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LIX. Classical Material in Broadside Ballads, 1550–1625

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Herschel C. Baker
Herschel C. Baker*
Affiliation:
University of Texas
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Extract

One does not ordinarily associate the Elizabethan broadside with classical antiquity, although the ballads of the late sixteenth century are fairly studded with allusions to ancient literature. It is unlikely that the inquiring, responsive writers of the day should not have exhibited, in some slight way, their knowledge of the older literatures. When Thomas Newton confessed his translation of Seneca to be “an unflidge nestling, unable to fly: an unnatural abortion, and an unperfect Embroyon,” he was indicting much of the more shallow scholarship of his contemporaries. With such thorough-paced savants as Cheke and Ascham, Mulcaster and Camden, we have no business; but it is interesting to note the way in which their more lowly brethren used their learning. When ballad writers try to put their classics to good account in making a broadside doggerel of some ancient myth, the results are at once ludicrous and irritating—ludicrous in their naive distortion of source, irritating in their flagrant violation of whatever decorous beauty the original may have had. I shall attempt to sketch a few of the ways in which the popular writer's classical education influenced the most thoroughly popular of literary productions, the broadside ballad. The querulous will immediately raise the caveat that these ephemeral broadsides can hardly be dignified with the term “literary productions,” but when one considers that Surrey and Dyer, as well as Elderton and Deloney, had their poetic efforts published in this form, the distinction seems factitious.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , December 1939 , pp. 981 - 989
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1939

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References

1 Seneca Bis Tenne Tragedies, 2 vols. (London, 1927), i, 4.

2 Neptune's Triumph, Works, ed. Gifford-Cunningham (London, 1875), viii, 28.

3 Cf. Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV, iii. i; ii. ii; All's Well, ii. i; Winter's Tale, iii. iii; Ant. and Cleo., v. ii; and Much Ado, i. i.

4 On the question of the social rank of the ballad-writers see Charles Read Baskervill's review of Hyder E. Rollins' edition of the Handful (Harvard Univ. Press, 1924) in M.P., xxiii (1925), 120; Douglas Bush, Mythology and the Renaissance Tradition (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1935), p. 58; Louis B. Wright, Middle-Class Culture in Elizabethan England (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1935), pp. 418 ff.; Hyder E. Rollins, “The Black-Letter Broadside Ballad,” PMLA, xxxiv (1919), 260; Baskervill, The Elizabethan Jig (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1929), p. 31.

5 Pp. 35 ff.

6 Melam., iv, 55–166.

7 It is quite likely that the writer of this ballad never read Ovid. There was probably an early broadside based on “A boke intituled Perymus and Thesbye” which was licensed to Griffith in July, 1563. The story was popular in England from Chaucer's time. There is “The History of Pyramus and Thisbie truely translated” in the Gorgeous Gallery, ed. Rollins (Harvard Univ. Press, 1924), pp. 103 ff.; and Shakespeare's parody is too well known to cite. Further references to the myth are in the Pepys Ballads, ed. Rollins, 8 vols., (Harvard Univ. Press, 1929–32), i, 163–164; Handful, p. 54.

8 Ed. Rollins (Harvard Univ. Press, 1927), pp. 117 ff.

9 Reprinted in the publications of the London Shakespeare Society, xxxi (1846), 101 ff. Perhaps this was the ballad licensed in 1565–1566 to Thomas Purfoote, “The history of Troilus whose throtes [trust?] hath Well bene tryed”; See Hyder E. Rollins, An Analytical Index to the Ballad-Entries in the Registers of the Company of Stationers … (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1924), No. 1124.

10 The Percy Folio of Old English Ballads and Romances, 4 vols. (London, 1910), iv, 178. This is a reprint of the text established by Hales and Furnivall (London, 1867–68).—The references to Troilus and Cressida in Elizabethan broadsides are numerous: William Elderton's famous “Pangs of Love” in H. L. Collmann, Ballads and Broadsides chiefly of the Elizabethan Period (Roxburghe Club, 1912), No. 39, speaks of Troilus who “languished and lost his joye.” “The Louer cōplaineth the losse of his Ladie to Cicilia Pauin” in the Handful (pp. 31 ff.) gives a highly colored account of the false Cressida who, “because she did transgresse,” became a leper. An early ballad registered at Stationers' Hall in 1564–65 (Arber, Transcript, i, 270; reprinted in Thomas Wright, Songs and Ballads [Roxburghe Club, 1860], pp. 163 ff.) has a fleeting reference to deceitful women of whome the author read in “Bocas and Guydo,” but Cressida is not mentioned by name. Another ballad draws a contrast between Cressida and the virtuous Penelope ([Joseph Lilly] A Collection of Seventy-Nine Black-Letter Ballads and Broadsides … [London, 1865], p. 115). See also Richard Johnson, A Crowne-Garland of Golden Roses (Percy Society, vi, [1842]), p. 67; Charles Mackay, A Collection of Songs and Ballads (Percy Society, i [1840]), p. 96; Tottel's Miscellany (ed. Rollins, Harvard Univ. Press, 2 vols., 1928–29), i, 18: The Shirburn Ballads, ed. Andrew Clark (Oxford, 1907), p. 233; Handful, p. 56.

