Produced by Jonathan Ingram and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in | | this text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of | | this document. | | | | Text printed using the Greek alphabet in the original book | | is shown as follows: [Greek: logos]. | | | | Superscript text in the original book is shown as follows: | | w^ch | +------------------------------------------------------------+
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
=SHAKESPEARE IN FRANCE.= Illustrated. Demy 8vo, cloth, 21s. Also 20 Copies on Japan paper, signed, L2 2s.
=ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE IN THE MIDDLE AGES (XIVth CENTURY).= Fourth and Revised Edition. Illustrated. Large crown 8vo, cloth, 7s. 6d.
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=A LITERARY HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE: From the Origins to the Renaissance.= Demy 8vo, cloth, 12s. 6d. nett.
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN
QUEEN ELIZABETH.]
THE
ENGLISH NOVEL
IN THE
TIME OF SHAKESPEARE
BY
J. J. JUSSERAND
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY
ELIZABETH LEE
REVISED AND ENLARGED BY THE AUTHOR
NEW IMPRESSION
LondonT. FISHER UNWINPATERNOSTER SQUAREMDCCCXCIX
_First Edition, May, 1890.__Reprinted November, 1895.__Reprinted March, 1899._
[_All rights reserved._]
_The work here presented to English readers was published in Frenchthree years ago in an abbreviated form. Worthy of attention as are theolder novelists of Great Britain, it was not to be expected that detailsabout Chettle, Munday, Ford, or Crowne, would prove very acceptablesouth of the Channel, especially when it is remembered that the historyof French fiction, not an insignificant one, from "Aucassin" to "Jehande Saintre," to "Gargantua," and to "Astree," still remains to bewritten. A compressed account of the subject, amounting to scarcely morethan a hundred pages of the present volume, was therefore deemedsufficient to satisfy such craving as there was for informationconcerning Nash, Greene, Lodge, and the more important among theirpeers. According to the publishers of the book this estimate was notfallacious, and there were no complaints of omission.
When the honour of a translation was proposed for the small volume, itappeared that a more thorough account of the distant forefathers of thenovelists of to-day would perhaps be acceptable in England; for here thequestion was of countrymen and ancestors. The work was for this reasonentirely remodelled and rewritten in order to furnish fuller particularson our authors' lives and works, and to extract from their darksomeplace of retirement such forgotten heroes as Zelauto, Sorares, Parismus,who had, some of them, once upon a time, been known to fame, and hadplayed their part in the toilsome task of bringing the modern Englishnovel to shape.
In writing of Shakespeare's contemporaries, care has been taken to enablethe reader to judge them on their own merits. With this view an effort hasbeen made to illustrate their spirit by what was best in their books, andnot necessarily what would recall the master-dramatist's works, and wouldexpose them to the extreme danger of being dwarfed by him beyond desert,and of fading away in his light as moths in the sunshine. Considered fromthis standpoint, they will not, however, cease to offer some degree ofinterest to the Shakespearean student, for this process makes us aware notmerely of what materials Shakespeare happened to use, but from what storeshe chose them. On this account such works as Greene's tales of real lifehave been studied at some length, and a chapter has been devoted to Nash,who, high as he stands among the older novelists, has been allowed to passunnoticed as a tale writer by all historians of fiction. If, therefore, alarge use has been made of the publications of learned societies devotedto the study of Shakespeare, liberal recourse also has been had to thedepositories of old original pamphlets, to the Bodleian libraryespecially, where, surprising as it may be in this age of reprints, singlecopies of early novels, not to be met anywhere else, are even now to befound. Some other writings of the same kind, even less known, such as"Zelinda," a very witty parody of a romantic tale by Voiture, the"Adventures of Covent Garden," illustrative of the novel and the drama inthe seventeenth century, were found in the primitive and only issue nearerat hand, in that matchless granary of knowledge, whose name no student canpronounce without a feeling of awe, because it is so noble, and ofgratitude, because it is so generously administered, the British Museum.
Engravings have been added, for it seemed that scattered as the rareoriginals of our tales remain, it would be of assistance to gathertogether those curious characteristics. They give an idea of the kind ofillustrations then in fashion, of the sort of appearance some of ourauthors wore; they show how in the course of centuries, Guy of Warwickwas transformed from an armour-clad knight into a plain squire with acane and a cocked hat; and they exemplify the way in which foreignartists were in several cases imitated with the burin, in the same booksin which foreign literary models were imitated with the pen. Objectionhaving been taken, in the very kindly criticisms passed upon this work,to the absence of the only known representation of Greene, this defecthas been supplied in the present edition.
I need not say that the translator of the portions written originally inFrench took the trouble to overlook my additions, and to revise myrevisions. I need say that my heartiest thanks are due also to thewell-known Elizabethan scholar, Mr. A. H. Bullen, who, putting aside fora while much more important work, has shown me the great kindness ofreading the proofs of this volume. J._
SAINT HAON-LE-CHATEL, _Nov., 1890_.