foliation of the Tenne Trag., Nos. 64 and 65 appear 
twice. I have denoted the recto and verso of the latter pair by 
c and d respectively. 

59 



THE ELIZABETHAN TKAN'SLATIONS 

quently by Nuce, who, as has been noticed elsewhere, 
has a love for archaic forms. 
Two examples will suffice : 

Some scale the buylclings halfe yburnte. 

Troas, Fl, T. T., 117 b, 9. 
And griesly goast to graue with Torche yborne. 

Oct., ol f T. T., 166a, 6. 

This y- is sometimes erroneously used with other 

parts of the verb, e.g. 

And sterne Erinnis in with deadly steps, 
To Claudius Court, all desert left yleps. 

Oct., B4v. T. T., 165b, 23, 24. 

Whose roring sownd, and craking noise the lesser woods 
I charmes. (Ed., 03v, T. T., 85b, 18. 

Weak past participles often omit -ed, if the stem of 
the verb ends in t or d, e.g. 

Thy fall hath lift thee higher up. 

Troas, e 3v, T. T., 114 b, 8. 

You Aares haue yeld a clattryng noyse. 

Medea, F5v. T. T., 135a, 22. 

Danie Iuno hath transport the elves. 

Here. (Et., T. T., 189a, 27. 

There are a few examples in which -ed is omitted, 
though the stem does not end in t or d. In this case 
it will generally be found that the word following 
begins with t or d, e.g. 

. . . if that among you any are 
Constrayne to shed your streaming teares. 

Here. (Et., T. T., 216a, 14, 15. 

We sometimes find -n omitted in strong past part., 
e.g. 

This wayward agony hath take his perflt wits away. 

Here. (Et., T. T., 209b, 1. 

. . . nowe Lycus loe the grownde 
With groueling face hath smit. 

Here. Fur., I 3, T. T., 14b, 1, 2. 

Which Grekes haue writ in registers. 

Ag., C4, T. T., 145b, 3. 

60 



OF SENEGA'S TRAGEDIES. 

Pret. forms in past part. 

Occasionally preterite forms are used as past 
participles, e.g. 

Or hath the tamer of the worlde and greekes renowne lykewyse, 
Forsooke the silent howse. 

Here. Fur., Gl, 2, T. T., 10 b, 2, 8. 
I haue shooke the seas. Herb. (Ft., T. T., 195b, 15. 

The braseen buclers being shoke did gyue a clattrying sound. 

Ag. E 6, 152 b, 18. 
On thee that next olde Arcades in heauen thy seate hast tooke. 

Hipp., T. T., 66 b, 20. 

Nouns. 

There are very few plural forms of interest. 

Clives ( = cliffs.) Hipp., T. T., 59b, 1. 

Eyen ( = eyes.) Theb., T. T., 42 a, 10. 

Grieves ( = griefs.) Theb., T. T., 45 a, 16. 

Howsen (= houses.) Here. Fur., I 1, 13 b, 1. 

Mischieves ( = mischiefs.) Oct., B 2v. T. T., 163 a, 26. 

Clives, grieves, and mischieves show the frequent 
change of f to v in the plural. Eyen (O. E. eagan) 
retains the O. E. suffix -n, used to form the plural of 
weak nouns. Howsen is a new formation, found in 
other sixteenth-century writers, 1 and still existing 
dialectally, on the analogy of nouns like e} T en and 
oxen. The plural form in O. E. was hus, and in 
M. E. houses. 
Adjectives. 

The double comparative is sometimes found, e.g. 
'worser' (Hipp., T. T., 58 b, 16), and the double super- 
lative, e.g. 'most extreamest ' (Ag., c2, T. T., 144b, 16). 
The form ' lenger ' ((Ed., A 2, T. T., 80b, 24) for ' longer' 
represents 0. E. lengra, showing i-umlaut. 2 

i Cp. North. Guevara's Diall of Princes, 194, a/2. The housen 
wherin they dwel. 

2 Golding's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses furnishes an 
interesting contemporary parallel to these Senecan translations in 
grammar and vocabulary. Many of the forms instanced in this 
chapter are also to be found in Golding, e.g., 'mought,' Meta- 
morphoses vi., 471; 'flang,' viii., 551 ; 'molt,' xiv., 487; 'take' as 
past participle, v., 882 ; ' lenger,' vi., 63. 

61 



IX. 

VOCABULARY. 

The vocabulary used in these translations of 
Seneca is full of interest. It varies to a certain 
extent according to the idiosyncrasies of the dif- 
ferent translators, Heywood having a partiality for 
Latinisnis, Nuce for archaisms of English origin, 
Studley and Newton for colloquial words and 
phrases. On the whole, however, there is a general 
similarity in the language of the plays which make 
up the Tenne Tragedies, and it serves as an excellent 
example of the diction used between 1559 and 1567 
by young men of literary tastes and good education. 

