Mirroring Queen Elizabeth in John Lyly’s Comedies

Edmund Spenser, Spenser: The Faerie Queene, ed. A. C. Hamilton, text. ed., Hiroshi Yamashita and Toshiyuki Suzuki, Longman Annotated English Poets (Harlow, UK: Longman, 2001), 289.Google Scholar

For the translation (with an introduction and commentary), see Marc Shell, Elizabeth’s Glass (Lincoln and London: U of Nebraska P, 1993), esp. 111–44.Google Scholar

G. Wilson Knight, “Lyly,” Review of English Studies 15 (1939): 146–63, esp. 149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Leah S. Marcus, Puzzling Shakespeare: Local Reading and Its Discontents (Berkeley and London: U of California P, 1988), 51–105, esp. 66–92.Google Scholar

John Lyly, Sapho and Phao, The Plays of John Lyly, ed. Carter A. Daniel (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 1988), 69–104, esp. 71. All citations of Lyly’s plays (by page numbers) refer to texts in this edition.Google Scholar

G. K. Hunter, in John Lyly: The Humanist as Courtier (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1962), refers in his analysis of Sapho and Phao to “the sovereign lady Sapho-Elizabeth” (166–77, esp. 169). Hunter asserts that “[i]t is fairly clear throughout Sapho and Phao … that the chaste and lovable sovereign of the play is intended to be a complimentary image of Queen Elizabeth” (173)Google Scholar

Peter Saccio, in The Court Comedies of John Lyly: A Study in Allegorical Dramaturgy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1969), asserts that “[t]he overwhelming praise given Sapho clearly makes her a figure for that phoenix of the age: Queen Elizabeth” (168).Google Scholar

Spenser, The Faerie Queene 410 (Book 4, Proem 4.3–4, 9). Also see Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1958), 73–75.Google Scholar

Philippa Berry, in Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and the Unmarried Queen (London and New York: Routledge, 1984), argues that Cupid’s utterance, taken in conjunction with the association of lesbianism and Sapho’s name, creates a highly salacious innuendo in this play about the object of the unmarried Queen Elizabeth’s affections.Google Scholar

Joseph W. Houppert, in John Lyly, Twayne’s English Authors Series 177 (Boston: Twayne, 1975), claims that these details in Sapho’s dream register her sexual frustration in consummating her consciously unacknowledged passion for Phao (80).Google Scholar

Theodora A. Jankowski, in “The Subversion of Flattery: The Queen’s Body in John Lyly’s Sapho and Phao,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 5 (1991): 69–86, asserts that while Lyly perhaps intended in this play to flatter Queen Elizabeth, its text “can be read as calling into serious question both the political stature and political efficacy of the woman he intended to flatter” (70).Google Scholar

Cf. Michael Pincombe, The Plays of John Lyly: Eros and Eliza, The Revels Plays Companion Library (Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 1996), 52–78.Google Scholar

Richard Dutton, Mastering the Revels: The Regulation and Censorship of English Renaissance Drama (Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1991), 60–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Christine M. Neufeld, in “Lyly’s Chimerical Vision: Witchcraft in Endimion,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 43 (2007): 351–69, esp. 353, 362, argues that Queen Elizabeth is associated with the witch in this play not only by her moon aspect of Hecate, queen of witches, but also by her metaphorical bewitching Endimion in love and her releasing him from enchantment. Pincombe also suggests Cynthia’s association with the witch Dipsas (The Plays of John Lyly, 97–98). In the same vein, see Berry, Of Chastity and Power, 129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Robert S. Knapp, in “The Monarchy of Love in Lyly’s Endimion,” Modern Philology 73 (1976): 353–67, remarks that “[t]his behavior [of Endimion was] first exemplified in [Dante’s] Vita Nuova. In that first stage of a long allegorical journey through created veils, Dante … had first used one and then another lady as both screen and defense, as a ‘schermo’ for his love for Beatrice, herself ‘figura’ of divinity. Dante’s progress toward spiritual maturity consists in discarding these childish allegories, which had simultaneously shielded him from worldly envy and permitted him to worship through their protection that beauty which he had neither courage nor power to approach” (359–60). He argues that Endimion must learn to do the same, but Cynthia is not the aloof Beatrice of the Vita Nuova. She must learn to make an exception to her cold aloofness and bend in mercy to kiss and redeem Endimion, setting an example for her world.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Knapp states that “[a]fter the oracle has been fulfilled and Cynthia’s kiss has wakened Endimion to divine beauty incarnate, he must still put on the Pauline new man: he must stop lying” (363). He believes that, after his final lie, he did not say to Tellus that he loved her (191). Endimion, “[u]rged by Cynthia, taking heart from her promise not to revenge love with hatred, … puts away his screen of honor and openly speaks truth” (363). The only speech before the end of the play to which Knapp’s judgment might apply involves Endimion’s telling Cynthia that he never dared to call his honoring of her love (either to himself or to anyone else), and that he now knows that the great difference in their states means that his feeling for her cannot be called love (191). Nevertheless, he asks Cynthia to grant him the wish to call his honoring her love, as long as the profession is secretly to himself (and that if anyone asks him what he feels, he will say “honor”) (191). Taking this speech, whose subject is duplicity, as clear testimony of Endimion’s putting on the New Man, of his new capacity for truth telling, proves difficult. I would argue that awakened Endimion’s persistent mark of original sin accentuates the generosity of Cynthia’s merciful stooping to kiss and redeem him. In this respect, the Catholic Virgin Mary as intercessor for fallen humankind constitutes an analogue for Cynthia’s behavior. As both Peter Weltner (“The Antinomic Vision of Lyly’s Endimion,” English Literary Renaissance 3 [1973]: 5–29, esp. 27–28).Google Scholar

