5Qcent Studies in the Ekg-ZSh ?@zaissance

The format and enunierative standards of ELR “Recent Studies” surveys are generally consistent with those used in the forthconiing Reccnt Studies in English Renaissance Drama, ed. Terence P. Logan and Denzell S. Smith (University of Nebraska Press). Scholarship is organized by authors or titles of anonymous works. Items included represent the combined entiics listed in the annual bibliographies published by PMLA, SP, YWES, and M H R A from 1945 through, in the present instance, 1971, supplemented by a selective list of general studies and additional annual bibliographies. This material, a t the discretion of the individual contributor, has been either included in the prose commentary or listed in the See also sections. The series is intended to combine a topical review of research with a rcasonably complete bibliography.

ELR bibliographical articles will expand the Nebraska serics to include nondramatic authors and, when appropriate, bring the dramatic surveys up to date. Preliminary enunicra- tive bibliography and cditorial work are done at the Renaissance English Bibliography Center, University of New Hampshire by Terence P. Logan and Elizabeth H. Hagclaan. Journal title abbreviations used are from the Directory ofJotrrnals and Series in the Humanities, compiled by Harrison T. Meserole and Carolyn Jarncs Bishop (New York, 197o).-Terence P. Logan, Director; Renaissance English Bibliography Center; University of New Hamp- shire, Durham

R E C E N T S T U D I E S I N GREVILLE PAULA B E N N E T T

B. G R O S A R T ’ S The Works in Verse and Prose Complete o f the Lord Brooke, 4 vols. (1870), is the only complete edition of Grevdle’s writings. Geoffrey Bul-

lough‘s 2 vol. Poems and Drariias oJ‘Fulke Greville, First Lord Brooke (1939, rpt. w 1945) contains Caelica, three treatises, Alaham and Mustapha. G. A. Wilkes edits Greviue’s two remaining treatises in The Remains, Being Poem ofMonarchy and Re- ligion (1965). Nowell Smith‘s L~ ofsir Philip Sidney (1907) remains standard for that work.

I . GENERAL

A. Biographical. With the publication of The LifL. of Fulke Greville First Lord Brooke by Ronald A. Rebholz (197i), a major gap in Greville criticism has been closed. The princi- pal facts in Grcvik’s life are well-establishcd and a massive amount of supplementary

[ 376 1

Paula Bennett 3 77 source material exists. Generally selective in respect to the latter, the Rebholz biography nevertheless adds much to our knowledge of the intricate course of Grevdle’s political career (particularly his relationship with various patrons) and the major events in his life are fully delineated. In order to relate the development of GreviIle’s thought “to his ex- perience as a private and public man in the England of Ehabeth, James I, and Charles I,” Rebholz also weaves extended discussions of the poet’s works into the biographical narra- tive, giving a rounded picture of Greville’s intellectual and spiritual growth. Fulke Gre- ville, Lord Brooke, 1554-1628: A Critical Biogaphy (1971) by Joan Rees opens with a four- chapter introduction “to the man and his mind” which, Rees states, does not pretend to be comprehensive. Rather, she concentrates on those aspects of Greville’s life which will best “facilitate an informed approach to what he wrote,” devoting a chapter each to Greville’s roles as landowner, statesman, and friend to Sir Philip Sidney. Bullough‘s early article, “Fulke Greville, First Lord Brooke,” MLR, XXVIII (1933), 1-20, is little more than a bio- grapliical sketch designed to supplement his introduction to the Poems and Dramas and written from the same point of view.

Further background on the Greville-Sidney friendship is provided by works primarily on Sidney. Of these, John Buxton’s Sir Philip Sidney and the English Renaissance (1954) and Roger Howell’s Sir Philip Sidney: The Shepherd Kn$ht (1968) include extensive treat- ments. The two critics differ widely in their estimates of Sidney’s influence over Greville and the closeness of their working relationship.

Norman K. Farmer Jr.’s “Fulke Greville and Sir John Coke: An Exchange ofLetters on a History Lecture and Certain Latin Verses on Sir Philip Sidney,” HLQ, XXXIII (1969- 70), 217-36, survcys Greville’s activities and goals as patron and contains the only com- plete published transcription of the important Coke-Greville letter of 1612.

B. Geraeral Critical Studies. Morris Croll’s T h e Works qfFulke Greville (1903), long out of print, remains an duent ia l work, in the case of Caclicn (see below II,A), largely deter- mining the course criticism has taken. Croll argues that Greville is a major poet worthy of serious attention. He defends the “strange individuality” of his works for their “subtlety and inwardness of thought,” and sees Grcville as a paradoxically personal poet who be- cause of his “unique temperament” was able to impose “a new character upon the forms and conventions” with which he worked.

