Pathomachia

Last updated

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.

Contents

Date and publication

The play was licensed for publication by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 16 April 1630 and was published later that year, in a quarto printed by the brothers Richard and Thomas Cotes for the bookseller Francis Constable. Constable dedicated the work to Henry Carey, 4th Baron Hunsdon and 1st Earl of Dover. In his dedication, Constable repeats the statement of the title page, that the author is deceased. [1]

The full title of the play in the 1630 quarto is Pathomachia or the Battle of Affections, Shadowed by a Feigned Siege of the City of Pathopolis. The title page also states that the play was "Written some years since" by the late author and is now issued by one of his friends. The play's running title, which appears at the top of the pages of text, is Love's Lodestone. A University play by that name was staged c. 1616; the implication is that the Pathomachia of 1630 is the same work as the Love's Lodestone of c. 1616. [2]

The play also exists in two manuscript texts; one is part of MS. Harl. 6869 Art. 1 in the collection of the British Library, and the other is MS. Eng. poet. e. 5 in the collection in the Bodleian Library. [3] Pathomachia shares the Harleian MS. with another allegorical play, titled The Fallacies, or the Troubles of Hermenia, which is dated 1631 and ascribed to Richard Zouch. The Harleian MS. text of Pathomachia contains variant readings and some material absent from the printed text, but is missing its last seventeen or so lines.

Authorship

There is no external evidence of the author's identity. One 19th-century commentator, misreading Francis Kirkman's 1661 play list, assigned the play to Anthony Brewer, an attribution for which there is no sound justification. An attempt to assign the play to John Marston has been rejected by the scholarly consensus. Attempts to assign the play to the Cambridge Platonist philosopher Henry More are problematical chronologically, since More was born in 1614. (He might have written Pathomachia in his mid-teens, but he couldn't have written Love's Lodestone at the age of two.) The blind academic Ambrose Fisher (died 1617) has also been suggested as a candidate. [4]

Perhaps the strongest case has been made for Thomas Tomkis as the author of Pathomachia; the play shares obvious commonalities with Tomkis's Lingua (1607). In fact Pathomachia contains two direct references to "Madame Lingua," and shows a range of similarities with Tomkis's play. [5] Tomkis was an academic playwright; his Albumazar (1615) was acted at Cambridge University. [6]

Genre

Composed in prose rather than verse, Pathomachia relies heavily on the tradition of allegory and the morality play; its characters are personifications of the human passions, Love, Hatred, Pride, Malice, Envy, Curiosity, etc. The play treats Love and Hatred as the King and Queen of the country of the emotions; but the royal figures have neglected their duties and a rebellion has sprung up among their subjects. The vices masquerade as virtues, until they are suppressed and brought to order by Justice. In fact there is no action in the play, which consists of three acts of dialogue among the personifications.

(Pathomachia strongly resembles closet drama, and many critics would probably classify it as such; though if it was acted on stage as Love's Lodestone it would not qualify as a literal instance of closet drama.)

The text is rich with classical allusions and cultural references. In the opening scene of Act II, for example, Justice tells Love that Heroical Virtue "is gone to the Antipodes, unto Japonia" [that is, Japan] and that "I have not heard of him since the time of Judas Maccabeus...." The drama also displays many references to then-recent historical events, including the Gunpowder Plot and François Ravaillac's assassination of Henri IV among others. (These contemporaneous references are consistent with a date of authorship c. 1616; none of them are to events of the 1620s that would contradict that dating.) The one passage in the play most often cited in the critical literature is probably the catalogue of torture devices in Act III, scene iv: "the Russian Shiners, the Scottish Boots, the Dutch Wheel, the Spanish strappado, linen ball, and pearl of confession shall torment thee...," etc.

Despite the play's references to contemporary events, it gives no sense that it is in any way a commentary on the specific English political situation of its time. It is hard to see how either set of English rulers in its era — King James I and Queen Anne, or King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria — could be allegorised as Love and Hatred.

Though the morality-play genre was definitely old-fashioned by 1630, it had not yet died out entirely. Apart from the earlier Lingua, Pathomachia can be classed with a roster of similar plays in its generation, including Dekker and Ford's The Sun's Darling , Nabbes's Microcosmus, Randolph's The Muses' Looking Glass, Barten Holyday's Technogamia , and William Strode's The Floating Island, among others.