11 So licensed on March 1, 1575 (Analytical Index, No. 2840). For the numerous reprints and moralizations see Ibid., Nos. 2839 and 2841. I quote from the reprint in the Shir. Bal., pp. 276 ff.

12 Discrepancies between this and the classical account are striking. In Ovid's Heroldes the upbraiding epistle to Æneas is written by Dido before her death; here, by her sister, who remains unnamed. (There is no such letter, of course, in Virgil.) In the Æneid Dido is cremated on a magnificent pyre; here, she is given a typical English burial. Virgil has Æneas meeting Dido in the underworld, where she turns away from him without a word; here, Dido's ghost reads the fugitive guest a lecture like a veritable shrew. “In Horace Æneas is, þar excellance, ‘castus Æneas,‘ lauded in the Carmen Saeculare; here, he is dragged down to hell, as the libertine in Mozart's Don Juan” (Clark, Shir. Bal., p. 276). This Faustus-like ending, with fiends bearing Æneas away to damnation, is extremely unclassical; it is not impossible that it reflects native English Morality tradition. Further references to Dido and Æneas in balladry are found in the Roxburghe Ballads, ed. William Chappell, 3 vols. (Ballad Society, 1871–80); J. W. Ebsworth, 6 vols. (1883–1887), i, 266; Percy Folio, iv, 150, contains a thirty-line, careless ballad on Dido; see Collmann, p. 236.

13 For example, allusion to the exploits or adventures of classical deities and heroes are numerous: Shir. Bal., p. 338 (Jove and Europa); J. P. Collier, Broadside Black-Letter Ballads (London, 1898), p. 73 (Hercules and Omphale); A Collection of Old Ballads, 3 vols. (London, 1723–1725), i, 38 (Hercules and the dragon of Lerna); Gorgeous Gallery, p. 38 (Camma, Synorix, and Sinnatus; cf. Analytical Index, Nos. 2552 and 2284).

14 A case in point is the extended allusion to Narcissus, used merely to illustrate the thesis, “Love has pangs,” Handful, pp. 20 ff; cf. Hyder E. Rollins, Old English Ballads, 1553–1625, Chiefly from Manuscripts (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1920), p. 248 for a slightly different treatment of the same legend. Numerous references to the Trojan material might be cited: Roxburghe Ballads, i, 380 ff.; Old Eng. Bal., p. 320 ff; Tottel, i, 14 (cf. Analytical Index, Nos. 1619, 2918–2921); 79 Old Bal., pp. 153 ff; Collmann, p. 261; Collection of Old Bal., i, 38. Albion's Brut and the New Troy find mention in Collmann, pp. 94, 151; Old Eng. Bal., p. 281; Percy's Reliques, ed. Wheatley, 3 vols. (London, 1876–77), iii, 40.

15 For example, “Diana and her darlings deare,” Handful, pp. 25 ff. Cf. Roxburghe Bal., ii, 520; Gorgeous Gallery, p. 52; 79 Old Bal., p. 215; Shir. Bal., p. 338; J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, A Catalogue of an Unique Collection of English Broadside Ballads (London, 1856), No. 251.

16 Characteristic passing allusions to Cupid and his prowess are to be found in Collmann, p. 36; Shir. Bal., pp. 121, 303–304, 338; Handful, pp. 9, 43, 44, 45, 55, 68; Tottel, i, 5 (cf. Analytical Index, No. 369); Cupid appears often as the subject and agent provocateur of an entire ballad: see Pepys Bal., i, 175; Shir. Bal., p. 332; 79 Old Bal., p. 115; Tottel, i, 164 (the famous “Cupid's Fort,” in connection with which see the Analytical Index, No. 430 and the moralization in Collmann, No. 3); Halliwell-Phillipps, Catalogue, Nos. 34, 38, 39, 40.

17 Venus ran her waggish son a close second in popularity with writers of love lyrics. Her own amorous exploits became favorite source-material for insistent lovers to use in cajoling obdurate mistresses, and comparisons between her charms and those of the swain's lady are numerous. See Shir. Bal., pp. 88, 180, 283; Pepys Bal., i, 86, 178; ii, 105 ff; 79 Old Bal., pp. 120, 130, 190; Handful, pp. 34, 59; Old Eng. Bal., pp. 251, 288; Mr. Rollins has reprinted in PMLA, xxxviii (1923), 133 ff. from British Museum Add. MS. 38,599 an interesting fragmentary ballad on Venus and Adonis, in which the goddess is Shakespeare's insatiate nymphomaniac, drawn with little delicacy.