Since Croll, Greville criticism tends to divide between those critics who feel that Gre- ville’s verse is worthy of study in its own right and those who treat it as primarily of in- terest to the historian of ideas. Despite h s obvious sympathy and admiration for G r e d e , Bullough (1,A) largely accepts the latter view of the poet’s works. Wishing Grevdle had been “either more of a poet or less,” Bullough focuses his own criticism on the intellec- tual background behind Greville’s poems and dramas and praises him as one “who had thought long and deeply on the spiritual and social problems of his age.” To Bullough, it was “by accident rather than necessity” that Greville became a poet at all. In “Grevde’s ‘Poetic’,’’ SP, LXI (1964), 170-91, Hugh N. Maclean supports this view of Greville through an analysis of the poet’s aesthetic doctrine. Drawing together passages froiii the Treatie of’Huniane L m x i r g and the Liji $Sidney, Maclean contrasts Greville’s description of poetry’s function with Sidney’s in the Apology. Unlike Sidney, Greville shows little if any interest in poetry’s power to please, wishing instead to inake it subserve the ends of state and religion through moral “ ‘lessons learned’.’’

3 78 English Literary Renaissance In contrast, Joan Rees (1,A) feels that Grevae never despised poetry or its power to

please. Admitting Greville’s obscurity and the formidable nature of much of his subject matter, she nevertheless argues that (unhke his protbgt, Daniel) he never gave up writing precisely because he never lost faith in poetry’s power to express the truth and to move men towards it. Rees believes that the principal change in Grevde’s writing comes not from the rejection of a pleasing style but from the poet’s increasing ability to give com- plex, multi-level statement to his ideas. These ideas were drawn from his basic Calvinist convictions and remained fundamentally the same throughout his career. Unlike other critics, Rees does not feel Greville was tom “between the world and God.” Greville’s pub- lic career allowed him to write from a “position of great strength,” giving to both God and world a firm place in a single, integrated vision. [Announced too late for inclusion in this review is Richard Waswo, T h e Fatal Mirror: Themes and Techniques in the Poetry of Fulke Grcville (Charlottesville, 1972) -eds.]

11. STUDIES O F INDIVIDUAL WORKS

A. Caelica. Croll (1,B) concentrates his analysis of Greville’s sonnet collection on matters of form, prosody, diction, and imagery. On the basis of this analysis, he develops an elaboratc chronological argument for the composition of the sequence and the artistic de- velopment within it. Croll depicts Grevik as deliberately breaking away from the“fanci- fbl” Petrarchan decoration of his youth in order to forge a new style, composed of bare words and simple images, which would better express his experience of the real world. In his three-part article “The Sixteenth-Century Lyric in England,” Poetry, LIII (i939), 258- 72,320-35, and LIV (i939), 35-51 (rev. and rpt. in F o r m $Discovery: Critical and Historical Essays on the Forms ofthe Short Poem in English [i967]), Yvor Winters draws a similar pic- ture of Greville’s style and development. Grouping Greville together with other “plain- style” poets of the period, Winters argues that Grede’s lyrics exhibit not only profound feeling and thought, but a degree of polish “equal in its own way to that of Sidney’s best songs and supcrior to that of his sonnets.” Grcville is ranked with Jonson “as one of the two great masters of the short poem in the Renaissance.” Following Winters, Douglas Peterson in The Eny,dish Lyricjoni W y a t t to Donne: A History ofthe P h i and Eloquent Styles (1967) places Greville’s secular and religious poems within their appropriate lyric tradi- tions. To Peterson, Grevifle is a transition figure in whom plain-style techniques are con- siderably modified by contact with Petrarchan experimentation. He regards the niove- ment of the sequence from “more or less conventional . . . praises, complaints, and peti- tions” to religious poetry of “scrupulous self-examination” as characteristic of major de- velopments within the lyric tradition of the final decades of the sixteenth century. “Metaphysical Poetry and thc Greatness of Fulke Grevdle,” CR, VIII (1965), 101-09, by Fred Inglis and “The Lyrics of Fulke Grevdle,” OUR, x (1968), 28-41, by Peter Heidt- mann are two similar “re-evaluations” of Grevae’s stature as a lyric poet based on plain- style arguments drawn from Winters with virtually no significant modification.

