Recent Studies in the English Renaissance

ELR bibliographic essays are intended to combine a topical review of research with a reasonably complete bibliography. Scholarship is organized by authors or titles of anonymous works. Items included represent combined entries listed in the annual bibliographies published by PMLA, YWES, and MHRA from 1971 through, in the present instance, 2010. The format used here is a modied version of that used in Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama, ed. Terence P. Logan and Denzel S. Smith, 4 vols. (Univ. of Nebraska, 19731978). The ELR series is edited by Elizabeth H. Hageman, Professor of English-Emerita, University of New Hampshire.

RECENT STUDIES IN JOHN LYLY (19902010)

ruth lunney editions

ew standard editions providing modern-spelling, annotated texts have become available since 1990. Lylys prose works, Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit and Euphues and His England, are published in a single volume edited by Leah Scragg for the Revels Plays Companion Library (2003). The eight plays are in the Revels Plays series: Campaspe (ed. G. K. Hunter) and Sappho and Phao (David Bevington) in a single volume (1991); Endymion (Bevington, 1996); Galatea (Hunter) and Midas (Bevington) in a single volume (2000); The Woman in the Moon (Scragg, 2006); Loves Metamorphosis (Scragg, 2008); and Mother Bombie (Scragg, 2010). The older 3-volume edition, The Complete Works of John Lyly, ed. R. Warwick Bond (1902; rpt. 1967), includes in addition to the works listed above the anti-Martinist tract Pap with a Hatchet and extant letters and petitions by Lyly as well as other works of possible or doubtful attribution. I. General Studies A. Biographical Studies. The most extensive biographical study remains G. K. Hunter, John Lyly: The Humanist as Courtier (1962). Michael Pincombe, The Plays of John Lyly: Eros and Eliza (1996), challenges the established view of

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Lyly as a courtly dramatistthe humanist as courtier in Hunters formulationtracing his career instead in terms of an increasingly skeptical and hostile attitude to courtliness. Leah Scragg, The Victim of Fashion? Rereading the Biography of John Lyly, MaRDiE 19 (2006), 21026, contends that Lyly was not the victim of fashion (Hunters term) but of censorship and that even after 1590 he remained a respected and prominent gure in the cultural landscape. In her Edward Blount and the History of Lylian Criticism, RES 46 (1995), 110, Scragg rejects the notion that nostalgia prompted Blounts publication of the Court Comedies in 1632; it was rather a personal tribute from a knowledgeable publisher to one of the luminaries of the Elizabethan stage. Derek B. Alwes,John Lyly (between 1552 and 1554November 1606), in DLB 167 (1996), ed. David A. Richardson, pp. 10215; rev. and rpt. in Alwes, Sons and Authors in Elizabethan England (2004), pp. 2846, offers a developmental account of Lylys career inuenced by Richard Helgerson, The Elizabethan Prodigals (1976). Alwes describes the early writings as a pursuit of patronage: in Euphues for academic advancement, in its sequel for a place as a courtly entertainer. In another essay, I would fain serve: John Lylys Career at Court, CompD 34 (Winter 2000/2001), 399421; rev. and rpt. in his Sons and Authors (2004), pp. 4764, Alwes argues that the clever, willful, and perceptive servants of the plays represent Lylys relationship with Queen and court and ultimately express his frustration at not achieving a meaningful position. G. K. Hunter, John Lyly (15541606), in ODNB 34 (2004), pp. 86772, offers a useful brief biography. Alan H. Nelson, Monstrous Adversary:The Life of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (2003), documents Lylys relationship with Oxford. Albert Feuillerat, John Lyly: Contribution LHistoire de la Renaissance en Angleterre (1910; rpt. 1968), includes relevant documents. Mark Eccles, Brief Lives: Tudor and Stuart Authors, SP 79 (1982), 8688, provides additional biographical details. B. Critical Studies. Lylys claims to critical attention are advanced by Leah Scragg, Introduction to her edition of Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit and Euphues and His England (Editions, above), for whom Lylys work is striking in its modernity as well aswith its kaleidoscopic assemblage of Renaissance concernsproviding a window into sixteenth-century culture. In her John Lyly and the Politics of Language, EIC 55 (2005), pp.1738, Scragg explores the increasing politicization of language in Lylys works from Euphues to Midas: Lylys fascination with the malleability of language culminates in a socio/political destabilisation of meaning in a world inimical to freedom of expression. In another essay, Any Shape One Would Conceive: From a Prose Style to Lylys Plays for the First Blackfriars Theatre, in Contexts of Renaissance Comedy, ed. Janet Clare and Roy Eriksen
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(1997), pp. 6176, Scragg highlights the continuity between the prose works and plays, noting the constant process of destabilisation, the destruction rather than construction of meaning, that lies at the heart of the new English which Lyly taught his contemporaries. Chloe Porter, Idolatry, Iconoclasm, and Agency: Visual Experience in Works by Lyly and Shakespeare, L&H 18 (2009), 115, claims that Lyly enlists the individual spectator, of Euphues and His England and Campaspe in particular, to construct and interrogate the visual, including images of royalty. Jacqueline Vanhoutte,A Strange hatred of Marriage: John Lyly, Elizabeth I, and the Ends of Comedy, in The Single Woman in Medieval and Early Modern England: Her Life and Representation, ed. Laurel Amtower and Dorothea Kehler (2003), pp. 97115, argues that the four court plays reect the Queens avoidance of marriage and that as lessons for single women they encourage a search for alternatives to a traditional heterosexual marriage. Theodora A. Jankowski, Pure Resistance: Queer Virginity in Early Modern English Drama (2000), instances Gallathea and Loves Metamorphosis as featuring queer virgins: those who stand outside the early modern sex/gender system by not acceding to conventional expectations. John Franceschina, Homosexualities in the English Theatre: From Lyly to Wilde (1997), pp. 3041, comments that each of Lylys plays trades in some kind of homoeroticism, while the Euphues books feature an elegant depiction of male bonding that was socially acceptable purely on the basis of mutual affection rather than mutual interest. Gender studies referring to particular works will be covered below in the relevant sections. For Jeanne McCarthy, Elizabeth Is picture in little: Boy Company Representations of a Queens Authority, SP 100 (2003), 42562, the Queens promotion of the boy companies disciplined her courtiers into accepting a distant but loving childlike relationship with their maternal queen. For Philippa Berry, Chastity and the Power of Interior Spaces: Lylys Alternative View of Elizabethan Courtiership, in her Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and the Unmarried Queen (1989), pp. 11133, Lyly endorses courtiership as a mysticism of contemplation rather than of action linked with the isolationism of the Burghley faction. David Bevington,Lylys Endimion and Midas: The Catholic Question in England, CompD 32 (1998), 2646, considers both plays in the context of the political crises of 15871588: Endimion contains an implicit plea for royal tolerance of the loyal Catholic lords such as his patron, Oxford, whereas Midas satirizes tyranny and celebrates national greatness. Robert Weimann, Scene Individable, Mingle-Mangle Unlimited: Authority and Poetics in Lylys and Shakespeares Theatres, EJES 1 (1997), 31028; rev. and rpt. as From hodge-podge to scene individable, in Prologues to Shakespeares Theatre: Performance and Liminality in Early Modern Drama, ed.
