Lingua (play)

Last updated

Lingua, or the Combat of the Tongue and the Five Senses for Superiority is an allegorical stage play of the first decade of the 17th century, generally attributed to the academic playwright Thomas Tomkis.

Contents

Publication

Lingua was entered into the Stationers' Register on 23 February 1607 (new style), and was published later that year in a quarto printed by George Eld for the bookseller Simon Waterson. [1] The play proved to have unusual long-term popularity for an academic work, and was reprinted in 1610, 1617, 1622, 1632, and 1657. Its use of English rather than the more normal Latin gave Lingua a wider accessibility to a general audience than academic dramas of its era usually had. In 1613 Lingua was translated into a German version titled Speculum Aestheticum, by Johannes Rhenanus; a Dutch translation followed in 1648, by Lambert van den Bosch. [2]

Date

The date of the play's stage premiere is uncertain. The play's text itself contains a reference to the year 1602: "About the year 1602 many used this skew kind of language" (Act III, scene v). Some scholars have supported this date by noting apparent contemporary references and allusions; the personification of "Queen Psyche" (IV, vii), for example, is the type of compliment to Queen Elizabeth common during her reign, and is logical in play written prior to her 1603 death. Other commentators have demurred, however; apparent allusions to Shakespeare's Macbeth suggest a date closer to the 1607 publication to some critics. [3]

Authorship

The early editions of Lingua were all printed with no attribution of authorship. A manuscript list of books and papers from the hand of Sir John Harington assigns the play to Tomkis; and the play's resemblances with Tomkis's Albumazar have persuaded scholars that Harington's attribution of Lingua to Tomkis is correct.

Sources

Tomkis borrowed and adapted his main plot from the classical myth of the Judgement of Paris; but particular features of his work depend upon more contemporaneous influences, including Spenser's The Faerie Queene , [4] Du Bartas' La Sepmaine, [5] and Sir John Davies's Nosce Teipsum. [6]

Oliver Cromwell?

A reference to Lingua from 1663 states that Oliver Cromwell played a part in an early production of the play. [7] If this tradition has any validity, it may involve the entertainment that Cromwell's uncle, Sir Oliver Cromwell, provided for King James I at Hinchingbrooke in late April 1603. If Lingua was staged for the king at that time and place (which is uncertain), the future Protector and regicide, then four years old, may have filled the role of Small Beer in IV,v.

Costumes

The 1607 quarto of Lingua is very unusual in that it provides highly detailed and specific descriptions of the costumes worn by the actors:

And the rest of the play's figures are similarly, gaudily accoutered. [8]

Such detailed descriptions are often found in the published texts of masques from the Stuart era, but not in play texts. The costumes of Lingua may give a rare indication of the range of costumes used in the plays of the era (though generalizing from one academic play to the popular drama of the London theatres requires caution).

The allegory

As its title and subtitle indicate, the play portrays Lingua, the personification of language, asserting her importance against the traditional personifications of the senses. (Auditus is hearing, Visus is sight; Olfactus, Gustus, and Tactus round out the five.) This allegorical treatment of the five senses reaches far back into the literature and drama of the Middle Ages – though Tomkis departs from the Medieval tradition by depicting the five senses as male rather than female figures. (The change allows Tomkis to cast the play's conflict in an anti-feminist, battle-of-the-sexes context.)

As noted above, the play's plot derives from the story of the Judgement of Paris: like Eris among the Olympian gods, Lingua inspires dissension and competition among the five senses by offering a prize for the worthiest of them. She leaves a golden crown and a royal robe in a grove in "Microcosmus", with this inscription:

He of the five that proves himself the best,
Shall have his temples with this coronet blest.

The five quarrel over who should receive the gifts; they go so far as to prepare for physical combat, though "Communis Sensus", the viceregent of Queen Psyche, forestalls that extremity. Like Paris, he presides over the competition, eventually awarding the crown to Visus and the robe to Tactus; the other three receive consolation prizes of offices under Psyche. Lingua's claim to be the sixth sense is rejected – though with a qualification: it is allowed that woman have six senses, the sixth being "the sense of speaking."

Madame Lingua is not willing to accept this status of being "half a sense." At a celebratory banquet she serves the senses drugged wine, which deranges them; but further disruption is suppressed by the charm of Somnus. Lingua talks in her sleep and confesses her plot; she is imprisoned so that she cannot "wag abroad."

The play features a range of other personifications – Terra, Comedus, Phantastes, Lumen (light), Coelum (the sky), and others – even Tobacco, "the king of Trinidado" who has "conquered all Europe." The classical deities Ceres and Bacchus also appear.

Medieval allegory was a dying form in Tomkis's era, though it still appeared on occasion; Phineas Fletcher's The Purple Island (1633) is one late example. Tomkis's play has been praised for the excellence of its style; "Tomkis proves himself a master of polished and flexible dialogue...The wit is sparkling and unforced", delivered "with scholarly grace." [9] The play's comedy often provides a burlesque of famous plays of its era, mocking the heroic speeches of The Spanish Tragedy and offering apparent Shakespearean allusions.

Related Research Articles

Thomas Cromwell English statesman and chief minister to King Henry VIII of England

Thomas Cromwell, was an English lawyer and statesman who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540, when he was beheaded on orders of the king, who later blamed false charges for the execution.