Certain words present considerable difficulty, and 
deserve special notice. Among these may be men- 
tioned the following : — 

' Marble ' is used repeatedly by Studley as an 
epithet to be applied to the sea or sky, e.g. Hipp. 
T. T., 56a, 25, "Whereas the marble Sea doth neete", 
Here. CEt., T. T., 192a, 18, "... when marble skies no 
filthy fog doth dim." Readers of Milton^ will recall 
in this connection the ' pur e marble air' of Paradise 
Lost, in, 564. The Neiv Eng. Diet, explains ' marble ' 
in the line just quoted from Milton, and in a line 
from Phaer ' marble-facyd seas,' as meaning ' smooth 
as marble,' and takes no notice of the use of the 
word in the Tenne Tragedies. A study of the 
passages in which the word is used by Studley and 

62 



ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS FROM SENECA. 

Heywood 1 leads, however, to a somewhat different 
conclusion. In Hipp., T. T., 71a, 19, we find "A 
boasting Bnll his marble necke advaimced hye that 
bare" as the rendering of the Latin "Caerulea taurus 
colla sublimis gerens," where ' marble ' represents 
the Latin ' caerulea.' 

In Hipp., T. T., 73a, 17, "the Monstrous hags of 
Marble Seas" represent the "monstra caerulei maris" 
of Seneca. 

Here. CEt., T. T., 193a, 8, has "The northern beare 
to Marble seas shall stoupe to quench his thyrst " as 
the rendering of "Ursa pontum sicca caerulum bibet." 
In Heywood's Here. Fur., c 3, T. T., 3a, 8, we find 
"With marble hors now drawn" representing Seneca's 
"iam caeruleis evectus equis." Apparently the 
translator associated the idea of blueness with 
marble, for in Hipp., T. T., (36b, 30, "lucebit Pario 
marmore clarius " is rendered by — 

The Marble blue in quarry pittes of Parius that doth lie, 
Beares not so brave a glimsyng glosse as pleasant seemes thy face. 

If marble be taken as the equivalent of ' caeruleus ' = 
' azure,' ' dark blue,' the force of the epithet when 
applied to sea or sky becomes clear, and Studley's 
predilection for it (he uses it frequently when there 
is no corresponding Latin adjective at all) becomes 
easy to understand. 
' Aleare.' 

O well was I, when as I lived a leare, 
Not in the barren balkes of fallow land. 

Here. (Et., T. T., 190 b, 1, 2. 

I spoylde thy father Hercules, this hand, this hand aleare 
Hath murdred him. Here. CEt., T. T., 208a, 37, 38. 



i It has been pointed out tome that Donne, who was Heywood's 
nephew, uses ' marble ' as an epithet for the air in his poem of 
The Storm. 1. 14 : " th'air's middle marble room." 

63 



THE ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS 

The only example of the word in the New Eng. 
Diet, is the latter one just quoted from Here. (Et. 
The New Eng. Diet, explains: "? Fated. ? chance- 
directed," and suggests as a derivation : " ? ad Lat. 
alearis, meaning ' belonging to dice '." This explana- 
tion does not hold good for the former passage, of 
which no notice is taken in the Neiv Eng. Diet. 
There is no corresponding Latin word in either 
passage — " felix incolui non steriles focos," " Hercu- 
lem eripuit tibi haec, haec peremit dextra." Both 
the meaning and the origin of the word are obscure. 
The Eng. Dialect Diet, gives 'aleare' as a provincial 
word used of waggons to mean ' empty, unladen.' 

' Cloyne ' = ' steal.' 

. . . for feare least thou alone 
Should cloyne his Scepter from his hand. 

Here. (Et., T. T., 216b, 15, 16. 

' Feltred ' = ' matted,' ' tangled.' 

And griesly Plutos filthie feltred denne. 

Oct., c 2v, T. T., 167 a, 33. 

'Frounced' = 'wrinkled,' 'perverse.' 

And settest out a forhead fay re where frounced mynd doth rest. 

Hipp., T. T., 69a, 2. 

Thus startyng still with frounced mind she waiters to and froe. 

Medea, D 2, T. T., 127 b, 21. 

The New Eng. Diet, gives no example of the 
figurative use of 'frounced,' except a nineteenth- 
century one from Saintsbury in a different sense, 
though it mentions that 'frounce' is used to mean 
' to look angry,' which is not quite the same sense as 
here. The transition, however, is easy, if such a 
passage is considered as Gawaine, 1. 2306, " frounces 
bothe lyppe and browe." 

64 



OF SENECA'S TRAGEDIES. 

' Overheel ' = ' cover over.' 

. . . the fielde 
That all to spatterd lay with blond, and bones quight overheelde. 

