Students of English drama have long been interested in the Parnassus trilogy, produced in St. John's College, Cambridge, at the turn of the sixteenth century. The third play, The Reiurne from Parnassus, or The Scourge of Simony, was the only one published contemporaneously. Since the Reverend W. D. Macray's edition of the entire series in 1886, following his discovery in the Bodleian of a manuscript copy of the long-lost first two plays, the trilogy has been acclaimed as “the most brilliant product of the Tudor university stage.” Successive scholars have analyzed its sources, argued the problems of its authorship and dating, and variously interpreted its personal satire and allusion. Still unsolved, however, is the problem of authorship; still uncertain the answer to a famous crux in Shakespearean scholarship—the identification of Shakespeare's “purge” of Jonson, alluded to in the third play. It is the purpose of this paper (1) to introduce a new name in connection with the authorship of the trilogy; (2) by means of previously unused internal evidence to establish beyond any possibility of doubt J. B. Leishman's well-reasoned, but nevertheless inconclusive, identification of the “purge” with Dekker's Satiro-Mastix, despite the Parnassus poet's attribution of it to Shakespeare; and (3) to use this same internal evidence to reveal the Cambridge playwright's hitherto unsuspected satire of Jonson.

The publication of the Diana, probably in Valencia, 1559, marks the birth of the pastoral novel in Spain. Most of what has been written on the book has been centered around the problem of influences, that is to say, the extent of Montemayor's imitation of Sannazaro's Arcadia. Such a view, regardless of its merits, tends to leave unexplained the book itself, since a book—the artistic accomplishment—is not what it is because of any certain, or uncertain, influences, but in spite of them. Life, and thereby literature, are not only the sum total of our actions, of what we do, but also of what we refrain from doing, and, furthermore, our actions are a composite of inherited patterns of reaction plus the new and improvised attitudes we strike when challenged by the renewing and omnipresent crossroads of life. If we are to study the Diana, or any other book, as a distillation of life, one of the important things is not to point out the influence of Sannazaro, which I fail to see, or of anybody else, but to underline the measure of acceptance of such an influence (the thin dividing line between the “done” and “not done” by the author in search for artistic expression), and then to seek the way it is to be harmonized with the new chords the author is trying to strike.

The Authorship of the Romaunt of the Rose, subject of ardent controversy for nearly a century, can at last be established beyond any significant measure of doubt, for there is a new and highly reliable kind of evidence to show that at least two men were responsible for the existing partial translation of the famed Roman de la rose into Middle English. More than 200 MSS of the original French poem, composed by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun in the thirteenth century, have been catalogued by the late Ernest Langlois. The French scholar divided these MSS into three main groups, I, II, and III, and into subgroups or families marked by capital letters; while individual MSS he designated by the family letter plus a lower-case letter, Ab, He, Ha, and so on. In consequence of Langlois' great work, scholars have been enabled to compare the ME Romaunt with the variant readings of the MSS of its French original, and as will be demonstrated below, such comparison throws revealing light upon the facts of the Romaunt's composition.

This report of recommendations on modern foreign languages is the second part of a six-year sequence in curriculum study of the National Association of Secondary-School Principals. Within the six-year period, it is planned to portray the components of a balanced secondary-school curriculum.

The timetable of this report began when an Ad Hoc Committee of national experts and administrators met in November 1958 to agree on a statement of position on modern foreign languages in junior and senior high schools. The tentative paper they formulated was submitted for analysis and discussion by principals attending the 43rd Annual Convention in Philadelphia, February 7-11, 1959. In light of the comments and suggestions made by these principals, the statement was revised and then resubmitted to the Ad Hoc Committee. Thereafter, further revisions were made. The report now appears in completed form and is believed to represent the informed judgment of thousands of secondary-school leaders and modern language specialists throughout the nation.

The Committee on Curriculum Planning and Development officially adopted these recommendations and the Executive Committee officially approved them, May 7, 1959.

That numerous commentators on Paradise Lost have been repelled by the presentation of the Father in Book III is common knowledge. The objections raised have been voiced variously, ranging from Mark Van Doren's flat statement that Milton's God is a “dull dictator” to G. Wilson Knight's persuasion that sulphur is more appropriate to the poet's Heaven than ambrosia. Behind these and similar statements stands the opinion that Milton's defense of the ways of God to man is, as Sir Herbert Grierson put it, “too purely legal.”.