B. Alaham and Mustupha. Grevdle’s two closet dramas have received only sporadic atten- tion in recent years. In TheJacobem Drama: An Interpretation (1936; 5th ed. 1965), Una Ellis-Fernior apologizes for presenting an author who so manifestly “despised the theatre.” Despite Greville’s faults as a dramatist, she feels that his plays make up in their “majesty”

Paula Bennett 3 79 and “severity ofdemeanour” what they lack in poetry and theatricality. Insofar as Grevde was able to make explicit the profound intellectual conflicts latent in the theatre of his day, he serves a legitimate ‘‘function in the history of contemporary drama.” A similar assess- ment of Greville’s place in the history of drama underlies Jean Jacquot’s “Religion et Raison d’Etat dans l’Euvre de Fulke Greville,” EA, v (i952), 211-22. Jacquot focuses his analysis of the plays almost entirely on the philosophical conflict between state and reli- gion which forms the poet’s primary subject matter. Greville sympathized with the Lucre- tian sentiments expressed by the Chorus Tartaroruni in the last act of Mustapha and it was only h s profound sense ofhuman corruption that kept Grevdle a religious and a political conservative.

In “Fulke Greville’s Dramatic Characters,” RES, N.S. I (igso), 308-23, Peter Ure vigor- ously protests reading Grevde’s dramas as “rhymed political treatises” and clarifies the poet’s unique personal contribution to the French Senecan form. The basic conflict in the plays lies between the mherent Stoic emphasis on inner harmony and contemplation and Grevdle’s own Calvinist convictions concerning the corruptibility of the human heart. From this conflict, characters are created whose passionate introspection illustrates man- kind’s struggle with inner evil. Greville charged the Senecan form with “fears and hatreds drawn from quite another tradition” and became “preeminently the dramatist of the ‘in- ward man’.”

“The Tragic Vision of Fulke Greville,” ShS, XIV (1961), 66-75, by Ivor Morris and Geoffrey Bullough’s “Sin&que, Grevillc et le jeme Shakespeare,” in Les Tragidies de S i d q u e et la Thidtre de la Renaissance, ed. Jean Jacquot and Marcel Oddon (1964), arc at- tempts to relate Grevdle to Shakespeare. Morris uses the choruses of Greville’s two plays as vehicles by which to arrive at a viable definition of tragic vision which will not only satisfy Greville’s drama but answer Bradley’s questions about the nature of Shakespearean tragedy as well. Bdough‘s aim is merely to compare the practice of two very different poets in drawing from the same source, Seneca.

C. Treatises. In “Fulke Greville: Kingship and Sovereignty,” HLQ, XVI (i953), 237-71, and “Fulke Greville on War,” HLQ, XXI (1958), 95-109, Hugh N. Maclean draws heady but not exclusively from the treatises on monarchy and war. Greville’s treatment of sovereignty reflects the d u e n c e of a variety of contradictory theories, but it was finally his “state experience” which determined his understanding of the “relationship between nature and positive law” and, hence, the conception of sovereignty resting upon it. Gre- ville’s attitude toward war, on the other hand, encloses “the pragmatic and nationalistic reasons which Grevde knew from state experience are given to justify war” within a “characteristically voluntarist” outlook which judges war to be at once “ ‘a type ofhell’ ” and a necessary part of God’s plan. “Donne and Grevillc: Two Christian Attitudes toward the Renaissance Idea of Mutability and Decay,” CLAJ, v (1962), 203-12, by John L. Ma- honey, compares and contrasts Donne’s and Greville’s response to the ideas of mutability and decay in the Second Anniversary and the Treatie OJ Humane Learning. Donne looked from the decay of this world to the constancy ofheaven; Grcville attempted “to reconcile the mutable and the immutable . . . by establishg all human knowledge on . . . the word of God.” In Paradoxia Epidemica: T h e Renaissance Tradition ofParadox (1966), Rosalie CoIie gives a brief but stimulating view of the same trcatise against the tradition of paradoxical verse epistemologies.

3 80 English Literury Renaissance D. L i j ofSidney and Letter to an Honoirrable Lady. Croll (I,B), Rees (I,A), and Rebholz (1,A) contain the only published criticism of these two curious but important works. Croll’s approach is characteristically weighted toward style. Rees and Rcbholz give greater emphasis to content, noting in particular points of contact with Greville’s other writings. S. Blaine Ewing in “A New Manuscript of Greville’s L@ of Sidney,” MLR, XLIX (1954), 424-27, describes the Shrewsbury MS. of the Liji, listing variants from the published version.

E. The State of t f ie Criticism. In the opinion of many, Greville holds the unenviable dis- tinction of being the last major figure of the English Renaissance to be “discovered.” The spate of studies in recent years underscores heavily how much remains to be done. Cucdica, the most accessible of his works, has fared the best. The extraordinarily rich quality of the finest sonnets is generally recognized. But much of the criticism devoted to the sequence is vitiated by an insistence upon describing Greville’s dense, figurative idiom as “plain” and a reassessment of his style is, as Rees observes, very much in order. Grcville’s dramas, treatises, and prose works have yet to rcceive a significant amount of attention.