(Ed., A 5* T. T., 79 b, 21, 22. 

The New Eng. Diet, gives no example of the use of 
the word as late as the sixteenth century except by 
Scotch writers. 

' Plaunch.' 

Alas, each part of me with gnilt is plannch and overgrowne. 

Theb., T. T., 44 a, 34. 

The New Eng. Diet, gives no example of the use of 
'plaunch' as an adjective. It explains the verb 
'plaunch' as 'to cover with planks'. 

' Royle.' 

As a verb, =' roam ' (cf. Golding, Metamorph., 

in, 18). 

Let them in solemne flockes goe royle. 

Here. Fur., I 2, T. T., 14 a, 5. 

As a noun, = 'monster' (?). 

That ngly Royle heere heates him selfe. 

Hipp., T. T., 71b, 4. 

These royles, that prease to worrey mee. 

Medea, Go, T. T., 138b, 18. 

The New Eng. Diet, gives two substantives under 
' roil or royle,' the first meaning ' an inferior or 
spiritless horse, a draught-horse (of Flemish breed), 
or a clumsy or stoutly-built female,' and the second 
meaning 'agitation or stirring up (of water).' Neither 
of these suits the quotations here given, since that 
from Hippolytus refers to the sea-monster which a 
few lines before had been described as a bull, and the 
passage from Medea refers to the Furies. 

Among Heywood's Latinisms the following may 
be noticed : — 

65 



ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS FROM SENECA. 

' Frete ' or 'freate,' meaning 'sea' or 'flood' 1 (Lat. 
1 fretum '), e.g. 

And freate that twyse with ebbe away dooth slyppe. 

And twyse upflowe. Here. Fur., D 4, T. T., 6a, 13, 14. 

And hardened top of frosen freat he troade, 
And sylent sea with banks full dumme about. 

Here. Fur., P5, T. T., 9a, 12, 13. 
Thou fearefull freate of fyre . 
O Phlegethon. Thy., T. T., 39b, 14, 1-5. 

' Roge,' meaning ' funeral pile ' (Lat. ' rogus '), e.g. 

And roges for kings, that high on piles we reare. 

Troas, T. T., 100 a, 29. 

What bretherns double tents'? or what as many roages also? 
(Latin : quid totidem rogos '?) 

Here. Fur., E3, T. T., 7a, 19. 

'Impery,' meaning 'dominion ' (Lat. ' imperium '), 

. . . the auncient note and sygne of impery. 

T. T., 24 b, 20. 

and also meaning a 'command,' e.g. " at ease he doothe 
myne imperies fulfyll" (Lat. "laetusimperia excipit") 
(Here. Fur., B 5, T. T., lb, 32). 

' Stadie,' meaning ' a race-course,' ' stadium,' e.g. 
" Renowned stadies to my youth " (Lat. " celebrata 
inveni stadia") (T. T., 27b, 6). 

A fuller list of the more unusual words employed 
in the Tenne Tragedies will be found in the 
Appendix. 



i The New Eng. Diet, gives only ' strait ' as the meaning of 
'frete', but its use here seems to be wider, and to correspond to 
the use of ' fretum ' in Latin poetry to mean not merely ' strait ' 
but ' sea ' . 



66 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



I. TEXT. 

LATIN. 
Senecae Tragoediae. Venetiis in iEdibus Aldi et Andreae Soceri. 

MDXVII. 

L. Annei Senecae Gordubensis Tragoediae. Basileae apud Henri- 
chum Petri. mdl. 

L. Annei Senecae Cordubensis Tragoediae. Apud Seb. Gryphium 

Lugduni, 1554. 

L. Annaei Senecae Tragoediae. Recensuit et emendavit Fridericus 
Leo. Berolini, mdccclxviii. 

L. Annaei Senecae Tragoediae. Recensuerunt Rudolphus Peiper 
et Gustavus Richter. Lipsiae. In aedibus B. G. Teubneri. 

MCMII. 



ENGLISH. 

HEYWOOD (Jasper). The sixt tragedie of the most grave and 
prudent author Lucius Anneus Seneca, entituled Troas, with 
diners and sundrye addicions to the same. Newly set forth 
in Englishe by Iasper Heywood, Student in Oxenforde. 

London, 1559. 

Heywood (Jasper). The seconde tragedie of Seneca, entituled 
Thyestes, faithfully Englished by I. Heywood. 

London, 1560. 

HEYWOOD (Jasper). L. A. Senecae Tragedia prima quae inscribitur 
Hercules Furens ... in anglicum metrum conuersa 
. . . per I. Heywoodum. London, 1561. 

67 



BIBLIOGKAPHY. 

NEVILLE (Alexander). The Lamentable Tragedie of CEdipus the 
Sonne of Lotus Kyng of Thebes out of Seneca. By Alexander 
Neuyle. London, 1563. 