At one point in Webster's The While Devil the Cardinal Monticelso addresses a shocking invitation to the Duke of Florence, the arch-revenger of the play:

As a scene-opener the speech deserves to be thought of as one of Webster's coups de théâtre, for the whole play is of a kind to make the words hyperbolically preposterous. We are, of course, in the chosen realm of Jacobean imagining, that lurid Italy where every thought “Imitates / The suttle fouldings of a Winters snake” (i.ii.345-346) and where brides epitomize hypocrisy:

After Foscolo's arrival in England in 1817 he was soon made welcome at Holland House, the palatial home of Lord Holland—a home distinguished by the generous kindliness of its master and by the richness of its library. Among the residents of the great establishment were two Italians with whom Foscolo became well acquainted: Serafino Buonaiuti, a factotum who assisted in the library, and Giuseppe Binda, a protégé who at times, at least, rendered secretarial service.

The Influence of Scandinavian on English vocabulary as a result of the settlement of the Northmen in England before the Norman Conquest was well established over fifty years ago by Bjôrkman. Claims have been made by some scholars about Scandinavian influence on English syntax, but these have been the subject of much controversy. As early as 1908 Logeman noted the tendency of both Danish and English to stress the preposition and usages such as “he has someone to work for,” which are not found in the other Germanic languages. Jespersen cited several correspondences between Modern English and Modern Danish, which he felt might possibly date back to the Viking settlements. Specifically he enumerated (1) relative clauses without pronouns, (2) the omission of the conjunction 'that,' (3) the use of 'shall' and ‘will’ in Middle English, (4) the genitive before nouns. Later students have followed Jespersen's lead; e.g. Marckwardt in his Introduction to English (Toronto & New York, 1942) and Pei in his Story of English (Philadelphia and New York, 1952).

Chaucer Writes about more varieties of amatory experience than any other English poet except Shakespeare. Whether in this abundance we have God's plenty or the devil's I will leave to Dryden and Father Denomy and try to comment only on this point of view as he relates the love visions and Troilus and Criseyde.

Gryphius' Stellung unter den Barockdichtern ist eine besondere. Er trat der Weltordnung mit einer Forderung gegenüber, die kein anderer zu stellen wagte, und wenn er sich auch zu zähmen suchte, so stieg doch die Wucht der Anklage während seines Lebens immer an, ja man kann fast sagen: je gefügiger die Worte werden, desto mehr tobt in ihm die Rebellion. Er selbst war sich wohl dessen nicht bewußt, er hielt sich fur einen guten Christen und war es auch, aber er konnte sich nie der Resignation wirklich ergeben. Wir fühlen in seinen Schriften ein ständiges Brodeln wie in einem Vulkan, der einem Ausbruch nahe ist. Die Lava ist nie tobend übergeflossen, denn die Schwere der Gesteinsmassen, die darüber lagen, war nicht zu durchstoßen. Er war keiner von denen, die mit den Dingen leicht fertig werden; er war von Natur schwer und aus dieser Schwere heraus, aus dieser gehemmten Anlage seines Wesens, brannte seine Flamme nie ruhig; seine Sprache, mächtig und reich, muß schwerflüssig und stokkend gekommen sein.

After the scores of “secret histories,” “authentick memoirs,” and “true relations” written by Mrs. Eliza Haywood and other female novelists of the 1720's, the four volumes of fiction by Mrs. Mary Davys produce much the same “cheerful, sunshiny, breezy” effect that Coleridge attributed to Fielding's work, in contrast to “the close, hot, day-dreamy continuity of Richardson.” The double comparison is more than subjectively valid, for Mrs. Davys stands in much the same relation to Fielding's ebullient masculine genius that Mrs. Haywood's distressed damsels do to Richardson's heroines—both as a forerunner and as an influence upon the early eighteenth-century reading public.

Many of the qualities which distinguish Mrs. Davys from her contemporaries may be explained by her background and by the circumstances under which her works were written and published. She was born in Dublin in 1674 and married the Reverend Peter Davys, a friend of Jonathan Swift and headmaster of the free school attached to St. Patrick's. Swift considered the marriage an indiscretion on the headmaster's part but, indiscreet or not, it was apparently a happy one until Davys'early death in 1698. Soon after this, his young widow “went for mere want to England.” She appeared briefly in London in 1700 and then settled in York where she lived for the next fifteen years. Little is known of her during this period. Swift's correspondence and his Journal to Stella indicate that she occasionally visited London, that she tried by various ruses to maintain contact with him from York, and that he grudgingly sent her several sums of money before his return to Ireland in 1714. Such irregular charity could hardly have been sufficient for the most frugal existence, and from pictures of life in a York boarding house and the recurrent character of a settled but good-natured female companion in her plays and novels, one may conjecture that Mrs. Davys enacted a similar role in private life.

It has now been six years since the publication, by Professor William R. Parker, of the survey, “Foreign Language Entrance and Degree Requirements for the B.A. Degree” (PMLA, September 1953). The statistics gathered at that time have been frequently revised, the fifth revision having appeared in the September 1957 Supplement to PMLA. The findings published in that study have given teachers and administrators a clear picture of the national pattern of foreign language requirements for the B.A. degree.

Milton's polemical tracts of the Puritan Revolution have long offered difficulty to scholars, and these difficulties are intensified in the eight pamphlets which he wrote during the chaotic closing years of the interregnum. One problem concerns Milton's bewildering shifts of political allegiance among the various parties and models of government: he first acquiesced in the protectorate of Richard Cromwell, then denounced protectorian government and eulogized the restored Rump Parliament and the commonwealth, then defended an army government which deposed the Rump, then demanded the Rump's return, then offered plans for perpetuating three different legislatures in power or about to come to power, and at one point proposed the establishment of a temporary monarchy or protectorate. Furthermore, during this brief period he restated two contradictory theories of government developed in earlier tracts—the popular-sovereignty theory, asserting the right of every free people to choose, alter, and depose their government, and an “aristocratic” theory justifying the “worthy minority” in imposing and perpetuating its rule over an “unworthy” majority. Also intensified is the ambiguity, long present in Milton's tracts, concerning the relation of regenerate to the civil government: Milton's ecclesiastical pamphlets of 1659 define a sharp separation of church and state in terms of their laws, concerns, and jurisdictions, but in other works of this period he appears to assert the contradictory doctrine that the “Saints” should enjoy special political privileges.

With the emergence of philosophy in the nineteenth century as a separate discipline which stressed primarily questions insoluble by empirical or formal methods, Voltaire's reputation as a philosopher has gone into gradual eclipse. It has become unfashionable and degrading for philosophers to concern themselves with the practical aspects of philosophical enquiry. In eighteenth-century France, on the other hand, the identification of philosophy with science, which by twentieth-century standards had vitiated philosophical thought, produced the “philosophes” or natural philosophers who were on the whole more interested in human progress than in the progress of the human mind. And Voltaire was by popular consent the leader of this “philosophe” group, the one who had unquestionably contributed the most in the struggle to make man a happier and freer member of society. Yet, ironically, despite a lifelong effort in behalf of humanity, Voltaire's reputation as a destructive thinker has steadily grown even as the critics have pejoratively classified him as a “practical” rather than a “real” philosopher. Typical of this criticism of Voltaire is Macaulay's statement: “Voltaire could not build: he could only pull down: he was the very Vitruvius of ruin. He has bequeathed to us not a single doctrine to be called by his name, not a single addition to the stock of our positive knowledge.”

Dryden's place as theorist and exponent of the imagination has never been appropriately determined, and the reason may be as much in the difficulty of the problem as in the temptation to settle out of court for Hobbesian influence. Certainly there is much in Dryden to plague his interpreters: the obliqueness with which he insists upon approaching the subject, the transitional and hence shifting vocabulary with which he works, and the rhetorical density within which he almost invariably transacts his critical discourse. These things make analysis and interpretation difficult and precarious. But of one thing the Dryden scholar need not despair—the lack of evidence. For Dryden had a nagging curiosity about the imagination and a tireless impulse to talk about it.