111. CANON A N D TEXT

A. Major Works. The entirc Greville canon exists in MS and presents no problem as stich, except for variant readings. Dating is another matter. All the works, with the exception of an umauthorizcd edition of Mustayha (1609) and some sonnets, were published posthu- mously. Dating therefore depends on internal evidcncc which in this case is not only slight but, because of Greville’s habits of revision, unreliable. Only loose agreement on the order of composition has been achieved. For discussions of dating and order of composi- tion, see Rebholz &A), Rees (I,A), Croll (I,B), and G. A. Wilkes, “The Sequence of the Writings of Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke,” SP, LVI (1959), 489-503.

B. Critiqlre ofthe Standard Edition. A new complete edition of Grevilk is needed. Grosart’s text is inaccurate and outdated. Geoffrey Bullough’s 2 vol. Poem and Dranias contains only part of the canon and is based on the 1633 Folio rather than the preferred Warwick MSS. Moreover, it is marred by typographical errors, unevenly helpful notes, and an ex- tremely clunisy format for the presentation of variants. It is also out of print. G. A. Wilkes’ Rctiiainr is a considerably more adequate text but contains only two treatises. The discovery of the Shrewsbiiry MS. of the Life ofSidney makes a new edition of that work desirable as well.

C. Other Editions. The Selected Poems ofFulke Greville, edited by Thoni Gunn in modern spelling, contains Caclica and selected choruses from the plays. G L ~ provides a long ap- preciative introduction to the poet and his art, but unfortunately liis text and notes depend on B ~ l l ~ u g h .

Paula Bennett 381

See also I. GENERAL

A. Biographical Strider, Robert E. L. Robert Creville, Lord Brooke (1958).

B. General Critical Studies Evans, M. “Metaphor and Symbol in the Sixteenth Century,” EIC, 111 (1953), 267-84. Farmer, Norman K. Jr. “Fulke Greville and the Poetic of the Plain Style,” TSLL, XI

Godshalk, William L. “Recent Studies,” ELR, 11 (i972), 148-64 [passim, Greville’s rela-

Lewis, C. S. Eiglish Literature in the Sixteenth Century (1354). Newman, Franklin B. “Sir Fuke Grevdle and Giordano Bruno: A Possible Echo,” PQ,

Parkes, H. B. “Nature’s Diverse Laws: The Double Vision of the Elizabcthans,” SR,

Sells, A. Lytton. T h e Italian Injluence in English Poetryfrorn Chaucer to Shakespeare (1953). Utz, Hans Werner. Die Anschauungen iiber WissenschaJ und Religion in1 Werke Fzrlke Gre-

(1969)~ 657-70.

tions with Sidney].

XXIX (1950), 367-74.

LVIII (1950), 402-18.

uihs (1948).

11. STUDIES O F INDIVIDUAL WORKS

A. CaeJica Mourgues, Odette de. Metaphysical, Baroque and Precieux Poetry (1953). Williamson, George. T h e Proper W i t o f Poetry (1961).

B. Mustupha

Oras, Ants. “Fulke Greville’s Mustapha and Robert Wilmot’s Tancred and Gismund,”

Wdkes, G. A. “The Sources of Fuke Greville’s Mustupha,” NGQ, v (1958), 329-30. N&Q, vn (1960), 24-25.

111. CANON A N D TEXT

A. Other Editions Bender, Robert M. Five Courtier Poets of the English Renaissance (1967) [Cuelira and A

Treatie o f Humane Learning].

IV. MISCELLANEOUS

Crundell, H. W. “Gcorge Chapman and the Grevilles,” NGQ, CLXXXV (1943), 137.

Farmer, Norman K. Jr. “Fulke Greville’s Letter to a Cousin in France and the Problem of

K e u e r , W. Hilton. “Byron and Brooke,” TLS, May 5 , 1969, 584.

. “Chapman and the Grevilles,” NfiQ, CLXXXIX (1945), 213.

Authorship in Cases of Formula Writing,” RenQ, XXII (1969), 140-47.

3 82 English Literary Renaissance Maclean, Hugh N. “Bacon, Greville, History and Biography,” NGQ, 111 (1956), 95-97. -. “Reliquiae Bodleianae: Letter CCXXII,” BLR, VI (1960), 537-41. Rees, Joan. “Fulke Greville and Revisions of Arcudiu,” RES, XVII (1966), 54-57. -. “Fulke Greville’s Epitaph on Sidney,” RES, XIX (1968), 47-51. Rossky, William. “Imagination in the English Renaissance: Psychology and Poetic,”

Snow, Vernon F. “Francis Bacon’s Advice to Fuke Greviue on Research Techniques,”

Ure, Peter. “Note on ‘Opinion’ in Daniel, Greville, and Chapman,” MLR, XLVI (1951),

SRetl, v ( 1 9 ~ 8 ) ~ 49-73.

HLQ, MIII (1960), 369-78.

331-38.

C O N C O R D , MASSACHUSETTS