A
Glimpse of Theatre History
The most famous and most successful Tudor tragedy was written by Thomas Norton (1532-84) and Thomas Sackville (1536-1608) while they were students at the Inns of Court of London. Norton was to become a very successful lawyer and Sackville a barrister of the Inner Temple, and later Earl of Dorset and Lord High Treasure of England.
Based on British legend, and in conscious imitation of the Senecan model, Gorbuduc proved so successful at its premiere at the Hall of the Inner Temple, that it was repeated before Queen Elizabeth in a command performance. It is especially significant for its use of blank verse, a first in English tragedy which was to lead the way to the full flowering of what must be called the Elizabethan Golden Age. From Seneca, the play takes its
| 1] five-act form, 2] theme of revenge, which was to become popular later in "tragedies of blood," 3] choral odes, 4] Messenger speeches to report offstage violence, and 5] the ever popular sententiae. |
To these were added "dumb shows"-allegorical mimes borrowed from, or at least influenced by Italian intermedii. Each act begins with a "dumb show" which thematically presages the action that is to come. The dumb show preceding the fourth act is the most spectacular:
| First the music of the hautboys (oboes) began to play, during which there came forth from under the stage, as though out of hell, three furies, Alecto, Megæra and Tisiphone, clad in black garments sprinkled with blood and flames, their bodies girt with snakes, their heads spread with serpents instead of hair, the one bearing in her hand a snake, the other a whip, and third a burning firebrand: each driving before them a king and a queen: which, moved by furies, unnaturally had slain their own children. The names of the kings and queens were these, Tantalus, Medea, Athamas, Ino, Cambyses, Althea: after that the furies and these had passed about the stage thrice, they departed, and then the music ceased. Hereby signified the unnatural murders to follow; that is to say, Porrex slain by his own mother, and of King Gorbuduc and Queen Videna killed by their own subjects. |
At first glance, it is easy to dismiss Gorbuduc as merely reflecting the Elizabethan taste for bombast. But in fact, the play pulses with realistic life. The Messenger speeches, particularly in the first four acts take on the expectancy of the inner sancta of state, where news of unfolding events must have been carried by messengers. The volubility of the neoclassic preoccupation with the unity of place seems remarkably valid when we experience not the events themselves, but the impact of their reporting and their larger implications for the state. What many justifiable see as the beginnings of realism in the Elizabethan drama is very evident here in this full-blown rhetorical wonder.
Norton and Sackville's didactic purpose is very clear in this chorus from Act I [lines 458-463]:
| And this great king that doth divide his land, And change the course of his descending crown, And yields the reign into his children's hand, From blissful state of joy and great renown, A mirror shall become to princes all, To learn to shun the cause of such a fall. |
One can imagine the effect such sentiments must have had in the court of the Virgin Queen on whose choice of successor the peace and tranquility of the state would surely depend. Without a clear succession, Civil War was sure to ensue. This was no idle or unimportant topic.
Religion was also no peripheral preoccupation. Mary Tudor-dubbed Bloody Mary by her Protestant opponents for her bloody purges near the end of her reign-had seen to that. In an age when atheism was a crime because it was literally threatening the divine right of kings, the advice which elder son Ferrex's advisor Hermon gave the young man needed to be seen for what it was:
| When kings on slender quarrels run to wars, And then in cruel and unkindly wise, Command thefts, rapes, murders of innocents, The spoil of towns, ruins of mighty realms; Think you such princes do suppose themselves Subject to the laws of kind, and fear of gods? Murders and violent thefts in private men Are heinous crimes, and full of foul reproach; Yet none offence, but decked with glorious name Of noble conquests in the hands of kings. To which the elder advisor Dordan replies in horror: O heaven! Was there ever heard of know, So wicked counsel to a noble prince. The chorus later comments: Succeeding heaps of plagues shall teach, too late, To learn the mischiefs of misguided state. |
Sententiae abound, like this one that echoes the exodus of Sophokles' Oedipus: "O, no man happy till his end be seen." [III, i, 11]; or this little gem: "Sorrow doth dark the judgement of the wit." [III, i, 141]. . There is perhaps no more poignant speech anywhere than the unhappy Gorbuduc's pronouncement [IV, ii, 240-245]:
| Many can yield right sage and grave advice Of patient spirit to others wrapp'd in woe, And can in speech both rule and conquer kind; Who, if by proof they might feel nature's force, Would show themselves men as they are indeed, Which now will needs be gods… |