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Douglas Bruster and Robert Weimann (2004), pp. 11734, asserts that the prologue to Midas reveals an awareness of contemporary political heterogeneity and hence authorizes the plays mingle-mangle of elements. In contrast, G. K. Hunter, English Drama, 15861642:The Age of Shakespeare (1997), pp. 13851, proposes a less politically aware author than the other University Wits: the prose works may hint at an individual narrative voice, but the plays lack political engagement between hierarchy and subversion. Challenging the standard view of Lylys plays as static and intellectual, Kent Cartwright, The Confusions of Gallathea: John Lyly as Popular Dramatist, CompD 32 (1998), 20739; rpt. in his Theatre and Humanism: English Drama in the Sixteenth Century (1999), pp. 16793, aligns the theatricality of the plays with that of the popular drama: Lyly adapts romance conventions to a humanist dramaturgy, thus achieving a shift in the nature of theatrical experience. Paul Whiteld White, Playing Companies and the Drama of the 1580s: A New Direction for Elizabethan Theatre History? ShakS 28 (2000), 26584, conjectures that Lyly may have written for the public theaters. Scragg, Speaking Pictures: Style and Spectacle in Lylian Comedy, ES 86 (2005), 298311, traces the progressive integration of euphuistic style with theatrical resources in the plays from Campaspe to Loves Metamorphosis. Matthew Steggle, Laughing and Weeping in Early Modern Theatres (2007), pp. 99102, comments that the Lylyan aesthetic of soft smiling promised in the Blackfriars Prologue to Sappho and Phao, is at odds with the usual expectations of Renaissance comedy as well as with much of the practice of Lyly himself. Useful discussions on the staging of individual plays and their theatrical history (or lack thereof) can be found in the introductions to the Revels Plays editions. Pincombe (I, A) provides a chapter on each play and one on Euphues; he contends that Lyly is an Ovidian writer rather than a courtly one, with the plays belonging to the metropolis and the relatively new tradition of commercial juvenile drama. Carter A. Daniel, Introduction to his edition of The Plays of John Lyly (1988), emphasizes the comic spirit of euphuism and the notable achievements of the plays in thematic unity, structure, dialogue, and in the merging of the classical and romance elements of court drama. John Lyly, ed. Ruth Lunney (2011), reprints fourteen of the essays referred to in this review; they include the following, mentioned above: Alwes,Career at Court (I, A); Scragg, Politics of Language (I, B); Bevington (I, B); Cartwright, Confusions of Gallathea (I, B); Scragg, Speaking Pictures (I, B). Other inclusions are (below) Bates, Art of Civil Conversation (II, B); Walen, Constructions of Female Homoerotics (II, C). Additional items are to be found in the entries on individual works in Section II, below. C. Bibliographies. In the process of updating Kevin J. Donovan, Recent Studies in John Lyly (19691990), ELR 22 (1992), 43550, which covers
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scholarship from 1969 through 1990, the present essay includes several items from 1988 to 1990. Reid Barbour, Recent Studies in Elizabethan Prose Fiction, ELR 25 (1995), 24876, has a section on Lyly; three items are repeated here, as is one included in James L. Harner, English Renaissance Prose Fiction, 15001660: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism, 19841990 (1992). Brownell Salomon, John Lyly, in his Critical Analyses in English Renaissance Drama: A Bibliographic Guide (1991), pp. 97104, offers selected annotated entries to 1985. Jon Lawry, A Working Bibliography for John Lyly and the Martin Marprelate Controversy, in Two Bibliographies: John Lyly, by James L. Harner and Jon Lawry, ERP (1989), 4050, lists texts and studies relevant to Pap with a Hatchet to 1985.

II. Studies of Individual Works A. Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit. The Revels Plays Companion text of Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (Editions, above) is based on the second edition of 1579, a version which expands the narrative and includes Lylys letter to the Gentlemen Scholars of Oxford and from which all subsequent early editions derive; in contrast, Bonds text (Editions, above) uses the rst edition of 1578 with material added from the third edition (also 1579). In her introduction to the Revels edition Leah Scragg comments on the pervasive ambivalence at the heart of the euphuistic mode [which] endows Lylys work with a far greater degree of ambiguity than its subject matter initially suggests. Lylys humanist heritage is analyzed by Melanie Ord, Travel and Prodigality in John Lylys Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578) and Euphues and his England (1580), in her Travel and Experience in Early Modern English Literature (2008), pp. 5787, who considers the rival inuences of Aschams Scholemaster and contemporary travel narratives, concluding that Lyly provides no decisive answer in the debate between book-learning and experience. R. W. Maslen, Elizabethan Fictions: Espionage, Counter-Espionage, and the Duplicity of Fiction in Early Elizabethan Prose Narratives (1997), argues that Euphues conforms to Aschams values as a satire on the private lives of the ruling classes, and the sequel contains a sometimes ironic version of . . . an English Utopia, protected from foreign inltration by a wealth of safe native ctions. For Jeff Dolven, however, in the chapter Experience: Lylys Euphues, in his Scenes of Instruction in Renaissance Romance (2007), pp. 6597, Lyly is the categorical enemy of Ascham in attempting to use romance narrative to call received modes of teaching and learning into question; Euphues himself, however, retreats into the role of schoolmaster at the end of the rst book and becomes a tragic gure in the second.Tom MacFaul, Male Friendship in Shakespeare and
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His Contemporaries (2007), pp. 6672, comments that the humanist rhetoric of ideal friendship is used ironically in depicting the relationship between Euphues and Philautus. Joan Pong Linton,The Humanist in the Market: Gendering Exchange and Authorship in Lylys Euphues Romances, in Framing Elizabethan Fictions: Contemporary Approaches to Early Modern Narrative Prose, ed. Constance C. Relihan (1996), pp. 7397; rpt. in Lunney (I, B), pp. 71100, explores euphuism in terms of class and gender, noting its feminine and emotional qualitiesdespite its performance of logicalitywhich aligns the style more closely with the negotiable values of the marketplace than the hierarchical, absolute truths of the court; Lyly resolves the tensions inherent in cultivating both court patronage and a middle-class female audience by resorting to the humanist discourse of domestic mastery. Stephen Guy-Bray, Homo and Allo in Lylys Euphues, in Prose Fiction and Early Modern Sexualities in England, 15701640, ed. Constance C. Relihan and Goran V. Stanivukovic (2004), pp. 11327, nds a world of blurred binaries, with the interactions between rhetorical gures of difference (alloiosis) and sameness (homonormativity) correlating with the stages of the human relationships in the text; at the end Euphues is a gure of stability, masculine friendship is afrmed, and Lucillawho has repudiated the values of her social contextis the real sodomite. A different message is found in Katherine Wilson, An ensample to all women of lightness: Lylys Lucilla and her Inuence, Imaginaires 2 (1997), 3146; rev. and rpt. in her Fictions of Authorship in Late Elizabethan Narratives: Euphues in Arcadia (2006), pp. 5264, who comments that euphuism is reinvented by every new speaker and especially by the prodigal daughter, Lucilla, who seizes the narrative energy of the text and at her death becomes a romance heroine, a source of wonder and strangeness. Caroline Lucas, Writing for Women: The Example of Woman as Reader in Elizabethan Romance (1989), pp. 4447, comments that in passages such as Lucillas self-debate womens thoughts and feelings are treated seriously despite the misogyny and condescension displayed elsewhere. Leah Guenther, To Parley Euphuism: Fashioning English as a Linguistic Fad, RenSt 16 (2002), 2435, declares that Lylys intentions were less than high-minded: Euphues was written and marketed as an article of linguistic fashion to appeal to Elizabeths fashionable ock, but it was mere verbal nery that would soon become threadbare. Michael Pincombe, Lylys Euphues: Anatomy or Peep-Show? in Narrative Strategies in Early Modern Fiction, ed. Wolfgang Grtschacher and Holger Klein (1995), pp. 10313, also discounts any lofty motives: Lyly aims to titillate his Gentlemen Readers rather than illuminate them, since moral imperfection is the key to beauty and to the pleasure of art.
