John Lyly was probably born in Canterbury in 1553 or 1554.
He took his B.A. at Oxford in 1573 and his M.A. in 1575, and
was made an M.A. by Cambridge University also in 1579. Late in
1578 his Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit was issued, a work
intended to set a pattern for English prose, in which he wove
into a thin thread of fiction dissertations on such subjects
as education and contemporary manners. A second part, Euphues
and His England, appeared in 1580. In spite of the vogue
of Euphues, whose style was imitated in a series of romantic
novels for many years to come, Lyly turned from fiction to devote
himself to drama, possibly under the influence of the Earl of
Oxford. Beginning about 1580 as his secretary, Lyly served the
earl at least until about 1585. He was esquire of the body to
Elizabeth in 1588, probably wrote a pamphlet and plays for the
bishop's party in the Marprelate controversy of 1589-90, and
secured election to parliament on four separate occasions. Disappointed
of his chief hopes, however, he died in 1606, after a decade
marked for us only by some petty records of his family life and
some letters complaining of failure and neglect.
Lyly's dramatic work was part of his disappointing effort
to advance his fortunes at court, especially in connection with
the office of the revels, but it was also designed for the professional
theater. The records of the activities and interrelations of
the boy companies by whom his plays were acted are complicated
and often obscure. Campaspe and Sappho and Phao
were printed in 1584 as having been acted early in the year at
court, by the Children of the Chapel and the Boys of St. Paul's
Choir School, but official payment for the two performances was
made to Oxford's "servants" under Lyly. Possibly the
boy company under Oxford's patronage was combined with the other
two companies in this year to perform at court plays written
by Lyly and Oxford. According to the prologues, however, Lyly's
two plays were also publicly acted at the "private"
theater of Blackfriars, where the Children of the Chapel had
given periodic performances for profit since 1576. Apparently
Lyly and Oxford acquired an interest in this playhouse just as
it was closed by a suit in 1584. Later Lyly wrote plays for Paul's
boys, as the title-pages show, clearly for both court and public
performances, until the public acting of the boys came to an
end in 1591. These plays, with the dates of publication, are
Endymion (1591), Galathea (1592), Mother Bombie
(1594), and Love's Metamorphosis (1601). The Woman
in the Moon (1597) has no indication of the company, and
may have been the result of some other connection.
It is in keeping with this effort to please the court and
the public that Lyly's dramatic work marks the first stage in
the development toward the Elizabethan popular drama of superb
literary quality which was to follow. In the words of Bond, Lyly
struck a "balance between classic precedent and romantic
freedom." Titles of lost plays suggest that court taste
had turned from the stricter classicism of academic circles to
romance, sometimes disguised by the use of classical story. Lyly
used as a basis of his plots love stories drawn from ancient
history or mythology, most often from Ovid, adding at times pastoral
or sylvan settings, and always reflecting the ideals of courtly
circles. Indirect effects of classical influence, possibly in
part derived from Italian influence, are seen in both structure
and style. There is good motivation of action, variety and skillful
complications of incidents, and suspense, especially in the love
story. A simplified form of the famous euphuistic prose style,
with new elements of conceit and wit appropriate to brisk dialogue,
makes Lyly's dramatic prose significant for the future of Elizabethan
drama. In his pages, with their quotations from the classics
and their parody of the forms and devices of logic, Lyly developed
roles appropriate to his actors as school boys, and the amount
of singing in the plays gives scope for them as choir boys. Probably
his style and his reflection of court life and taste account
for the early printing of his plays, which in turn probably led
to the printing of other romantic plays written for the London
stage, especially those of the University Wits.
In Endymion the main incidents of the long sleep and
the kiss of Cynthia, drawn from Ovid and Lucian, furnished a
basis for Lyly's best blend of classic story, love intrigue,
courtly and sylvan setting, satire, and wit. A long tradition
of interpreting classic myth freely as shadowing historical events
or embodying allegory was responsible for popularizing in the
Renaissance the use of myths for presentation of contemporary
events or figures, either for flattery or for satire, in poetry
generally but perhaps chiefly in pageants and plays. Lyly availed
himself of the fashion to flatter Elizabeth boldly as Cynthia
and possibly to glance at events in the court. Many attempts
have been made to read the apparent allegory of the play. In
1843 Halpin argued that Endymion's story represents Leicester's
love for Elizabeth and his relations to others at court. Other
interpretations of the play as personal allegory have been advanced
by various scholars. P.W. Long argues, however, perhaps correctly,
that the allegory is primarily one of Platonic love, in which
Endymion passes from love of Tellus (Earth), or earthly beauty,
to adoration of Cynthia as a symbol of heavenly beauty.
Endymion, probably composed some time between 1585
and 1588, was entered in the Stationer's Register on October
4, 1591, and published anonymously later that year. The play
was printed as Lyly's by Blount in Six Court Comedies
of 1632. The style, however, would leave no doubt as to Lyly's
authorship.
This article was originally published
in Elizabethan and Stuart Plays Ed. Charles Read Baskervill.
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1934. pp. 171-72.
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