Nuce (Thomas). The ninth Tragedie of Lucius Anneus Seneca, 
called Octauia. Translated out of Latine into English, 
by T. N. Student in Cambridge. London [undated]. 

STUDLEY (John). The Eyght Tragedie of Seneca. Entituled 
Agamemnon. Translated out of Latin into English, by Iohn 
Studley, Student in Trinitie Colledge in Cambridge. 

London, 1566, 

Studley (John). The seuenth Tragedie of Seneca, Entituled Medea. 
Translated out of Latin into English, by Iohn Studley, 
Student in Trinitie Colledge in Cambridge. London, 1566. 

Newton (Thomas) [editor]. Seneca. His Tenne Tragedies, trans- 
lated into Englysh. London, 1581, 

Spenser SOCIETY. Reprint of " Seneca. His Tenne Tragedies.'' 1 

Manchester, 1887, 



II. CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL. 



Boas (F. S.) Works of Thomas Kyd. Oxford, 1901. 

Chetwcod. The British Theatre. Containing the Lives of the 
English Dramatic Poets. London, 1750. 

COOPER (C. H.) Annals of Cambridge. Cambridge, 1842-53. 

Cooper (C. H. and T. C.) Athenae Cantabrigienses. 

Cambridge, 1858. 

Cunliffe (J. W.) The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy. 

London, 1893. 

Fischer (Rudolph). Zur Kunstentwicklung der englischen Tragodie 
von ihren Anfangen bis zu Shakespeare. 

Strassburg, 1893. 

HEYWOOD (James) and Wright. Cambridge University Trans- 
actions. London, 1854. 

JOCKERS (Ernst). Die englischen Seneca — Vebersetzcr des 16. 
Jahrhunderts. Strassburg, 1909. 

68 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

Kaluza (M.) (Trans. A. C. Dunstan). Short History of English 

Versification. London, 1911. 

MILLER, (F. J.) The Tragedies of Seneca translated into English 
verse. Introduced by an Essay on the influence of the 
tragedies of Seneca upon Early English drama by John 
Matthews Manly. Chicago, 1907. 

SAINTSBURY (G.) A History of English Prosody. London, 1906. 

SCHELLING (F. E.) Elizabethan Drama. 

Boston and New York, 1908. 

Schipper (J.) Neuenglische MetriTc. Bonn, 1888. 

Smith (G. C. Moore). Plays performed in Cambridge Colleges 
before 1585. (Article in Fasciculus J. W. ClarJc dicatns.) 

Privately printed, Cambridge. 

Stephen (Leslie) and Lee (Sidney). Dictionary of National Bio- 
graphy. Articles on Heywood, Neville, Newton, Nuce, 
and Studley. London, 1885—1900. 

Strype (John). Life and Acts of 21. Parker. London, 1711. 

Life and Acts of J. Whitgift. London, 1718. 

SYMONDS (J. A.) Shakespeare'' s Predecessors in the English Drama. 

Revised edition. London, 1900. 

Ward (A. W.) History of English Dramatic Literature to the 
Death of Queen Anne. 2nd ed. London, 1899. 

Ward (A. W.) and Waller (A. R.) Cambridge History of Eng- 
lish Literature, Vols. V. and VI. Cambridge, 1910. 

WARTON (T.) History of English Poetry. London, 1774—81. 

Edited by Hazlitt (W. C.) London, 1871. 

WOOD (Anthony a). Athenae Oxonienses. Ed. P. Bliss. 

London, 1813—20. 



APPENDIX 

A list of the more unusual words to be found in 
the Tenne Tragedies of 1581. 

This list does not claim to furnish a complete glossary. The references 
are to the foliation of the 1581 edition. The derivations given are for the 
most part based on information found in the New English Dictionary as 
far as it lias appeared. 

aare (O. F. aire, L. ara), altar. 186 b. 

abandon (causative use of vb.), banish, cause to abandon. 58b. 

"Nor... Taurus mount whose hoary and frosty face 
With numming cold abandons all inhibitors the place." 
AGRISE (O. E. agrisan), terrify. 66 b, 189. 
alder (northern form of 'older'), former. 64b, 134b. 
aleare (see pp. 63, 64), etymology and meaning uncertain. According 

to N. E. D. not found elsewhere. 190b, 203. 
APPEACHE (represents an earlier *anpeche, prob. A. F. form of O. F. 

empecbier), accuse. 65 d. 
appose (var. of oppose), confront with hard questions. 43b. 
assoyle (pres. ind. and subj. of O. F. asoldre), solve. 79b. 
attach (O. F. atachier), accuse. 165 b. 

basnet (O. F. bassinet), steel head-piece. 51. 

battaylous (O. F. batailleus), warlike. 175. 

bear the bell, take the first place. 48 b, 65 c, 166 b. 

befrounced (be + frounce = wrinkle), ruffled. 214b. N. E. D. gives no 

other example of the word. 
beray (be + ray, aphetic form of array), disfigure. 181, 183. 
bestad (be + stad and O.N. staddr), beset. 10 b, 160. 
bethwact. N. E. D. gives only bethwack = pelt, thrash. 53 b. The 

meaning here seems to be ' covered.' " a soyle bethwact with 

vines." 
bleakish (bleak + ish), rather pale. 67. The only example in N. E. D. 

of this use of the word. 
blockam. Etymology and meaning uncertain. Not mentioned in N.E.D. 