In the view of one critic, Pathomachia has "a significance for the historian of ethics and psychological theory." [7]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Ford (dramatist)</span> English poet and playwright (1586 – c. 1639)

John Ford was an English playwright and poet of the Jacobean and Caroline eras born in Ilsington in Devon, England. His plays deal mainly with the conflict between passion and conscience. Although remembered primarily as a playwright, he also wrote a number of poems on themes of love and morality.

<i>Blurt, Master Constable</i>

Blurt, Master Constable, or the Spaniards' Night Walk is a late Elizabethan comedy, printed anonymously in 1602 and usually attributed to either Thomas Middleton or Thomas Dekker.

<i>Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay</i> Play written by Robert Greene

Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, originally entitled The Honorable Historie of Frier Bacon and Frier Bongay, is an Elizabethan era stage play, a comedy written by Robert Greene. Widely regarded as Greene's best and most significant play, it has received more critical attention than any other of Greene's dramas.

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.

<i>The Coronation Triumph</i> Play written by Ben Jonson

The Coronation Triumph is a Jacobean era literary work, usually classed as an "entertainment," written by Ben Jonson for the coronation of King James I and performed on 15 March 1604. Jonson's work was half of a total performance, the other half written by Thomas Dekker. The work was especially significant in the developing literary career of Jonson, in that it marked the commencement of his role as a writer of masques and entertainments for the Stuart Court, a role he would fill for the next three decades.

The Renegado, or The Gentleman of Venice is a late Jacobean stage play, a tragicomedy written by Philip Massinger and first published in 1630. The play has attracted critical attention for its treatment of cultural conflict between Christian Europe and Muslim North Africa.

<i>The Scornful Lady</i>

The Scornful Lady is a Jacobean era stage play, a comedy written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, and first published in 1616, the year of Beaumont's death. It was one of the pair's most popular, often revived, and frequently reprinted works.

<i>Loves Metamorphosis</i>

Love's Metamorphosis is an Elizabethan era stage play, an allegorical pastoral written by John Lyly. It was the last of his dramas to be printed.

Summer's Last Will and Testament is an Elizabethan stage play, a comedy written by Thomas Nashe. The play is notable for breaking new ground in the development of English Renaissance drama. The literary scholar George Richard Hibbard says "No earlier English comedy has anything like the intellectual content or the social relevance that it has."

Walter Burre was a London bookseller and publisher of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, best remembered for publishing several key texts in English Renaissance drama.

Richard Meighen was a London publisher of the Jacobean and Caroline eras. He is noted for his publications of plays of English Renaissance drama; he published the second Ben Jonson folio of 1640/41, and was a member of the syndicate that issued the Second Folio of Shakespeare's collected plays in 1632.

George Eld was a London printer of the Jacobean era, who produced important works of English Renaissance drama and literature, including key texts by William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, and Thomas Middleton.

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.

The Three Ladies of London is an Elizabethan comedy about usury that was probably first performed in 1581; it was published in a quarto edition both in 1584 and 1592. The play is unusual and noteworthy as a philo-Semitic response to the prevailing anti-Semitism of Elizabethan drama and the larger contemporaneous English society.

The Wild Gallant is a Restoration comedy written by John Dryden. It was Dryden's earliest play, and written in prose, except for the prologue, and the epilogue, which are in verse. It was premiered on the stage by the King's Company at their Vere Street theatre, formerly Gibbon's Tennis Court, on February 5, 1663. As Dryden himself stated in his Preface, it was "the first attempt I made in Dramatique Poetry."

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.

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.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Augustine Matthews</span>

Augustine Matthews was a printer in London in the Jacobean and Caroline eras. Among a wide variety of other work, Matthews printed notable texts in English Renaissance drama.

References

  1. ↑ David Moore Bergeron, Textual Patronage in English Drama, 1570–1640, London, Ashgate, 2006; p. 40.
  2. ↑ E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923; Vol. 3, p. 499.
  3. ↑ Alfred Harbage, "Elizabethan and Seventeenth-Century Play Manuscripts," Papers of the Modern Language Association Vol. 50 No. 3 (September 1935), pp. 687–99; see p. 695.
  4. ↑ Peter Laslett, "Sir Robert Filmer: The Man Versus the Whig Myth," William and Mary Quarterly Vol. 5 (1948), pp. 523–46.
  5. ↑ Paul Edward Smith, ed., Pathomachia, Washington DC, Catholic University of America Press, 1942.
  6. ↑ Chambers, Vol. 3, p. 498.
  7. ↑ Alfred Harbage, "Materials for the Study of English Renaissance Drama," Modern Language Notes Vol. 59 No. 2 (February 1944), p. 131.
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.