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The Sources of Shirley's St. Patrick for Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Hugh MacMullan
Hugh MacMullan*
Affiliation:
The Berkshire School
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Extract

Dr. Robert Stanley Forsythe in his The Relation of Shirley's Plays to the Elizabethan Drama, has shown the debt of Shirley to the plays of 1590–1648 for typical scenes and characters; but the various sources from which Shirley drew his plots have remained comparatively uninvestigated, and his habits of work have, consequently, not been sufficiently revealed. Since a union of the knowledge of the analogues already possessed with that of the actual sources would explain to a great degree Shirley's mechanics of composition, it is the purpose of this paper to examine the sources for St. Patrick for Ireland (published 1640) and the uses which the poet made of them.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , September 1933 , pp. 806 - 814
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1933

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References

1 New York, 1914.

2 Langbaine, Gerard, An Account of the English Dramatick Poets (Oxford, 1691), p. 483.

3 Gifford, W. and Dyce, A., The Dramatic Works and Poems of James Shirley (1833), iv, 364.

4 Ward, A. W., A History of English Dramatic Literature (London, 1899), iii, 100, n. 1.

5 Forsythe, R. S., op. cit., pp. 221–222.

6 It would seem likely that this life was a chapbook relating the adventures of the chivalrous St. Patrick; such a book as The Delightful History of the Life and Death of that Renowned & Famous St. Patrick, Champion of Ireland (London, 1685).

7 Published in Opera Bedae … (Basil, 1563). It was written by Probus.

8 Published by Wynkyn de Worde (1516).

9 Fr. B. B. The Life of the Glorious Bishop S. Patrick … (S. Omers, 1625). This life was republished as an Appendix to Alphonso de Villegas' Lives of the Saints. There are many editions of this work in English recorded in The Short Title Catalogue. The only ones in which I am positive that the work of B.B. appeared are those of St. Omers (?), 1628 and Rouen, 1636.—Quotations in this paper are taken from the edition of St. Omers, 1625, British Museum C.25.c.9.

10 For Shirley as a Catholic, see Wood, A., Athenae Oxonienses (Oxford, 1692), 11, 260–261. For details of his Irish residence, see Nason, A. H., James Shirley Dramatist (New York, 1915).

11 Messingham, Thomas, Florïlegium Insulae Sanctorum (Paris, 1624), p. 22.

12 Fr. B. B., op. cit., p. 27.

13 Messingham, T., op. cit., p. 27; Fr. B.B., op. cit., p. 33.

14 Fr. B.B., op. cit., p. 31–32.

15 The text reads Coibre; the correction is provided by the errata.

16 B.B., op. cit., p. 19.

17 B.B., op. cit., p. 34.

18 B.B., op. cit., pp. 26–27.

19 B.B., op. cit., p. 29.

20 B.B., op. cit., pp. 18–19.

21 Ward, A. W., op. cit., iii, 100, n. 3; Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, trans. by Thomas Lodge (London, 1620), Bk. 18, Chap. iv, 422–168; Bandello, Matteo, Novels, trans. by John Payne (London, 1890), Part iii, story 15, v, 247–258.

22 Forsythe, R. S., op. cit., p. 227.

23 Lavater, Lewes, Of Ghostes and Spirites … (Oxford, 1929), pp. 23–44.

24 I can find no evidence to prove that this plot, as W. A. Neilson says, The Cambridge History of English Literature, vi, 206, was“already familiar on the English Stage.”

25 The records of early Irish ecclesiastical drama are few, and among them I can find no mention of Patrick. Bishop Bale, The Vocacyon of Iohan Bale, Harleian Miscellany, vi, 415, mentions “a Commedie of Sainct Iohan Baptistes Preachinges, of Christes Baptsynge, and of his Temptation in the Wildernesse …,” performed in Ireland. See A. W. Ward, op. cit., iii, 100, for modern commemoration of the Saint.

26 Ward, A. W., op. cit., iii, 100, n. 1.

27 Forsythe, R. S., op. cit., pp. 222–231.

28 Ward, A. W., op. cit., iii, 100, n. 4.

29 Forsythe, R. S., op. cit., pp. 222–231.

30 A good example is God's punishment of Dichu for attempting to kill Patrick. Forsythe, op. cit., 225, says, “The striking of Dichu motionless … is based upon The Virgin-Martyr, iv, 1, in which Sapritius is stricken as he orders the ravishment of Dorothea.” The source for this episode is, however, B.B., op. cit., 17–18.

31 St. Patrick for Ireland (London, 1640), Act i, ll. 207–208.

32 The Virgin Martir (London, 1622), Act iv, sig. K1.

33 Gifford, W. and Dyce, A., op. cit., IV, 437. Ward, A., op. cit., iii, 100.

34 Forsythe, R. S., op. cit., p. 230.

35 Gifford, W. and Dyce, A., op. cit., ii, 397.

36 I. C., The Two Merry Milke-Maids (London, 1620), L4r–M1v. In St. Patrick for Ireland, iv, ll. 438–445, Rodamant, invisible, kisses Ethne and Fedella.

37 I. C., op. cit., K3r–K4v. In St. Patrick for Ireland, iv, ll. 449–475, Rodamant, invisible, kicks and mocks Ferochus and Endarius.

38 I. C., op. cit. O3r. In St. Patrick for Ireland, v, ll. 86–98, a spirit takes the bracelet from Rodamant and pains his wrist.

39 A play St. George for England, by William Smith, is recorded in the destroyed Warburton collection.