Abstract
on the night before Agincourt the English soldiers, according to Holinshed, confessed themselves and received absolution at the hands of their chaplains;1 but in Henry V, IV, i, the youthful king “goes and visits all his host” attended by none. He alone comforts and inspires his dispirited men. In Holinshed Henry after the victory required his chaplains to sing the In exitu Israel and a Te Deum; but in Henry V, IV, viii, 119–122, chaplains are nowhere about for any such psalm or Te Deum. The dramatis personae in Henry V include “lords, ladies, officers, French and English soldiers, citizens, messengers, and attendants,” but no priests or chaplains. Holinshed could tell of Henry’s entering Harfleur and going to Saint Martin’s Church for a service of thanksgiving; or could show him passing through a city “to our ladie church [where] hauing said his orisons, he caused his chapleins to sing this antheme: Quis est tam magnus dominos: Who is so great a lord as our God”;2 but not Shakespeare.
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Notes
Holinshed, The Third volume of Chronicles (London, 1587), p. 552, c. 2.
Hall, The union of the two noble and illustre famelies of Lancastre and Yorke (1548), fol. 152v.
John Stow, The Annales of England (London, 1605), pp. 602–603; see also p. 628, line 35.
The Obedience of a Christen man, 1535, fol. cvij verso. See also The practyse of Prelates,1530, fol. B: “and at the last cometh in simple syr Jhon.”
John Bradford, “Letter on the Mass” (2 Sept. 1554), Writings I [Parker Society, XXXI] (Cambridge, 1848), P. 391. See also p. 71.
J. Dover Wilson, What Happens in Hamlet (New York, 1935), p. 69. Theobald’s similarly gratuitous editorial gloss gave Sir Christopher his priestly character in Richard III. See above p. 27. Still another unhappy gloss has crept into the stage directions heading Act IV in numerous modern editions of Richard II. In the 1623 Folio the stage directions prefacing this act read: Enter as to the Parliament, Bullingbrooke, Aumerle, Northumberland, Percie, Fitz-Water, Surrey, Carlile, Abbot of Westminster. Herauld, Officers, and Bagot. But at the head of this “great and crucial scene” in The Oxford Shakespeare stands this direction — The Lords spiritual on the right side of the throne: the Lords temporal on the left. Nothing of this sort is to be seen in any of the six quartos (1597, 1598, 1598, 1608, 1615, 1634), nor in any of the folios (1623, 1632, 1664, 1685 ).
The `bad’ 1603 is the exception. Nine later quartos appeared: in 1604, 1605, 1607, 1611, 1637, 1676, 1676, 1683, and 1695.
See William Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae 1’nglicanae ( London, 1846 ), I, ccxlii, for references showing the antiquity of this rule.
The rubric in the Elizabethan (1559) Prayerbook declares explicitly: “When they come to the grave, while the corpse is being made ready to be laid into the earth, the priest shall say, or the priests and clerks, shall sing.”
According to 1549 use he casts earth upon the corpse; according to 1552 and 1559 uses he recites a prayer while others “standing by” cast earth. On the other hand, if the churlish priest be thought of as a Roman Catholic (see Maurice J. Quinlan’s “Shakespeare and the Catholic Burial Services” [Shakespeare Quarterly,Summer, 1954, pp. 303–306]), then he failed to sprinkle grave and body, to bless the grave, to sing the antiphon In Paradisum deducant te angeli,and to recite various prayers and responses. Horatio’s Iine, “flights of angels sing thee to thy rest” (Hamlet,V, ii, 374), may perhaps echo the first phrase of this antiphon.
E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare (Oxford, 1930 ), II, 261.
Minutes and Accounts of the Corporation of Stratford-upon-Avon, Dugdale Society, V (London, 1926 ), pp. 50–51.
The scripture “while the corpse is made ready to be laid into the earth” is identical in 1549, 1552, 1559, and 1604 prayerbooks [Job 14. 1, 2].
According to Caxton,Calchas was a “bysshoppe of Troye” and a “passing wyse man” (The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye [Bruges, c. 1475], fol. 275).
John Lydgate, The Auncient Historie and onely trewe and syncere Cronicle of the warren betwixte the- Grecians and the Troyans (London, 1555), fol. V4, col. 1: “her father were therto contrarye,/For to vysyte and to haue a syght,/Of Dyomede that was become her knyght.”
P. A. Daniel said (p. xiv of his Introduction to Brooke’s Romeus and Juliet [London, 1875]) that Brooke’s friar is “represented much as in Shakespeare.”
In the address to the reader Brooke shows himself a staunch protestant“ (DNB,II, 1293b). His last publication before his untimely death was a scriptural harmony, An Agreement of sundry places of Scripture (1563).
Arthur Brooke, The tragicall history of Romeus and Juliet (London, 1567), fol. 16v. (lines 19–20).
his duty to prevent adultery (fol. 5R. lines 21–23). He admits his “science” is interdicted by “laws of men” (fol. 59v., lines 13–14), and only to be used in sudden dangers when a greater evil threatens (fol. 59v., lines 15–20).
For a fully documented discussion of clandestine marriage and its penalties see Encyclopédie Théologique,IX (Paris, 1844), pp. 507–515.
Constitutions and Canons 1604, ed. H. A. Wilson (Oxford, 1923 ), Canon LXII, fol. L3. See also Note on this Canon (Dd): “The penalty of three years’ suspension is that prescribed by the earlier Canon Law, to which the Canon of 1597 refers.”