<i>The Faerie Queene</i> English epic poem by Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene is an English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. Books I–III were first published in 1590, then republished in 1596 together with books IV–VI. The Faerie Queene is notable for its form: at over 36,000 lines and over 4,000 stanzas it is one of the longest poems in the English language; it is also the work in which Spenser invented the verse form known as the Spenserian stanza. On a literal level, the poem follows several knights as a means to examine different virtues, and though the text is primarily an allegorical work, it can be read on several levels of allegory, including as praise of Queen Elizabeth I. In Spenser's "Letter of the Authors", he states that the entire epic poem is "cloudily enwrapped in Allegorical devices", and that the aim of publishing The Faerie Queene was to "fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline".

<i>King Leir</i> anonymous Elizabethan play

King Leir is an anonymous Elizabethan play about the life of the ancient Brythonic king Leir of Britain. It was published in 1605 but was entered into the Stationers' Register on 15 May 1594. The play has attracted critical attention principally for its relationship with King Lear, Shakespeare's version of the same story.

Ode on Melancholy

"Ode on Melancholy" is one of five odes composed by English poet John Keats in the spring of 1819, along with "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode on Indolence", and "Ode to Psyche". The narrative of the poem describes the poet's perception of melancholy through a lyric discourse between the poet and the reader, along with the introduction to Ancient Grecian characters and ideals.

Four senses of Scripture Four-level method of interpreting the Bible

The four senses of Scripture are a four-level method of interpreting the Bible. This method originated in Christianity and was taken up in Judaism by the Kabbalah.

The King's Revels Children or Children of the King's Revels were a troupe of actors, or playing company, in Jacobean era London, active in the 1607-9 period. They were part of a fashion for child actors that peaked in the first decade of the seventeenth century, with the Children of Paul's and the Children of the Chapel.

<i>The Maids Metamorphosis</i>

The Maid's Metamorphosis is a late Elizabethan stage play, a pastoral first published in 1600. The play, "a comedy of considerable merit," was published anonymously, and its authorship has been a long-standing point of dispute among scholars.

Cupid's Revenge is a Jacobean tragedy written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. It was a popular success that influenced subsequent works by other authors.

Henry Hastings, 5th Earl of Huntingdon English nobleman

Henry Hastings, 5th Earl of Huntingdon, was a prominent English nobleman and literary patron in England during the first half of the seventeenth century.

Caesar and Pompey is a Jacobean era stage play, a classical tragedy written by George Chapman. Arguably Chapman's most obscure play, it is also one of the more problematic works of English Renaissance Drama.

Nicholas Okes was an English printer in London of the Jacobean and Caroline eras, remembered for printing works of English Renaissance drama. He was responsible for early editions of works by many of the playwrights of the period, including William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Webster, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood, James Shirley, and John Ford.

Pathomachia, or the Battle of Affections, also known as Love's Lodestone, is an early 17th-century play, first printed in 1630. It is an allegory that presents a range of problems to scholars of the drama of the Jacobean and Caroline eras.

Thomas Dring was a London publisher and bookseller of the middle seventeenth century. He was in business from 1649 on; his shop was located "at the sign of the George in Fleet Street, near St. Dunstan's Church."

Thomas Tomkis was an English playwright of the late Elizabethan and the Jacobean eras, and arguably one of the more cryptic figures of English Renaissance drama.

Albumazar is a Jacobean era play, a comedy written by Thomas Tomkis that was performed and published in 1615.

Technogamia, or the Marriages of the Arts is a Jacobean era stage play, an allegory written by Barten Holyday that was first performed and published in 1618.

In the time of William Shakespeare, there were commonly reckoned to be five wits and five senses. The five wits were sometimes taken to be synonymous with the five senses, but were otherwise also known and regarded as the five inward wits, distinguishing them from the five senses, which were the five outward wits.

Antony Brewer was a dramatist, author of The Love Sick King, to whom a number of other works have been attributed.

Thomas Jenner (publisher)

Thomas Jenner was an English author, engraver, and publisher in London. He kept from 1624 a print-shop by the south entrance of the Royal Exchange; it was recommended by John Evelyn to Samuel Pepys.

The Quest is a ballet score by William Walton, written for a ballet of the same title, now lost, choreographed by Frederick Ashton in 1943. Two versions of the score exist: one for the small orchestra for which Walton wrote, and a posthumously constructed version rescored for an orchestra of the larger size usually favoured by the composer. The ballet, with a scenario by Doris Langley Moore, was based on The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. It was first given by the Sadler's Wells Ballet company.

References

  1. ↑ E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923; Vol. 3, p. 497.
  2. ↑ Morris P. Tilley, "The Comedy Lingua and Sir John Davies's Nosce Teipsum", Modern Language Notes Vol. 44 No. 1 (January 1929), p. 36 n. 1.
  3. ↑ Chambers, Vol. 3, p. 498.
  4. ↑ Tilley, "The Comedy Lingua and The Faerie Queene", MLN Vol. 42 No. 3 (March 1927), pp. 150–7.
  5. ↑ Tilley, "The Comedy Lingua and Du Bartas' La Sepmaine", MLN Vol. 42 No. 5 (May 1927), pp. 293–9.
  6. ↑ Tilley, MLN Vol. 44 No. 1, pp. 36–9.
  7. ↑ "Tomkis, Thomas"  . Dictionary of National Biography . London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
  8. ↑ Frederick Kiefer, "A Dumb Show of the Senses in Timon of Athens", in: In the Company of Shakespeare: Essays on English Renaissance Literature in Honor of G. Blakemore Evans, Thomas Mosian and Douglas Bruster, eds.; Madison, New Jersey, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002; pp. 146–7.
  9. ↑ F. S. Boas, "University Plays", in: The Cambridge History of English Literature, Vol. 6, edited by Adolphus William Ward; Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1910; pp. 355–6.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.