18 Handful, p. 47.

19 Ibid., p. 40; cf. 79 Old Bal., p. 115.

20 Old Eng. Bal., p. 272; cf. Shir. Bal., p. 52.

21 Collmann, p. 85; cf. Handful, p. 44.

22 Handful, p. 63; cf. Tottel, i, 156; Pepys Bal., i, 182.

23 Old Eng. Bal., p. 299.

24 Collmann, pp. 23, 133, 215; 79 Old Bal., p. 179; Shir. Bal., p. 232.

25 Pepys Bal., i, 85 (cf. Analytical Index, No. 2416).

26 Old Eng. Bal., p. 231.

27 Some ballads indicate a desire on the part of their writers to work through all the names in the Homeric pantheon; these are little more than catalogues. Egregious in this respect is a ballad of Lodowick Lloyd's addressed to Queen Elizabeth; see British Biblioggrapher, i (1810), 338. A similar production is in the Gorgeous Gallery, pp. 116 ff. See Roxburghe Bal., i, 215; James Maidment, Ballads and other Fugitive Poetical Pieces from the Collection of Sir James Balfour (Edinburgh, 1839), p. 39; Shir. Bal., p. 66; Collmann, No. 92; 79 Old Bal., p. 114; Handful, pp. 43 ff.—These citations show just how superficial was the balladist's knowledge of the classics. Almost never, it would seem, did he have direct recourse to the originals. The allusions I have mentioned indicate that the phraseology and nomenclature of classical lore were taken over second-hand and transformed into a stiff, stereotyped array of symbols. Cupid became love, Troilus the faithful lover, Helen the beautiful woman, Penelope the faithful wife, and as such stock characters they stalk through all the ballad-writing of the period.

28 No. 168.

29 Page 96.

30 Shir. Bal., p. 352.

31 F. J. Furnivall, Ballads from Manuscripts, 2 vols. (Ballad Society, 1768–72), ii, 96 ff.

32 Page 220. Clark notes that a ballad of the same name (“all in a garden greene”) was registered in 1563, and gave its title to a tune (Roxburghe Bal., xiii, xxxv). Perhaps the ballad-writer knew the early translation of Theocritus, Six Idillia (reprinted in Bullen's Longer Elizabethan Poems [London, 1903]); cf. R. T. Kerlin, Theocritus in English Literature (Lynchburg, Virginia, 1910), p. 27.

33 Shir. Bal., No. 80.

34 Ibid., p. 61.

35 Page 55. The similarity between “A craggie Rocke, etc.” and “Nec tibi diva parens, etc.” seems hardly fortuitous. Cf. Addison's well-known dictum about Chevy Chase (Spectator, No. 70, Monday, May 21, 1711), which provoked the wrath of the editor of the eighteenth-century Collection of Old Ballads. This anonymous person (perhaps Ambrose Phillips) was quite convinced that all ballads draw directly on classical sources, and that Chevy Chase consciously imitated Virgil. Ballad-writers, he adds with some truculency, are “perfectly acquainted with the Ancients, whose Thoughts they do not only borrow, but sometimes their very expressions” (ii, viii-x).

36 Collmann, pp. 61–71. The entire flyting is reprinted by Collmann, Nos. 19–24.

37 79 Old. Bal., p. 205.

38 Collmann, sig. Cg recto.

39 Entered in Robert Lemon's Catalogue of a Collection of Printed Broadsides in the Possession of the Society of Antiquarians of London (London, 1866), No. 33. The Ovidian tale of Procris and Cephalus (Melam., vii, 694 ff. and Ars. Amat., iii, 685 ff.) turns up in broadsides. About 1568 Thomas Howell wrote “The lamentable historie of Sephalus with the Vnfortunat end of Procris” which he included in his New Sonets, and Pretie Pamphlets (Poems, ed. Grosart, p. 146 ff.). Cf. Shir. Bal., p. 339; Tottel, i, 202–203, ii, 309; Douglas Bush, “The Tedious Brief Scene of Pyramus and Thisbie,” PMLA, xxvi (1931), 146, shows possible influence of the Howell ballad on Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream.

40 79 Old Bal., pp. 39, 50, 51; Pepys Bal., i, 44; Old Eng. Bal., p. 264.

41 Paradise of Dainty Devices, ed. Rollins (Harvard Univ. Press, 1927), pp. 57 ff.