Henry Bullinger, The Christen state of Matrymonye,trans. by Miles Cover-dale (London, 1552), fol. 16v. For the age limit, seventeen for girls and nineteen for men, Bullinger found support in the opinions of Plato and Aristotle. In ch. 5 he stated that any marriage without parental consent was void, founding his case on Scripture and the “Imperyall lawe.” Bullinger’s treatise was nine times reprinted before 1575. John Stock-wood in 1589 published a 100-page treatise proving all marriages without parental consent to be null and void.
In the J. Arthur Rank movie release (1954) an entirely new scene was added to make Friar John’s detention seem more inevitable. A poor bereft woman implores him to visit her dying husband, who wishes to “confess”. Inside the death-chamber the friar diagnoses the malady as plague. All those standing by rush out when he mentions “plague”, and guards immediately begin to nail the house shut. When half the original play was cut, the addition of this extra scene proves the movie-makers considered Shakespeare’s dramaturgy weak at this crucial point. The movie friar does become absolutely helpless. Shakespeare’s could get back to Verona.
First Englished in Thomas Roscoe, The Italian Novelists (London, 1825), II, 37–73.
Davis P. Harding, “Elizabethan Betrothals and `Measure for Measure.- Journal of English and Germanic Philology, XLIX (1950), pp. 139–158.
Even in his bawdiest tales, Bandello always posed as a moralist. See Certain Tragical Discourses ( London, 1898 ), I, xxiv.
Lope de Vega “saved” the friar by transacting the marriage and potion-business offstage. Felice Romani wrote the libretto for Vincenzo Bellini’s I Capuletti ed i Montecchi (1830); another recension of this same libretto was used by Nicola Vaccaj in Giulietta e Romeo (1825)
Gounod’s librettists, Jules Barbier and Michel Carré (1864), followed the play more faithfully than Romani; but they too reworked the friar’s characterization.
George Peele, The Famous Chronicle of king Edward the first (London, 1593), fol. L.
Robert Greene, The Honourable Historie of frier Bacon, and frier Bongay (London, 1594), fol. H2v.
Thomas Middleton, The Mayor of Quinborough: A Comedy (London, 1661), P. 7.
John Ford, lis Pitty Shee’s a Whore (London, 1633), fol. F3v.
Thomas Dekker, 7/ie Honest Whore (London, 1604), fol. 12. 6g. Ibid,fol. B2.
Philip Massinger, The Renegado (London, 1630), fol. B3v.
John Day, The Travailes Of The three English Brothers (London, 1607), fol. H2. Sir Anthony Shirley greets the pope and attending cardinals at fols. Dv.-D2.
Beaumont and Fletcher, Comedies and Tragedies (London, 1647), fol. 1111112 verso. (Act V, sc. i.)
First Englished by John Payne (for the Villon Society) in 1890. Shakespeare presumably had recourse to the French translation rather than the original.
François de Belleforest, Histoires Tragiques (Lyons-Rouen, 1564–1604), IV, 183.
William Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae (London, 1846), I, 43 n. 3 and n. 5.
Together by“ in 1552 and 1559; ”of“ in 154.9. This paragraph is second in each ”Forms of solempnization of Matrimonye.“
Beaumont and Fletcher, Act II, sc. i, 4. See also Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair,Act II, sc. vi, 148, for use of the term Patriro Waspe guarantees to cool Overdo’s “hot fit of preaching” with a beating and calls him “the Patriarch of the cutpurses.”
London production, Spring, 1952.
George Chapman, May-Day, A witty Comedie (London, 1611), pp. 29–30.
An Heptameron(London, 1582), fol. O. iij. `But vpon these Newes, couertly, in the Habyt of an Hermyt, by the Diuine motion of the sowie,… Andrugio,goes to see the Death of his Capitall enemie.. Andrugio,behouldyng this ruethfull Spectackle, was so ouercome with loue towardes his Sister, as to giue her comfort.… And followinge this Resolution, in his Hermyts weede, vpon his knees, he humblye desired the Kinge too giue hym leaue to speake.“ After falling at the king’s feet and securing a promise of pardon ”if Andrugio lyue“, he then ”discoueryng himselfe, shewed the Prouidence of God.“ It was from the Heptameron rather than Whetstone’s closet drama that Shakespeare probably picked up the name of his heroine, Isabella. Just as ”Madam Isabella“ from narrator of the Promos and Cassandra tale is turned into its heroine, so the hermit’s disguise is transferred from Andrugio to Duke Vincentio. No hint of such a disguise is to be found either in Giraldi Cinthio’s Hecatommithi or Epitia At fol. L iij in Whetstone’s Promos and Cassandra his disguise is only ”some long blacke Cloake“ (Actus. 5. Scena. 1. of Part II), and not a hermit’s habit.
Roy W. Battenhouse, “Measure for Measure and Christian Doctrine of the Atonement,” PMLA, LXI, no$14, pt. 1 (December, 1946 ), pp. 1029–1059.
G. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire (London, 1954), p. 79.
Elizabeth M. Pope, “The Renaissance Background of Measure for.Measure, ” Shakespeare Survey, II (1949), p. 71.
Sir Sidney Lee, “Shakespeare and the Spanish Inquisition,” The Living Age,May 20, 1922, PP- 460–466.
Cf. Sir Thomas More, III,ii, 279–280. Faulkner threatens to “notch that rogue tom barbar that makes me Tooke thus like a Brownist.” These lines belong to an addition credited to Shakespeare in C. F. Tucker Brooke, The Shakespeare Apocrypha,pp. fill—by. Evidently, Brownists wore their hair close cropped. Robert Browne was “the first Englishman of strong intellectual gifts to win distinction as a preacher of separatism” (C. Burrage, The Early English Dissenters [Cambridge, 5912], I, 94).
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Stevenson, R. (1958). Priests and Friars. In: Shakespeare’s Religious Frontier. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-3851-0_2
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