" And some at least to blockam Feaste to bryng." 198. 
boalne (prob. from O. E. bolgen, past part, of bolgan), swollen. 196 b, 

2C0. 

70 



APPENDIX. 

bobltng (onomat.), babbling. 156b. 

rood (incorrect use of hood, preb. of hide, in the infinitive), abide, 147. 
bough (onomat.), bark. 155b. 
brasell (prob. Spun, brasil), hard wood, 188b. 

bray (0. F. braire), give forth. N. E. D. adds ' with a cry,' which does 
not suit 64, 1. 29. 
"Or els among the baulmy flowres out braving fauours [? sauours] 

sweete." 
Cf. 56, 11. 12, 3. 

" where Zephyrus most milde 
Out brayes his baumy breath so sweete." 
brim (O. E. breme), bright, 180, 192, 199b. 
buffe (O. F. buffe), buffalo, wild ox. 56 b. 
bugge (prob. Weslh bwg), hobgoblin. 201b, 206b. 
bugle (O. F. bugle), buffalo, wild ox. 56b. 
bum (deriv. uncertain), strike. 64b, 183 b. 
buskle (freq. of busk), prepare, shake. 1S9, 192, 212. 
bylbowblades (from Bilbao iu Spain, famous for its swords), shaiqi 
swords. 143 b. 

CHOP (prob. rar. of chap=buy), exchange. 161. 

cleaze (plur. of clea, clee, which represents the O. E. nom. clen, cleo, 

as claw represents the oblique cases, clawe, etc.), claws, 74b, 

188b, 206b. 
CLERESO.vie (O. F. cler + some), bright, 3. Not in X. E. D. 
clotter (freq. of clot), clot, 69, 92b. 
Clubbisu (club + ish), clownish. 174. 
CLYP (O. E. clyppan), embrace. 29b. 
coll (O. F. col), embrace. 29b, 51. 
con thanks (O. E. thane cunnan), offer thanks. 47b. 
CONQUEROUS (conquer + ous), victorious. 180. 

corsey' (syncopated form of coresive = corrosive) grievance. 193, 206. 
couxtermure (F. contremurer), fortify with an additional wall. 64b. 
COUXTERPAY'SE (O. F. contrepeser), counterbalance. 67 b. 
COYLE, subs, (deriv. uncertain), tumult, 43, 189b, 52b, 183b. 
Coyle, vb. (deriv. uncertain), beat. 156 b. 

ckake (var. of crack), boast, As subs. 141, 151; as vb. 166b. 
CRANKE (deriv. uncertain), vigorous. 201b. 
CRISPEN (var. of crisp, crisjied), curled. 62, 64 b, 131b, 204. This form 

of the word is not mentioned in X. E. D. 

dankesh, danky (deriv. of dank), somewhat dank. 167, 106 b. 
darraygne (O. F. deraisnier), contest, challenge. 46 b. 

71 



APPENDIX. 

DIMILAUNCE (F. demie lance), light horseman armed with short lance. 
1 52. 

i>i\<;tiikyitk (ding + thrift), spendthrift. 198. 

DISPONSED (Lat. desponsare), betrothed. 152b. X. E. D. gives only 
d espoused, for which this may be a printer's error, though it 
appears in both editions of the text, or it may be a new for- 
mation from the Latin. 

DISBUMPE (Lat. dis-rumpere), break up. 177 b. 

distatn (O. F. desteindre), defile. 42 b. 

doeee (prob. O. N. dar), mockery. 85. 

dottipoll (dote + poll), blockhead. 53. 

dowse (prob. onomat. though it may be connected with douse = strike), 
plunge. 74. N. E. D. gives no example as early as this, and 
states that the word appears c. 1600. 

drake (O. E. draca), meteor. 66. 

drosel (deriv. uncertain), slut. 168b. ~N. E. D. gives the word only 
as subs., but on f. 145b it is used as an adjective. 
'• This drosel sluggish ringleader." 

eabxefully (adv. from earneful, var. of yearnful, from yearn), anxiously, 
sorrowfully. 191 b. 

easteeling (from easier [adj.] + ling, prob. after Dutch oosterling), native 
of the east. 188b, 211. 

eftsones, immediately, repeatedly. 31, 105. 