Carolyn Ruth Swift Lenz (“The Allegory of Wisdom in Lyly’s Endimion,” Comparative Drama 10 [1976]: 235–57, esp. 235, 254) note, Lyly’s Endimion was first performed before Queen Elizabeth on Candlemas Day (February 2, 1588). Candlemas, celebrated in the Church of England calendar, focuses the presentation of the infant Jesus in the temple and commemorates the purification of the Virgin Mary as well as her chastity. Weltner in particular explains how Cythnia in Lyly’s play is an analogue to the Virgin Mary (28). Lenz concludes that “[a]lthough Endimion never displays the supremacy we would expect of Christ, Cynthia in contrast does resemble the Virgin Mary as intermediary between the mortal and the divine. No one can prove that [Protestant] silence about the Virgin in liturgy, in sermons, and in the English tales about Cynthia means that [the Virgin] was also absent from the hearts of a congregation, of a theatre audience, or of a playwright” (“The Allegory of Wisdom in Lyly’s Endimion,” 254).Google Scholar

Saccio, interpreting the dumb show of Endimion, equates the first lady with Tellus, the second with Dipsas, and the third with either Bagoa or Floscula (The Court Comedies of John Lyly, 181). He does so as part of his effort to interpret the dumb show in terms of the Four Daughters of God deriving from Psalm 85:10: “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness [or justice] and peace have kissed each other” (175–85, esp. 175). In Saccio’s reading, Tellus is Truth, and she carries a knife because she hates the falsehood about love that Endimion has told her. Dipsas is Justice, supporting Truth’s intent to punish Endimion’s falsehood. Bagoa or Floscula is Mercy because each feels sorry for Endimion’s bewitchment, but lack the courage to oppose it. Later, Cynthia assumes the role of Mercy. But there are four Daughters and only three women in the dream vision, a discrepancy challenging interpreters such as Saccio who would decode it in terms of Psalm 85:10. Peace proves the troublesome Daughter. First Saccio says that Cynthia not only absorbs Bagoa’s or Floscula’s role as Mercy, but also that she gathers all four Daughters’ virtues within herself (179). Then he claims, incredibly, that the acid-tongued Semele represents Peace in the allegory (183–84). Contrary to Saccio’s claim that Tellus depicts Truth in Endimion, Weltner argues that Tellus “dissembles more than any of the other major characters in the play [and] fails to follow truth’s constancy” (“The Antinomic Vision of Lyly’s Endimion,” 18). Most commentators interpret the dumb show of Endimion according to the dynamics of the Four Daughters of God in Psalm 85:10. In addition to Saccio, see Bernard F. Huppé, “Allegory of Love in Lyly’s Court Comedies,” ELH 14 (1947): 93–113, esp. 105n.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

J. A. Bryant, Jr., “The Nature of the Allegory in Lyly’s Endimion,” Renaissance Papers (Durham, NC: Southeastern Renaissance Conference, 1956), 4–11, esp. 7–9; and Lenz, “The Allegory of Wisdom in Lyly’s Endimion,” 245.Google Scholar

Leah Scragg, “The Victim of Fashion? Rereading the Biography of John Lyly,” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 19 (2006): 210–26, esp. 212.Google Scholar

See Maurice Hunt, “Being Precise in Measure for Measure,” Renascence 58 (2006): 243–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar