62-) English Literature
George Gascoigne
He
attended Trinity College, Cambridge, and replaced his father as an almoner at
Elizabeth I’s coronation. However, as a farmer George Gascoigne was
unsuccessful: he was imprisoned for debt and yet served in Parliament for two
years, beginning in 1557. In 1571 Gascoigne joined the army, serving under the
Prince of Orange in the Netherlands and at one point facing accusations of
treason.
He
is considered the most important poet of the early Elizabethan era, following
Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and leading to the emergence
of Philip Sidney. He was the first poet to deify Queen Elizabeth I, in effect
establishing her cult as a virgin goddess married to her kingdom and subjects.
His most noted works include A Discourse of the Adventures of Master FJ (1573),
an account of courtly intrigue and one of the earliest English prose fictions;
The Supposes, (performed in 1566, printed in 1573), an early translation of
Ariosto and the first comedy written in English prose, which was used by
Shakespeare as a source for The Taming of the Shrew; the frequently
anthologised short poem "Gascoignes wodmanship" (1573) and
"Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or ryme in
English" (1575), the first essay on English versification.
Early life
The
eldest son of Sir John Gascoigne of Cardington, Bedfordshire, Gascoigne was
educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and on leaving the university is
supposed to have joined the Middle Temple. He became a member of Gray's Inn in
1555. He has been identified without much show of evidence with a lawyer named
Gastone who was in prison in 1548 under very discreditable circumstances. There
is no doubt that his escapades were notorious, and that he was imprisoned for
debt. George Whetstone says that Sir John Gascoigne disinherited his son on
account of his follies, but by his own account he was obliged to sell his
patrimony to pay the debts contracted at court. He was MP for Bedford in
1557–1558 and 1558–1559, but when he presented himself in 1572 for election at
Midhurst he was refused on the charges of being "a defamed person and
noted for manslaughter", "a common Rymer and a deviser of slaunderous
Pasquelles", "a notorious rufilanne", and a constantly indebted
atheist.
Gascoigne
attended the University of Cambridge, studied law at Gray’s Inn in 1555, and
thereafter pursued careers as a politician, country gentleman, courtier,
soldier of fortune, and man of letters, all with moderate distinction. He was a
member of Parliament (1557–59). Because of his extravagance and debts, he
gained a reputation for disorderly living. He served with English troops in the
Low Countries, ending his military career as a repatriated prisoner of war. In
1575 he helped to arrange the celebrated entertainments provided for Queen
Elizabeth I at Kenilworth and Woodstock and in 1576 went to Holland as an agent
in the royal service. Among his friends were many leading poets, notably George
Whetstone, George Turberville, and Edmund Spenser.
His
poems, with the exception of some commendatory verses, were not published
before 1572, but they may have circulated in manuscript before that date. He
tells us that his friends at Gray's Inn importuned him to write on Latin themes
set by them, and that two of his plays were acted there. He repaired his
fortunes by marrying the wealthy widow of William Breton, thus becoming
stepfather to the poet, Nicholas Breton. In 1568 an inquiry into the
disposition of William Breton's property with a view to the protection of the
children's rights was instituted before the Lord Mayor, but the matter was
probably settled in a friendly manner, for Gascoigne continued to hold the
Breton Walthamstow estate, which he had from his wife, until his death.
George
Gascoigne wrote poetry, plays, and prose. His first play, Supposes— a
translation of I Suppositi by Ludovico Ariosto—was published in 1566. His
collection of poems and a prose novella, A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres (1573), was
deemed offensive by many. It was republished as The Posies of George Gascoigne
Esquire (1575). Gascoigne was also the author of The Steele Glas, “A Satyre
compiled by George Gascoigne Esquire,” on the senselessness of war. His The
Adventures of Master F.J. (1573), a hybrid of poetry and prose considered by
some to have been autobiographical, was published in two different versions.
Gascoigne wrote an essay on writing, “Certayne Notes of Instruction on Making
of Verse” (1575). His Spoyle of Antwerp (1576) gave an account of a visit to
Paris and Antwerp for business.
Shakespeare may have used Supposes as a source
for part of The Taming of the Shrew. Gascoigne died of an illness near
Stamford.
Plays at Gray's Inn
Gascoigne
translated two plays performed in 1566 at Gray's Inn, the most aristocratic of
the Renaissance London Inns of Court: the prose comedy Supposes based on
Ariosto's Suppositi, and Jocasta, a tragedy in blank verse which is said to
have derived from Euripides's Phoenissae, but appears more directly as a
translation from the Italian of Lodovico Dolce's Giocasta.[6]
A
Hundreth Sundry Flowres (1573) and Posies of Gascoigne (1575)
Gascoigne's
best known and controversial work was originally published in 1573 under the
title A Hundreth Sundry Flowres bound up in one small Poesie. Gathered partely
(by translation) in the fyne outlandish Gardins of Euripides, Ovid, Petrarch,
Ariosto and others; and partly by Invention out of our owne fruitefull
Orchardes in Englande, Yelding Sundrie Savours of tragical, comical and moral
discourse, bothe pleasaunt and profitable, to the well-smelling noses of
learned readers, by London printer Richarde Smith. The book purports to be an
anthology of courtly poets, gathered and edited by Gascoigne and two other
editors known only by the initials "H.W." and "G.T." The
book's content is throughout suggestive of courtly scandal, and the aura of
scandal is skilfully elaborated through the effective use of initials and
posies—Latin or English tags supposed to denote particular authors—in place of
the real names of actual or alleged authors.
Judged
to be offensive, the book was "seized by Her Majesty's High
Commissioners." Gascoigne republished the book with certain additions and
deletions two years later under the alternative title, The Posies of George
Gascoigne, Esquire. The new edition contains three new dedicatory epistles,
signed by Gascoigne, which apologise for the offence that the original edition
had caused. This effort failed, however, as the book was also ruled offensive
and likewise seized.
At
war in the Netherlands
When
Gascoigne sailed as a soldier of fortune to the Low Countries in 1572, his ship
was driven by stress of weather to Brielle, which luckily for him had just
fallen into the hands of the Dutch. He obtained a captain's commission, and
took an active part in the campaigns of the next two years including the
Middelburg siege, during which he acquired a profound dislike of the Dutch, and
a great admiration for William of Orange, who had personally intervened on his
behalf in a quarrel with his colonel, and secured him against the suspicion
caused by his clandestine visits to a lady at the Hague.
Taken
prisoner after the evacuation of Valkenburg by English troops during the Siege
of Leiden, he was sent to England in the autumn of 1574. He dedicated to Lord
Grey de Wilton the story of his adventures, The Fruites of Warres (printed in
the edition of 1575) and Gascoigne's Voyage into Hollande. In 1575 he had a
share in devising the masques, published in the next year as The Princely
Pleasures at the Courte at Kenelworth, which celebrated the queen's visit to
the Earl of Leicester. At Woodstock in 1575 he delivered a prose speech before
Elizabeth, and was present at a reading of the Pleasant Tale of Hemetes the
Hermit, a brief romance, probably written by the queen's host, Sir Henry Lee.
At the queen's annual gift exchange with members of her court the following New
Year's, Gascoigne gave her a manuscript of Hemetes which he had translated into
Latin, Italian, and French. Its frontispiece shows the Queen rewarding the
kneeling poet with an accolade and a purse; its motto, "Tam Marti, quam
Mercurio", indicates that he will serve her as a soldier, as a scholar-poet,
or as both. He also drew three emblems, with accompanying text in the three
other languages. He also translated Jacques du Fouilloux's La Venerie (1561)
into English as The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting (1575) which was printed
together with George Turberville's The Book of Falconrie or Hawking and is thus
sometimes misattributed to Turberville though in fact it was a work by
Gascoigne.
Later
writings and influences
Most
of his works were published during the last years of his life after his return
from the wars. He died in Stamford in Lincolnshire on 7 October 1577 and was
buried on 13 October in the graveyard of St Mary's Church, Stamford.
Gascoigne's
theory of metrical composition is explained in a short critical treatise,
"Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or ryme in
English, written at the request of Master Edouardo Donati," prefixed to
his Posies (1575). He acknowledged Chaucer as his master, and differed from the
earlier poets of the school of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and Thomas Wyatt
chiefly in the greater smoothness and sweetness of his verse.
Gascoigne
was a skilled literary craftsman, memorable for versatility and vividness of
expression and for his treatment of events based on his own experience. His chief
importance, however, is as a pioneer of the English Renaissance who had a
remarkable aptitude for domesticating foreign literary genres. He foreshadowed
the English sonnet sequences with groups of linked sonnets in his first
published work, A Hundreth sundrie Flowres (1573), a collection of verse and
prose. In The Posies of George Gascoigne (1575), an authorized revision of the
earlier work, which had been published anonymously, he included also “Certayne
notes of Instruction,” the first treatise on prosody in English. In The Steele
Glas (1576), one of the earliest formal satires in English, he wrote the first
original nondramatic English blank verse. In two amatory poems, the
autobiographical “Dan Bartholomew of Bathe” (published in A Hundreth sundrie Flowres)
and The Complainte of Phylomene (1576), Gascoigne developed Ovidian verse
narrative, the form used by William Shakespeare in Venus and Adonis and The
Rape of Lucrece.
“The
Adventures of Master F.J.,” published in A Hundreth sundrie Flowres, was the
first original prose narrative of the English Renaissance. Another prose work,
The Spoyle of Antwerpe (1576), is an early example of war journalism,
characterized by objective and graphic reporting.
Gascoigne’s
Jocasta (performed in 1566) constituted the first Greek tragedy to be presented
on the English stage. Translated into blank verse, with the collaboration of
Francis Kinwelmersh, from Lodovico Dolce’s Giocasta, the work derives
ultimately from Euripides’ Phoenissae. In comedy, Gascoigne’s Supposes (1566?),
a prose translation and adaptation of Ludovico Ariosto’s I Suppositi, was the
first prose comedy to be translated from Italian into English. A dramatically
effective work, it provided the subplot for Shakespeare’s The Taming of the
Shrew. A third play, The Glasse of Government (1575), is a didactic drama on
the Prodigal Son theme. It rounds out the picture of Gascoigne as a typical
literary man of the early Renaissance.
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