EMi'EACH (Fr. empecher), hinder. 43b. 

engeale (in + grave), entomb. 20. 

enmious (O. F. enemieux), hostile. 15b. 

ententiue (O. F. ententif), attentive. 194. 

enteeataxce (entreat + ance), entreaty. 64c. 

FADGE (deriv. uncertain), fit. 166b. 

feeee (O. E. gefera), companion, spouse. 43 b, etc. 

felteed (O. F. feltrer), matted. 167. 

fisk (prob. frequent of O. E. fysan), move briskly. 192b. 

FITTERS (deriv. uncertain), fragments. 73b. 

flawe (prob. O. E. *flagu, corresp. to Swed. flaga), squall. 69, 167. 

flimflam (prob. onomat.), idle. 137 b. 

flingbeayne (fliDg + brain), foolish. 47. Not as adj. in X. E. D. 

flush (prob. onomat.), flutter. 60 b. 

fondling (fond = foolish + ling), fool. 194, 198. 

foeloende (use of forlorn as trans, vb., meaning 'lament'). 141b. 

fobslow (O. E. for-slawian), delay. 214. 

feeake (O. E. freca), man. 162 b, etc. 

FBEMMD (O. E. fremede), stranger. 48b. 

72 



APPENDIX. 

frete (Lat, fretum), strait, sea, flood. 6, 9, 37 b, 391). 
frounced (O. F. froncier), wrinkled, perverse. (i9. 
frump (vb.), mock. 177 b. 

lgent (Lat. fulgentem), glittering. 27b, 66. 
fussten ftjmes (f ustian = coarse cloth, fig. inflated language), display of 
anger. 153 b. 

GAINER (compar. of O. N. gegn), straighter, more direct. 57. 
garbovt.e (O. F. garbouil), tumult. 47 b, 48. 

o a rg ell, gargle, adj. (O. F. gargouille), monstrous. 60b, 123b, 138b. 
gattex tree (O. E. gate treow), dogwood. 64b. 
gird (deriv. uncertain), thrust. 71b. 

glade (prob. Scand.), setting (of sun or stars). 66, 161b, 198. 
glede (O. E. glu>d), light, fire. 68 b, 71, etc. 

GLOWM, glown (deriv. uncertain), frown, lower, 192b, 210, 217. 
^GLUMMY (glum + y), dark. 74, 188b, etc. 
GLT (deriv. uncertain), look asquint. 188 b. 
GNOFFE (cf. E. Fris. gnuffig = rough), churl. 198. 
GOAR (from gore [subs.] =• blood), cover with blood. 188b. 
gobbet (O. F. gobet), fragment, piece of flesh. 72, 75. 
greets (O. E. greotan), weep. 207 b. 
grutch (O. F. groucier), murmur at. 177 b. 
gub (O. F. gobe, goube), lump, clot, 72, 175 b, etc. 
gydon (O. F. guidon), flag. 49. 

happy, vb. (from happy, adj.), make happy. 115. 

hawsing (O. E. hals), embracing. 65 c. 

hayting (hait, a word of encouragement to horses), crying 'hait!' 167b. 

X. H. D. gives no example of its use as adj. 
hegge (var. of hag), evil spirit, 204b. 
iiellicke (O. E. hel-lic), infernal. 67b, 73. 
helly (hell + y), infernal. 5 b, 18. 
hent (O. E. hentan), seize. 43. 
hoy (prob. M. Dutch hoci), sloop. 190. 
hugger mugger (deriv. uncertain), secret. 58. 
HUGY (liuge + y), huge. 35, 64b, etc. 

imp (O. E. impa), child, scion. 64d, 209b, etc. 

impery, emperie (O. F. emperie, assimilated in the form impery to Lat, 

imperium), (1) domiinon, 2, 24b, 29 b; (2) command, behest, lb. 

This latter use is said to be rare by N. E. D. which gives no 

other example. • 

jaunce (deriv. uncertain), make prance. 199. 
jet (O. F. jeter), strut, swagger. 194 b, 198 b. 

73 



APPENDIX. 

jotting (prob. onomat.), jogging. 56b, 72. 
jumpb, adv. (from jump, vb.), exactly. 183. 

kakkaym:, adj. (var. of carrion, O. Norm. F. caroine), death-like, cor- 
rupt. 190, 211b. 
KAYSAR (Lut. Caesar), emperor. 201b. 
KEBEREYES (a var. not mentioned in N. E. D. of earerie, var. of career). 

63 b. 
kill (var. of Kiln), funeral pyre. 

"and thus the forrest wyde 
Doth make the Kill [for Hercules' burning]." 213, 1. 8. 
"When up lie stept on Oeta mount and gazed on his Kill." 

ibid. 1. 13. 
JV. E. D. gives no example of this use, though the transition to it 
from the ordinary meaning ' furnace, oven ' is easy. 
knappe (onomat.), break in pieces. 19, 212 b. 
knariue (M. E. knarre), knotty. 64b, 202b, 213. 

label (O. F. label), fillet, ribbon. 64d, 66. 

LACTTJSE (var. of lettuce, Lat. lactuea), sea-weed. 71. 

laeme (F. larme), tear. 216. Not in N. E. D. 

launch (O. Norm. F. lancher), pierce. 168. 

lauxcixg (O. F. lancier), darting forward. 149. 

leame (O. E. leoma), flash, ray. 193b, etc. 

LEEFE, subs. (O. E. leof), love, husband. 167. 

li.mkke (O. F. liemier), leash-hound, blood-hound. 56b. 

LiNNK (O. E. linnan), cease. 44, 201, 210 b. 

litii (O. E. lithe), calm, still. 70b. 

lumpe (and lower), vb. (onomat.), look unpleasant. 150. 

lfskish (vb. lusk = skulk), sluggish. 57 b. 

mai'd (aphetic form of amayed = dismayed), dismayed. 103 b. 

MANKINDE, adj. masculine, virago-like. 156b. 

marble, adj. (see pp. 62, 63). 3. 56, 58b, 61, 61, 67b, 68b, 71, 71b, 

73, 192, 193, 193b, 216, 200b. 
meacocke, meycocke (deriv. uncertain), coward. 45, 151, 174. 
mell (O. F. meller, mesler), interfere. 54b. 
mknv (O. F. mesnie), retinue. 155. 

MICHING, myche (prob. O. F. muchier), skulking. 69, 193 b. 
miser (Lat. miser), wretch [without idea of avarice]. 22, 28, etc. 
moary (var. of moory, from moor), marshy. 196b, 210. In 'hoary 

moary frost,' 133 b, it has probably no force of its own, and is 

used only for the jingle. 

74 



APPENDIX. 

home (deriv. uncertain), blockhead. 150b, 198. 
moysted (from moist), moistened. 3(5 h. 
mucky (X. E. muk), dirty. 190. 

nock, vb. (from nock, subs. = notch), provide bow or arrows with notch. 

147 b, 213. 
note (ne + wot), know not. 25. 
nowne (from own, by mistaken division of myn own, thyn own, and used 

afterwards with her, your, etc.), own. 174 b. 
NOT, noiance (aphetic foiTtis of annoy, annoyance). 206b, 72 b. 

obit rytes (L. obitus), funeral rites. 74b, 149 b. 

OBTayne (in Lat. sense of occupy, possess). 64. 

oixerdight (over + dight), cover over. 162b. 

ouerheel (O. E. ofer-helian), cover over. 79b, 84b. X. E. D. gives 

none but Scotch examples after 1200. 
OUERQUEL (over + quell), perish, be overcome. 152. N. E. D. gives 

examples only of the transitive use of the verb. 
ouerthwart (over + O. X. thvert), across. 151. 

palt (var. of pelt) , strike with repeated blows. 191b. 

paebrake, perbrake (compound of brake = vomit), vomit. 69b, 159b. 

pash (onomat.), break in pieces. 50, 191 b, 206. 

patch (possibly from fool's patched coat, or perbaps from Ital. pazzo), 

fool. 174, 177. 
payse, subs. (O. F. peis), weight. 21b, 64. 
payse, vb. (O. F. peser), weigh, balance. 17 b, 162b. 
pipling (dimin. of pipe), whistle. 70b, 134 b. 
placket (L. placet), expression of assent or sanction. 189 b. 
plump (deriv. uncertain), troop, flock. 81. 
POYNT (aphetic form of appoint), appoint. 22b, 32b. 
prig (deriv. uncertain), steal. 64. 
princocks (deriv. uncertain), coxcomb. 165 b. 
pykes, pass the (F. passer les piques), run the gauntlet. 45. 

QUAIL (deriv. uncertain), impair, destroy. 44b, 45b. 

QUARELLE (O. F. quarel), arrow. 56 b. 

quarie (var. of quarelle), arrow. 190b. 

quaynt (O. F. cointier), acquaint. 64. 

QUEACHY (queach = thicket, + y), forming dense grove or thicket. 48, 

quell (O. E. cwellan), kill. 41b, 69. 

75 



APPENDIX. 

hack (var. of rase, raze), scratch. 72. 

rack (deriv. uncertain, prob. Scand.), muss of cloud. 60b, 196. 

rahatk (var. of rate), scold. 53 b. 

kami'irk (O. F. rampar; change of vowel in second syllable unexplained), 

rampart. 4 b, 64 b. 
ramptre, ramper (O. F. remparer), fortify. 172b. 
rascal, adj. (O. F. rascaille), inferior. 56, 211b. 
rat, subs. (prob. aphetic form of array, or perhaps direct from 

O. Norm. F. *rei,.0. F. roi), array. 48b, 71b. 
rat, vb., soil. 92 b. 

reaue (apparently due to confusion of reave = rob with rive), cleave. 
rector (Lat. rector), ruler, lib. 

recule (O. F. reculer), retire, drive back. 149b, 190. 
regall, subs. (F. regal), feast. 64. 
repriue (var. of reprove), reject. 163. 

retchles, reachlesse (O. E. recceleas), careless, heedless. 70, 74b. 
rexe (deriv. uncertain), merry-making. 156. 

RIG, ryg (deriv. uncertain), (1) ransack, rifle. 92 b. (2) romp. 57 b. 
ROGE (L. rogus), funeral pyre. 7, 99, 100. The only example in N. E. D. 

dates from the latter part of the seventeenth century. 
roore (M. Du. roer), disturbance. 212 b. N. E. D. gives the word only 

in the phrase in, on, or upon a roore. 
rotle, subs, (see p. 65), ? monster. 71b, 138b. 
BOYLE, vb. (deriv. uncertain), roam. 14. 
rotst (from roister, F. rustre), swagger. 63. 
ruffe (deriv. uncertain), fury. 59. 
rttndel (var. of roundel), circle. 175, 176. 
RTrENED (confusion of riven and rived), cloven. 170, 178. No mention 

of this form in N. E. D. 

safetinesse (safety + ness) , safety. 

" the daungerous quick Sand 
Shall promisse Ships with safetinesse upon the shold to land." 65. 
Not in N. E. D. 
sangue (F. sang), blood. 

" Descended of the royall Sangue." 46. 
N. E. D. gives only " sang royal," with no example of the inversion 
of the phrase. 
sheryng (O. E. scieran), cleaving [water]. 149 b, 162 b. 
shittel (M. E. schityl), rash, headlong. 58b, 62. 
shife (M. E. schive, schife), splinter. 64 b, 21. 
shog (var. of shock), shake, jog. 167 b, 189. 

76 



appendix. "•.•.•••.:..:: •••:*•.: 

slabbt (slab = mire, + y), wet, slimy. 71, 189. 
shot (verbal subs, from smite), stroke. 160b. 
spang (O. E. gespong), ornament. 198b. 
spell (? O. N. spolr), splinter. 72. 
splay (apbetic form of display), display. 102. 
spritish (sprite + isb), ghostly. 170 b. 
spyre (L. spirare), blow. 151. 
stadie (L. stadium), race-course. 27b. 
steaming (O. E. steman), glaring. 188 b, 201. 
stilting (? O. F. estiver), hasty. 148 b. 
stoulpe (Icel. stolpi), post. 68. 

swallowe, swolue (M. E. swolwe, gulf, whirlpool. 70b, 74. 
SWINCKE (O. E. swincan). The usual meaning of 'toil' is not apparent 
in this passage : 

" In olde Assaracks goblets gylt they 
swincke and swill the wyne." 156. 

tat (deriv. uncertain), let fall. No example of this use in A r . E. D. 
" The fainting horse for sodayne paine from back his 
burden tats." 80b. 
taw (O. E. tawian), flog. 68. 
thirl (O. E. thyrlian), pierce. 56 b, 208. 
tiiirl, thril, thurl (deriv. uncertain), hurl. 56b, 48b, 192. 
thratling (var. of throttle), choking. 152. 

TJGSOME, ougsome (O.N. uggr + some), frightful. 192b. 
ungrubbed (uii + grub = dig), not dug. 173 
UNPATSED (un + payse = weigh), unbalanced. 191b. 
fnreky (un + reky = moist), unmoistened. 207 b. 
i'nwayned (un + wayn = bring), not advanced. 191b. 
L'ke (O. F. cure), operation, use. 123, 141 b. 

yer (O. F. ver, Lat. ver), spi'ing. 66. 

virago (Lat. virago), woman of great strength and courage [without de- 
preciatory force; here applied to Diana]. 56b. 

walme, wawme (O. E. wselm), wave, ripple. 145, 149, 195 b. 
Walter (freq. of wait = roll), roll, welter. 62b, 81, etc. 
wambling (lYI. E. wamleu), rumbling, heaving. 133, 190b. 
v_^wanny (wan + y), pale. 66 b, 194. / 

77 



APPENDIX. 

WArors (wave + ous), full of waves. 43 b. 
WATMENT (O. F. waimenter, guaimcnter), lament. 4Sb. 
waynde (O. N. vegna), brought. 50b, 142b. 

whist, whisht, whusht, vb. (whist, interject, onomat.), be silent, 30b, 7, 
18 b. 



78 



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