The English Novel in the Time of ShakespeareJusserand, J. J. (Jean Jules)
History
The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare
Jusserand, J. J. (Jean Jules)
English fiction -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism
In the second part of his romance, which appeared in 1580,[91] Lyly
gives a kind of _Lettres persanes_, but _Lettres persanes_ reversed,
Montesquieu making use of his foreigner to satirize France, and Lyly of
his to eulogize his native land. Euphues comes to England with his
friend Philautus, and, since he knows everything, instructs the latter
as they go along. He warns him against wine, gambling, and debauchery,
teaches him geography, and points out to him what is worth seeing.
Philautus does not retort that Euphues is a pedant, which proves him to
be very good tempered and a perfect travelling companion. The two
friends are enchanted with the country: its natural products, its
commerce, its agriculture, its inhabitants and their manners, its
bishops and their flocks, the civil government, the religious
government, everything is perfect. English gentlewomen are prodigies of
wisdom and beauty; and indeed that is the least Lyly can say of them,
since it is for them that he is writing. When he spoke, as we have seen,
disparagingly of women, he meant Italian women (none of whom, as a
matter of fact, he had ever known or even seen), not Englishwomen. These
spend their mornings "in devout prayer," and not in bed like the ladies
of Italy; they read the Scriptures instead of Ariosto and Petrarch; they
are so beautiful that the traveller is enraptured and cannot help crying
out: "There is no beauty but in England." To sum up, "they are in prayer
devoute, in bravery humble, in beautie chast, in feasting temperate, in
affection wise, in mirth modest, in all their actions though courtlye,
bicause woemen, yet Aungels, bicause virtuous." As for the women of
other countries, they all have lovers and spend their time in painting
their faces.[92]
Having verified such important differences, Philautus cannot do less
than find a wife in England, and Euphues, whose unsociable humour
prevents his doing likewise, carries away with him into his native land
the remembrance of "a place, in my opinion (if any such may be on the
earth) not inferiour to a paradise," and of a Queen "of singuler beautie
and chastitie, excelling in the one Venus, in the other Vesta."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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