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B. Euphues and His England. The Revels Plays Companion text of Euphues and His England (Editions, above) is based on the rst edition (1580). The appendix provides a translation of Lylys Latin poem, Iovis Elizabeth, included in the text. For Victoria Burke, Constructing the Woman Reader in Barnabe Riche, John Lyly, and Marguerite de Navarre, in Narrative Strategies in Early Modern Fiction, ed. Wolfgang Grtschacher and Holger Klein (1995), pp. 11531, Lyly presents two visions of women: the rst, in the preface, is associated with frivolity and sexual dalliance; the second, in the text, is realized in the articulate, intelligent women at court and in the invitations to female readers to go beyond the text into their own discourse. Mary Ellen Lamb, Inventing the Early Modern Woman Reader Through the World of Goods: Lylys Gentlewoman Reader and Katherine Stubbs, in Reading Women: Literacy, Authorship, and Culture in the Atlantic World, 15001800, ed. Heidi Brayman Hackel and Catherine E. Kelly (2008), pp. 1535, attends more to Burkes rst vision, arguing that the construction of the female reader in Lylys epistle to the Ladies and Gentlewomen of England conates reading pleasure with eroticized consumer pleasures and thus prohibits any deep engagement with the text, especially the dangerous freedom of self-denition made possible by reading. Similarly, Helen Hackett, Fictions addressed to women by Lyly, Rich and Greene, in her Women and Romance Fiction in the English Renaissance (2000), pp. 76100, claims that the irtatious address to women readers primarily announced to male readers that titillating reading pleasures were to follow; the more positive images of women in the text itself are essentially part of a rhetorical game and the praise of Elizabeth a vehicle for didactic exhortations. Heidi Brayman Hackel, Boasting of silence:Women Readers in a Patriarchal State, in Reading, Society, and Politics in Early Modern England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker (2003), pp. 10121, offers an even more repressive picture based on a comparison of Lylys epistles to male and female readers: men are invited to judge and correct as they see t, women to conceal their censure and observe the silence expected of them in a patriarchal state. Alex Davis, Futures Past: John Lylys Visions of History in Euphues and His England, CahiersE 76 (2009), 110, suggests that the texts structuring as a network of interacting histories allows its celebration of the present to be underpinned by a gradualist, organic account of the past but also produces an ambiguity which undermines the panegyric of Elizabeth and her England. For Steve Mentz, Escaping Italy: From Novella to Romance in Gascoigne and Lyly, SP 101 (2004), 15371; rev. and rpt. in his Romance for Sale in Early Modern England:The Rise of Prose Fiction (2006), pp. 12941, the text develops an alternative to the amoral urbanity of the Italian novella: Lylys Frances, with her English values, showed later writers how the conventions of
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romance could inoculate narrative ction against the novella. Catherine Bates, A large occasion of discourse: John Lyly and the Art of Civil Conversation, RES 42 (1991), 46986; rev. and rpt. in her The Rhetoric of Courtship in Elizabethan Language and Literature (1992), pp. 89110, notes that Euphues and His England is centered around debates in the manner of the Italian courtly tradition; a distinction is drawn, nevertheless, between the civil conversation of the court which functions to restrain desire and the more legitimate courtship which aims at marriage. D. A. Beecher, Antiochus and Stratonice: The Heritage of a MedicoLiterary Motif in the Theatre of the English Renaissance, SCen 5 (1990), 11332, discusses the Fidus-Iffyda-Thirsus story as a variation exemplifying delity on a traditional tale of pathological erotic desire. Katherine Wilson, Venus Backside: The Real Ideal of Renaissance Prose Fiction, Imaginaires 3 (1998), 4356; rev. and rpt. in her Fictions of Authorship (II, A), pp. 6474, describes Euphues adventures in England as at once designer ephemera offering instant gratication and a daring attempt to represent the unrepresentable: the queen lies at the heart of Lylys book, but she has to be approached with caution. Porter (I, B), in contrast, suggests that Lyly enlists the reader as an active participant in the creation of an image of the queen. C. Gallathea. The Revels Plays edition of Galatea [sic] (Editions, above) is based on the rst edition of 1592 with the addition of the songs, which derive from the 1632 collection by Edward Blount, Six Court Comedies. In his introduction to the Revels edition G. K. Hunter describes the play as a deliberately depoliticized version of the standard story of Olympian quarrel and human confusion; the play may present serious issues, but only inside the rules of a high-spirited game. Denise A. Walen, Constructions of Female Homoerotics in Early Modern Drama, TJ 54 (2002), 41130; rev. and rpt. in her Constructions of Female Homoeroticism in Early Modern Drama (2005), pp. 57, 28788, 32730, cites Gallathea as an example of utopian lesbian erotics: Gallathea and Phillida are drawn to each others feminine qualities, establishing the homoerotic nature of their desires. Laurie Shannon, Renaissance Homonormativity and Elizabethan Comic Likeness, MP 98 (2000), 183210, in a study of Ovid, Gallathea, and Twelfth Night, contends that a preference for homonormativity (the attraction of like to like) was natural in the Renaissance and lies behind the plays ratication of homonormative bondsand its unpleasant images of heterosexual mixing. Theodora A. Jankowski, Where there can be no cause of affection: Redening virgins, their desires, and their pleasures in John Lylys Gallathea, in Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture, ed.Valerie Traub, M. Lindsay Kaplan, and Dympna Callaghan (1996), pp. 25374; rev. and rpt. in Jankowski (I, B), pp. 1427, maintains that the play presents examples
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of virginsDiana and her nymphs as well as the two maidenswho nd ways of dening themselves and their desires outside the patriarchal sexual economy. Jennifer Drouin, Dianas Band: Safe Spaces, Publics, and Early Modern Lesbianism, in Queer Renaissance Historiography: Backward Gaze, ed. Vin Nardizzi, Stephen Guy-Bray, and Will Stockton (2009), pp. 85110, describes Dianas band as a public of lesbian separatists, who exercise social and sexual autonomy while retaining every appearance of conventional virtue. Pincombe (I, A) distinguishes between Dianas cult of virginity as a tyrannical erotic rgime, which reects the conduct of erotic courtship at court, and the spontaneous love of the girls, physical as well as spiritual, which illustrates natures Ovidian mutability. Mark Dooley, Inversion, Metamorphosis, and Sexual Difference: Female Same-Sex Desire in Ovid and Lyly, in Ovid and the Renaissance Body, ed. Goran V. Stanivukovic (2001), pp. 5976, argues that Lyly radicalizes Ovidian myths, with female same-sex desire presented as both possible and desirableand patriarchal power as impotent. Valerie Traub, The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England, GLQ 7 (2001), 24563; rev. and rpt. in her The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England (2002), pp. 56, 28788, 32729, suggests that Lylys retelling of Ovids Iphis-Ianthe story with its theme of practicing impossibilities may reproduce social orthodoxy but also gestures towards the enactment of erotic passion for ones own sex. Douglas Bruster,FemaleFemale Eroticism and the Early Modern Stage, RenD 24 (1993), 132, considers the cultural myth that shaped male spectator expectations of female-female eroticism: the mutual attraction of beautiful twins in a separate place at an early or earlier time. In terms of this myth Gallathea exemplies a mutual attraction based on beauty. Christopher Wixson, Cross-Dressing and John Lylys Gallathea, SEL 41 (2001), 24156; rpt. in Lunney (I, B), pp. 35166, considers that the crossdressing in the play should be viewed in its theatrical context, that of a court drama concerned with the maintenance, legitimization, and celebration of authority; same-sex desire in the play may subvert its compulsory heterosexuality, but the lovers are rewarded for a desire that does not breach class boundaries. Cross-dressing also matters to Franceschina (I, B), who labels Gallathea the most homoerotic of Lylys plays,especially abundant in ambivalent transvestite associations. For Grace Tiffany, Erotic Beasts and Social Monsters: Shakespeare, Jonson, and Comic Androgyny (1995), pp. 4853, this tranvestism is exploited in Gallatheas staging of a mythic androgyny which signies the collapse of gender distinctions in the presence of eros, an androgyny of the kind associated with desire, divinity, creativity, and beastliness. The political implications of Gallathea are explored by Jacqueline A. Vanhoutte, Sacrice, Violence, and the Virgin Queen in Lylys Gallathea,
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CahiersE 49 (1996), 114, who suggests that the play reects Elizabeths increasingly androgynous rhetoric; as sacred monarch and sacricial victim, she is inscribed with the contradictions, desires, and fears of her patriarchal society. In a later essay, Vanhoutte (I, B) argues that the play is structured around a homology between marriage and virgin sacrice as Lyly contributes to the emerging cult of Elizabeth as a virgin goddess.That Lyly suffered unresolved conict about this contribution is urged by Mike Pincombe, John Lylys Galatea: Politics and Literary Allusion, in A Companion to Tudor Literature, ed. Kent Cartwright (2010), pp. 38194, who remarks upon the plays strategic vagueness as seen in its shifts of focus between the playworld and the courtly world of its audience. Stefania Gobbi,La Metamorfosi Annunciata in Gallathea di John Lyly, Acme 48 (1995), 4554, suggests that the projected transformation will be psychological as well as physical, a reconciliation of opposites symbolically appropriate for attering a queen who exercises patriarchal authority. Julia Bowen, Swift hart and soft heart: Elizabeth I and the Iconography of Lylys Gallathea and Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream, SPWVSRA 20 (1997), 4258, claims that the iconography of the bow in both plays points to the ambiguous reputation of Elizabeth as Diana or Venus, chaste or wanton. The theatricality of Gallathea is defended by Cartwright (I, B), noting the plays transgressive erotic fantasies and kinesthetic and emotional confusions; he comments that the action returns repeatedly to a concrete interest in the body, in the physical, kinetic, and emotional dimensions of experience. Kate D. Levin, Playing with Lyly: Theatrical Criticism and NonShakespearean Drama, RORD 40 (2001), 2553; rpt. in Lunney (I, B), pp. 46189, agrees with Cartwright and records a successful college production of the play; in performance, the allegories proved powerfully theatrical, the euphuistic language had emotional and comic potential, and the characters were capable of emotion, conict, and development. Jeremy Lopez, Theatrical Convention and Audience Response in Early Modern Drama (2003), pp. 190200, describes the unresolved ending as a radical experiment which becomes a celebration of freedom from rigid adherence to laws, whether of nature or fate or courtship. Peter Happ, Laughter in Court: Four Tudor Comedies (15181585), from Skelton to Lyly, in Tudor Theatre: For Laughs (?)/Pour Rire (?): Puzzling Laughter in Plays of the Tudor Age/Rires et Problmes dans le Thtre des Tudors, ed. Roberta Mullini (2002), pp. 11127, compares the dramaturgy of Gallathea with that of three earlier court plays in the delicate and doubtfully rewarding business of laughter in court; he notes that each of the four is inuenced by the character of the reigning monarch. D. Endymion. The Revels Plays edition of Endymion (Editions, above) is based on the rst edition of 1591 with the addition of the songs, which derive
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from the 1632 collection by Edward Blount, Six Court Comedies. In his introduction to the Revels edition David Bevington surveys the complex allegorical and symbolic meanings of the playcosmic, Neoplatonic, political, religious, genderedand argues that the messages are both topical (as repeated in Bevington, I, B) and more general, with the male courtier renouncing personal ambition to achieve a self-abnegating obedience. Jacqueline Vanhoutte, Elizabeth I as Stepmother, ELR 39 (2009), 31535, argues that references to Elizabeth as stepmother in a range of writings, including Endymion, allowed indirect commentary on the Queens strategies and tness for rule, including her usurpation of masculine privilege and her handling of the succession. For Christine M. Neufeld, Lylys Chimerical Vision: Witchcraft in Endymion, FMLS 43 (2007), 35169; rpt. in Lunney (I, B), pp. 193213, the play expresses anxieties about both witchcraft and the monstrous potential in all women; the queen and the witch are aligned in their chimerical natures, which represent the confusion of accepted social categories. In contrast, Natalia Khomenko, Between You and Her No Comparison: Witches, Healers, and Elizabeth I in John Lylys Endymion, ETREED 13 (2010), 3763, contends that in Protestant writings witches have no more power than other women: Cynthia, unique in nature and authority, is a healer of the social fabric but must also regulate the behavior of court ladies in their seeking after power and inuence. Philippa Berry (I, B) comments that the theme of witchcraft highlights Cynthias emotional and spiritual authority, while also proposing a passivity for the courtier similar to Bevingtons self-abnegating obedience. Pincombe (I, A) suggests that Lyly both contributes to and parodies the cult of Eliza by offering unexpected versions of classical stories: those of Endymion, the triplex Diana, and Medea. Bates, Rhetoric of Courtship (II, B), pp. 8388, aligns the play with courtly shows presented to the Queen as a meditation upon the exigencies of serving the Queen and on the proper expression of devotion and duty at court. A different perspective on courtly devotion is found in Vanhoutte, Age in Lust: Lylys Endymion and the Court of Elizabeth I, EIRC (forthcoming), who notes the aging of Elizabeths chief courtiers and the plays condemnation of superannuated male sexuality; as Endymion discovers, the remedy for unseemly lust is Neoplatonic admirationand the message is reinforced by the youthfulness of the actors. Jayne Elizabeth Lewis, All mankind are her Scots: Mary Stuart and the Birth of Modern Britain, REALB 14 (1998), 5575, claims that the ghost of Mary, Queen of Scots haunts the play in the seductive and pathetic gure of Tellus, who defuses ambivalence toward Elizabeth as the celestial heroine Cynthia; yet both play a part in the forging of the modern English subject. Kurt Tetzeli von Rosador, The Power of Magic: From Endimion to The Tempest, ShS 43 (1991), 113, proposes that charismatic royal power is able to
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defeat magical powers by using the strategies of displacement, containment, and annihilation recommended by writers on demonology, including the future James I. Sara F. Williams, Singe the enchantment for sleepe: Music and Bewitched Sleep in Early Modern English Drama, in Spirits Unseen:The Representation of Subtle Bodies in Early Modern European Culture, ed. Christine Gttler and Wolfgang Neuber (2008), pp. 17996, discusses instances in Endymion of the potent combination of music, magic, and bewitched sleep; both music and magic, dened similarly as airy spirits in Renaissance natural philosophy, could invade the soul through the ear. Noemi Messora, Parallels between Italian and English Courtly Plays in the Sixteenth Century: Carlo Turco and John Lyly, in Theatre of the English and Italian Renaissance, ed. J. R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (1991), pp. 14160, nds parallels in dramatic structure between Campaspe and Endimion and the Italian comdia nova of the mid-sixteenth century. E. Campaspe. The Revels Plays edition of Campaspe (Editions, above) is based on the rst edition of 1584, which was not available to Bond in 1902, with the addition of the songs, which derive from the 1632 collection by Edward Blount, Six Court Comedies. In his introduction to the Revels edition G. K. Hunter surveys the sources and describes the play as reducing romantic passion to a contemplative analysis before providing (pp. 2739) a useful discussion of staging and performance. Leah Scragg, Campaspe and the Construction of Monarchical Power, MaRDiE 12 (1999), 5983, stresses the plays ambivalence, which simultaneously celebrates and subverts, afrming the glory of kingship while disclosing the processes by which that glory is maintained. Pincombe (I, A) argues that Lyly uses the traditions of courtly philosophy to put into question Alexanders intentions and the conventions of tragicomedy to hint at the possibility of tyrannical lust. Vanhoutte (I, B) comments that allusions to mythical rapes are employed to undermine the validity of love in hierarchical relationships. Greg Walker, Courtship and Counsel: John Lylys Campaspe, in A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture, ed. Michael Hattaway (2000), pp. 18794, notes that Lylys audience was familiar with the historical Alexanders ambiguous character but considers that a model of ideal princely government is provided when Apelles offers good counsel to Alexander, in private. The relationship between ruler and ruled is also a concern of Lloyd Davis, Guise and Disguise: Rhetoric and Characterization in the English Renaissance (1993), pp. 10927, who contends that Campaspe represents the limited pressure that subjects may themselves exert against the sovereign system of obedience while working within it. Porter (I, B) argues that the interactive relationship between audience and performance, encouraged in both Prologues to Campaspe, extends to the
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visual experience of the play, with the viewer involved in the construction and interrogation of the royal image of Alexander. Marguerite A. Tassi, The Scandal of Images: Iconoclasm, Eroticism, and Painting in Early Modern English Drama (2005), pp. 6697, suggests that Lyly responds to sixteenth-century anxiety about imagesespecially painted, erotic, potentially idolatrous onesby focusing attention on Campaspes fair face. The problem of representing a nude on stage was thus solved by recourse to the aesthetic of miniature painting practiced by Nicholas Hilliard; a brief earlier version of this material can be found in O fair face: The Aesthetic of the Portrait Miniature in John Lylys Campaspe, Discoveries 17 (2003), 12, 1113. In discussing the problem of reproducing performance, Michael Markham, Sarrasines Failure, Campaspes Lament: Solo Song and the Ends of Material Reproduction, Opera Quarterly 26 (2010), 441, reviews the ApellesCampaspe story as a parable of performance, in which Apelles succeeds in painting Campaspes substitute for Alexander but cannot himself maintain the illusion that she is present in his text or portrait. F. Midas. The Revels Plays edition of Midas (Editions, above) is based on the rst edition of 1592 with the addition of the songs, which derive from the 1632 collection by Edward Blount, Six Court Comedies. In his introduction to the Revels edition David Bevington discusses parallels with earlier drama, seen in the plays pattern of pride, fall, and redemption as well as in the parodic sub-plot where the pages irreverently dissect the social posturings of all classes. Annaliese Connolly, O unquenchable thirst of gold: Lylys Midas and the English Quest for Empire, EMLS 8 (2002), 4.136; rpt. in Lunney (I, B), pp. 16174, argues that the surface allegory in Midas offers reassuring stereotypes but the plays primary concern is to present a skeptical view of Englands claims to empire, including the translatio imperii or Trojan myth of descent. In contrast, Bevington (I, B) depicts Midas as satirizing tyranny but also celebrating the Armada triumph and Elizabeths magnanimity toward her enemies. Mark Albert Johnston, Playing with the Beard: Courtly and Commercial Economies in Richard Edwardss Damon and Pithias and John Lylys Midas, ELH 72 (2005), 79103, notes that the early modern beard was the most important visual signier in the performance of masculinity, especially courtly masculinity; he analyzes the shift from a courtly to a commercial economy, from Edwards to Lyly, in terms of Midas stolen golden beard. Pincombe (I, A) contends that Midas represents a transition in Lylys drama from courtly panegyric to pastoral; the play challenges the assumed authority of Elizabethan panegyric and offers simple, plain-speaking love as preferable to the cult of virginity. Francis Guinle, Rude Ditties to a Pipe and Sonnets to a Lute, in The Show Within: Dramatic and Other Insets: English Renaissance
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Drama (15501642), ed. Franois Laroque (1992), II: 41726, notes a parallel with earlier drama in the use of a song to mark a moral choice; hence in the song contest Midas choosing between string and wood instruments represents a decision between reason and passion, light and darkness. Allan Folkestad, Dramatic Space in the Comedies of John Lyly: The Case of Midas, in Innovation and Tradition: Essays on Renaissance Art and Culture, ed. Dag T. Andersson and Roy Eriksen (2000), pp. 11320, traces the alternating spatial rhythm of expansion and contraction which reects the alternation between main plot and comic sub-plot. G. Loves Metamorphosis. The Revels Plays edition of Loves Metamorphosis (Editions, above) is based on the only early edition, dated 1601. In her introduction to the Revels edition Leah Scragg describes the play as spectacular in performance and elegantly evasive in style and structure; it does, nevertheless, challenge patriarchal assumptions as well as (perhaps) the cult of the Virgin Queen by linking chastity with love rather than virginity. In contrast, Theodora A. Jankowski, The scorne of Savage people: Virginity as Forbidden Sexuality in John Lylys Loves Metamorphosis, RenD 24 (1993), 12353; rev. and rpt. in Jankowski (I, B), pp. 13844, holds that the play constructs a radical and powerful virginity . . . viewed as threatening by the male characters even if that power is essentially contained by death or forced marriage. For Pincombe (I, A), however, the play is Lylys nal and most articulate challenge to the cult of virginity, with the virgins either terried of men or perverse and disdainfuland the most attractive character is the sexually experienced Protea. From another perspective, James M. Bromley, The onely way to be mad, is to bee constant: Defending Heterosexual Nonmonogamy in John Lylys Loves Metamorphosis, SP 106 (2009), 42040, identies the queer potential of the play in the nymph Niobe, who is compelled to marry but insists on the right to be inconstant (or nonmonogamous): to exercise, in effect, erotic self-determination. For Mark Dooley, The Healthy Body: Desire and Sustenance in John Lylys Loves Metamorphosis, EMLS 6 (2000), 3.119, the play promotes an active sexuality as chastity; indeed, love, sex, and food are all necessary to maintain healthy bodies and healthy societies. Claire M. Busse, Protable Children: Children as Commodities in Early Modern England, in Domestic Arrangements in Early Modern England, ed. Kari Boyd McBride (2002), pp. 20943, locates this play and Mother Bombie in the context of late sixteenth-century discussions on whether children are commodities or individuals with agency: in the mythical world of Loves Metamorphosis children (the instance is Protea) can be individuals as well as commodities.
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H. Mother Bombie. The Revels Plays edition of Mother Bombie (Editions, above) is based on the rst edition of 1594, with the addition of four songs, which derive from the 1632 collection by Edward Blount, Six Court Comedies. In her introduction to the Revels edition Leah Scragg argues that Mother Bombie herself is the highly unconventional presiding genius of the play who brings about a new order of sociability and companionship through her gift of foreknowledge and her alignment with social, natural, and spiritual orders. This positive view is supported by William Kerwin, Where Have You Gone, Margaret Kennix? Seeking the Tradition of Healing Women in English Renaissance Drama, in Women Healers and Physicians: Climbing a Long Hill, ed. Lilian R. Furst (1997), pp. 93113, who cites Mother Bombie as an instance of the woman healer; he describes her role as craftily returning people to more natural relations to each other. Lorna Hutson, Forensic Rhetoric in Early Revenge Tragedy and Early Romantic Comedy: Kyd, Lyly, and Shakespeare, in her The Invention of Suspicion: Law and Mimesis in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama (2007), pp. 259302, considers the play in terms of the moral difculties encountered in adapting Roman New Comedy with its combination of fraudulent rhetoric and romantic anagnoresis; Lyly solves the problem by using the character Mother Bombie, whose riddling speeches induce confessions and thereby uncover deceptions. Pincombe (I, A) comments that the Ovidian element in the play conrms the natural supremacy of honest love; as for Mother Bombie, she is benevolent but also an anti-Eliza: a grotesque parody of the original. Richard A. McCabe, Incest, Drama, and Natures Law 15501700 (1993), pp. 13940, notes Lylys play as the rst English comedy to fully exploit the foundling device in connection with the theme of incest; the outcome, however, is not tragic but an optimistic social fable. Busse (II, G) suggests that Mother Bombie supports the view that children are individuals with agency even if their physical bodies still belong to their rather unsatisfactory parents. I. Sappho and Phao. The Revels Plays edition of Sappho and Phao (Editions, above) is based on the quarto identied as the rst edition by David Bevington, The First Edition of John Lylys Sappho and Phao (1584), SB 42 (1989), 18799, whereas Bond (Editions, above) used the second edition of the same year. In his introduction to the Revels edition Bevington summarizes the case he presented earlier for the choice of text; in discussing the play he rejects any specic application to the Queen, suggesting that Sappho and Phao offers both a highly formal and emblematic world and an innovative love dialogue in which the limitations of language express the predicament of love.
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Theodora A. Jankowski, The Subversion of Flattery:The Queens Body in John Lylys Sapho and Phao, MaRDiE 5 (1991), 6986; rpt. in Lunney (I, B), pp. 17592, contends that by resorting to the romance convention of irrational women to present Sapphos love-sickness, the playfor all its attering intentionspresents a deep-seated uneasiness with the question of female rule. Pincombe (I, A) claims that Sappho is a comic gure until near the end when the conict between chastity and affection is resolved and she becomes an earthly goddess. In a later essay, Lyly and Lesbianism: Mysteries of the Closet in Sappho and Phao, in Renaissance Congurations: Voices/Bodies/Spaces, 15801690, ed. Gordon McMullan (1998), pp. 89107, Pincombe discusses the hints of lesbianism and of Lesbian (or by ancient association . . . obscene ) practices among the ladies of Sapphos court in their private spaces, especially when Cupids arrow becomes a toy made for ladies. In Cupid and Eliza:Variations on a Virgilian Icon in Plays by Gager, Lyly, and Marlowe, in The Iconography of Power: Ideas and Images of Rulership on the English Renaissance Stage, ed. Gyorgy E. Szonyi (2000), pp. 3352, Pincombe suggests that Lylys use of the Virgilian icon of Cupid on Didos lap develops from the panegyrical devices of Elizabeths progresses but collapses . . . into comic domesticity and irreverence. In a brief discussion of the play, C. Annette Grise, Depicting Lesbian Desire: Contexts for John Donnes Sapho to Philaenis, Mosaic 29 (1996), 4157, comments that the sexually transgressive gure of Sappho is an appropriate representation of Elizabeth since the Queen transgressed the hierarchies of gender. J. The Woman in the Moon. The Revels Plays edition of The Woman in the Moon (Editions, above) is based on the only early edition, dated 1597, which includes the text of two of the four songs. In her introduction to the Revels edition Leah Scragg suggests that the play admits two readings: a straightforward, and highly misogynistic, account of the origins of the female disposition; and an exhibition of how the female character was made shifting and unstable by the competing imperatives and confused values of a predominantly patriarchal society. Scraggs rst reading is strongly endorsed by Pincombe (I, A), pp. 17389; rpt. in Lunney (I, B), pp. 31530, who describes the play as cynical and misogynistic, reversing Lylys previous redemption . . . of female sexuality, with Pandora becoming the nal inversion of Lylys panegyrical gure of Eliza. For Stephen Guy-Bray, Against Reproduction: Where Renaissance Texts Come From (2009), pp. 4461, Pandora is the perfect work of art, ruined by gods and humans alike; the play challenges the arbitrary marriage plot of a typical comedy as well as the use of the reproductive metaphor to account for artistic production. Nathalie Rivre de Carles, Tenture et Thtre, de Minerve Thespis, Anglophonia 13 (2003), 8396, describes the unveiling of
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Pandora as a liminal moment in which the meanings of text and textiles (her clothes, the stage curtains and hangings) intersect to multiply dramatic signicance. K. Pap with a Hatchet. The text of this pamphlet in Bond (Editions, above) is based on the third edition (?1589). Bond also prints as possibly by Lyly rather than Nashe the verse pamphlets A Whip for an Ape: Or Martin Displayed and (part of) Mar-Martine. Evelyn B. Tribble, Margins and Marginality: The Printed Page in Early Modern England (1993), pp. 11719, argues that Lyly may have conceived the task of refuting Marprelate as a literary one, but in defending the state he outdid his opponent in the violence of his borrowed language. Joseph L. Black, The Martin Marprelate Tracts:A Modernized and Annotated Edition (2008), reprints Martinist rather than anti-Martinist material such as Lylys Pap, but he does offer a useful analysis of the controversy and a comprehensive list in the Works Cited of manuscripts, texts, and secondary works to 2006. Kristen Poole, Saints Alive! Falstaff, Martin Marprelate, and the Staging of Puritanism, SQ 46.1 (Spring 1995), 4775, offers a useful brief account of the pamphlets and controversy. See also Dutton, Mastering the Revels (III, C), and the bibliography by Lawry (I, B).

III. Studies of Individual Topics A. Lyly and Others. Katherine Wilson, Transplanting Lillies: Greene, Tyrants, and Tragical Comedies, in Writing Robert Greene: Essays on Englands First Notorious Professional Writer, ed. Kirk Melnikoff and Edward Gieskes (2008), pp. 188203, argues that Campaspe was a provocative text for Greene, who exploited its hints of sexual violence and male cruelty in Pandosto and Frier Bacon. Helen Moore, Elizabethan Fiction and Ovids Heroides, Tr&Lit 9 (2000), 4064, suggests that Ovids Heroides inuenced Pettie, Lyly, and Greene in their rhetorical romances to nd a place and a voice for the desiring womaneven if that voice was still circumscribed by the eloquence of the male writer. Regina Schneider, Late Tudor Narrative Voices: Philip Sidney and Barnaby Rich, in The Anatomy of Tudor Literature: Proceedings of the First International Conference of the Tudor Symposium (1998), ed. Mike Pincombe (2001), pp. 9097, notes that Sidney and Rich followed the pattern of the travel narrative popularized in Euphues and His England but subordinated its focus on dialogue and exempla to a narrative frame. Carmine Di Biase, The Decline of Euphuism: Robert Greenes Struggle Against Popular Taste, in Critical Approaches to English Prose Fiction, 15201640, ed. Donald Beecher (1998), pp. 85108, contends that Greene was ahead of his
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readers in becoming disillusioned with euphuism. A different contemporary attitude is suggested by George D. Gopen, The Noble Style of Thomas Delony: Rhythm as an Indication of Character, Imaginaires 11 (2005), 3957, who comments that Delony used a rhythmical, euphuistic style to denote the morally worthy rather than the merely aristocratic characters in his four works of prose ction published between 1597 and 1600, some years after Greenes change of style. Cyrus Mulready, Asia of the One Side, and Afric of the Other, in Staging Early Modern Romance: Prose Fiction, Dramatic Romance, and Shakespeare, ed. Mary Ellen Lamb and Valerie Wayne (2009), pp. 4771, explores the awareness in Sidneys Defense of Poesy and the prologue to Lylys Midas that trafc and travel were changing dramatic practices. Gabriel Egan,Leashing in the Dogs of War:The Inuence of Lylys Campaspe on Shakespeares Alls Well That Ends Well, ELN 40 (2002), 2941, claims that Shakespeares play shares the same concern as Campaspe does with the social danger of heroic values. In her exploration of the inuence of Castiglione, M. C. Bradbrook, Courtier and Courtesy: Lyly and Shakespeares Two Gentlemen of Verona, in Theatre of the English and Italian Renaissance, ed. J. R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (1991), pp. 16178, argues that Lyly in Gallathea and Endymion matches the lightness of Castigliones tone whereas Shakespeare in his early play is concerned with manners and sentiment. As for Marlowe,Yuzo Yamada, Parodying Lyly in Dido, Queen of Carthage, in his Writing under Inuences: A Study of Christopher Marlowe (1999), pp. 5167, asserts that Dido, Queen of Carthage is a failed parody of Lylys Sappho and Phao because of its awkward mingling of courtly drama and tragedy. John Hunter, The Euphuistic Memory: Humanist Culture and Bacons Advancement of Learning, RenP 1995 (1995), 4763, analyzes Bacons attack in the Advancement of Learning upon the euphuistic memory with its incoherent accumulation of items able to justify any and all courses of action. Nineteenth-century responses to Lyly are described by Lene OstermarkJohansen, The Death of Euphues: Euphuism and Decadence in LateVictorian Literature, ELT 45 (2002), 425, who argues that late nineteenthcentury reactions to Lylys Euphues involved both a textual and stylistic revival in the work of writers such as Pater and Swinburne with their aesthetic of delay and an attempt by critics to declare the death of Euphuism because of its decadence and effeminacy. Robert Rudnicki, Euphues and the Anatomy of Inuence: John Lyly, Harold Bloom, James Olney, and the Construction of John Kennedy Tooles Ignatius, MissQ 62 (2009), 281301, cites Lyly as an important inuence on the twentiethcentury writer John Kennedy Toole and his novel A Confederacy of Dunces. See also a number of the studies listed in earlier sections, which compare Lyly with one or more of his contemporaries.
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B. Boys Performing. The most relevant studies for Lylys plays remain W. Reavley Gair, The Children of Pauls:The Story of a Theatre Company, 15531608 (1982), and Michael Shapiro, Children of the Revels: The Boy Companies of Shakespeares Time and Their Plays (1977). Edel Lamb, Performing Childhood in the Early Modern Theatre: The Childrens Playing Companies, 15991613 (2009), treats later examples but offers insights into the experience of childhood and the role of the child player in early modern theatrical culture. David Bevington, Juvenile Servants on the Medieval and Renaissance Stage, in Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V A. Kolve, ed. Robert F.Yeager and Charlotte C. . Morse (2001), pp. 57793, argues that the servant roles in boys and adult drama were indebted to medieval allegorical romance but differed in their wordplay (respectively, satirical wit as against impertinent profanities) and their representations of social class (pages as against the poor). Shapiro, Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage: Boy Heroines and Female Pages (1994), traces the inuence of the Lylian page, variously described as pert, cheeky, impudent, and wise-cracking, on the cross-dressed heroines of Shakespeares plays. Cinta Zunino-Garrido, We shalbe tte for greater matters: Rhetorical Connections between the Boys of St. Pauls and John Lylys Drama, in Actas del 30th Congreso de la Asociacin Espaola de Estudias Anglo-Norteamericano: Proceedings of the 30th Aedean International Conference (2007), [n.d.], identies the symbiosis between Lylys rhetorically framed plays and the declamatory acting style of the boy actors. Shen Lin, How Old Were the Children of Pauls? TN 45 (1991), 12131, suggests that Lylys plays were written for children rather than superannuated choristers, although the latter may still have taken part as musicians. Information about four orphans recruited from the song school at Christs Hospital is provided by David Kathman, Four Choirboy-Actors in Sixteenth-Century London, N&Q 57 (2010), 34749, who notes that they were aged eleven or twelve when they joined the Children of Pauls or the Chapel between 1577 and 1582. C. Companies and Theaters. Richard Dutton, The Revels Ofce and the Boy Companies, 16001613: New Perspectives, ELR 32 (2002), 32451, revises his earlier opinion in Mastering the Revels:The Regulation and Censorship of English Renaissance Drama (1991), pp. 7477, that the Pauls Boys ceased playing in 1590 because of Lylys involvement in the Marprelate controversy, arguing instead that the reasons were commercial: the boy companies fell out of fashion and favor. Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearian Playing Companies (1996), pp. 21829, in a survey of the Early Boy Companies, suggests that the amalgamated company of boys (Pauls and the Chapel Children) lasted from 1583 to 1590, when the groups separated and began touring; in this, he challenges the views of Gair (III, B) and Shapiro, Children of the Revels (III, B).
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Gurrs earlier Playgoing in Shakespeares London (1987), pp. 4445, 12021, 12832, remains a useful account of the behavior and tastes of Lylys city audiences. John H. Astington, English Court Theatre 15581642 (1999), emphasizes the visual splendour and social function of performances at court and includes a discussion of the staging possibilities for Lylys plays at Whitehall and Greenwich. English Professional Theatre, 15301660, ed. Glynne Wickham, Herbert Berry, and William Ingram (2000), pp. 26067, 30615, 388403, provides documents on the child players, playing at Pauls, and the rst Blackfriars theater. Herbert Berry, Where was the Playhouse in which the Boy Choristers of St. Pauls Cathedral Performed Plays? MaRDiE 13 (2001), 10116, locates the playhouse against the south wall of the cathedral rather than behind the chapter house as proposed by Gair (III, B). Peter Happ, Theatres and Companies: The Context of the Professional StageJames Burbage and John Lyly, in his English Drama Before Shakespeare (1999), pp. 181200; rpt. in Elizabethan Drama, ed. Harold Bloom (2004), pp. 2745, considers Lylys plays in the context of differing performance places, companies, and audiences in the late 1570s and 1580s. D. Pedagogical Approaches. Terry Reilly, Teaching Lylys Euphuism through William Harrisons The Description of England: History, Parody, and Dialogic Form, in Teaching Early Modern English Prose, ed. Susannah Brietz Monta and Margaret W. Ferguson (2010), pp. 30312, describes units of work based on comparing passages from Euphues and His England with two versions of Harrisons Description (1577 and 1587); depending upon their level, students discover the main features of euphuism, write parodies, or consider concepts of genre and style, history and ction. Mark Dooley, Queer Teaching/ Teaching Queer: Renaissance Masculinities and the Seminar, in Masculinities in Text and Teaching, ed. Ben Knights (2008), pp. 5974, recounts his experience teaching Campaspe and the difculties he encountered in reconciling Renaissance and modern masculinities.

IV. Canon and Texts A. Commentary on the Standard Editions. In his review of the Revels editions of Campaspe and Sappho and Phao (1991) and Endymion (1996), William B. Long, MaRDiE 12 (1999), 35053, describes them as innitely superior to any previous edited texts and notes the effort and space devoted to dramaturgy and staging. In contrast, Leah Scragg, RES 52 (2001), 56466, in reviewing Hunter and Bevingtons other volume, Galatea and Midas (2000), comments on their neglect of recent criticism and on various inaccuracies
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and inconsistencies, found also (she notes) in their earlier (1991) volume; she claims that both Lyly and Lylian scholars deserve better. Scraggs own Euphues volume (2003) is commended in a review by Paul Dean, RES 55 (2004), 26970, who remarks that the introductory matter and annotation are crisp, lucid, and economical, providing a much-needed resource, although more could be said about Lylys inuence on Shakespeare. The introductions and commentaries in the older standard edition of Bond (Editions, above) were described as out-dated in Kevin J. Donovans 1992 bibliography of Lyly studies (I, C).The texts in Bond continue to be cited, but less frequently with the availability of the new Revels editions. Bonds volumes are still useful, however, if an old-spelling version is preferred and for accessing texts other than the eight canonical plays and the Euphues volumes, such as Lylys letters, petitions, and Pap with a Hatchet. Other inclusions (eight entertainments for the Queen, more anti-Martinist material, and a collection of poems) are not generally accepted as canonical, although no recent studies address the issue. Hunter, Humanist as Courtier (I, A) suggests that it was Bonds error to see Euphuism as the style of a man rather than that of a generation. Peter Beal, John Lyly, 15541606, in his Index of English Literary Manuscripts: vol. 1, 14501625: Part 2, DouglasWyatt, pp. 31921, comments that Bonds attribution to Lyly of the entertainments should be viewed with skepticism and that his attribution of the poems is purely conjectural or in some instances plainly erroneous. Beal lists two manuscripts of entertainments not included in Bond (at Chiswick in 1602 and Mitcham in 1598), one clearly ascribed to Lyly, the other attributed to Lyly by Leslie Hotson, Introduction to his edition of Queen Elizabeths Entertainment at Mitcham: Poet, Painter, and Musician (1953), who comments that the unnamed author was either John Lyly or the Devil. B. Other Editions. The Plays of John Lyly, ed. Carter A. Daniel (I, B), comprises modern-spelling versions of the eight plays with minimal annotation, offering an accessible one-volume readers edition. Leah Scragg, John Lyly: Selected Prose and Dramatic Work (1997) is designed for the student and general reader and contains annotated, modern-spelling versions of the narrative section of Euphues (the original 1578 version), and the plays Campaspe and Gallathea. Paul Salzman, An Anthology of English Prose Fiction (1987; reissued in paperback, 1998), includes a modern-spelling version of the narrative section of the 1579 Euphues. Editions of Gallathea and Midas by Anne Begor Lancashire (1969) and Mother Bombie by A. Harriette Andreadis (1975) remain useful for scholars. Malone Society Reprints have included Gallathea, ed. Scragg (1998) and Sapho and Phao, ed. Scragg (2002), joining Mother Bombie, ed. K. M. Lea and D. Nichol Smith (published in 1948 as the societys 1939 volume). Lylys letters and petitions are printed
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in Bond (Editions, above) and Feuillerat (I, A), with modern-spelling versions of the petitions in Hunter, John Lyly (I, A) and extracts in most biographies. The two entertainments listed in Beal (IV, A) are published in Hotson (IV, A). Electronic versions of Lylys plays and prose textsas well as the anti-Martinist texts by Lyly and otherscan be accessed in Early English Books Online (EEBO). C. Textual Studies. An introductory Note on the Texts in Scraggs edition of the Euphues volumes (Editions, above) points out that spelling, punctuation, and paragraphing are modernized and that typographical signaling is used to convey different narrative levels and texts within texts. The General Editors Preface to the Revels Plays editions indicates that each text is edited afresh from the original text of best authority . . . but spelling and punctuation are modernized and speech headings are silently made consistent. A textual discussion is included in each introduction and substantive variant readings are recorded in the on-page notes. Scraggs edition of Mother Bombie adds an appendix which contains a full historical collation. Bevington, Introduction to his edition of Endymion (Editions, above), outlines the evidence for two compositors in the 1591 quarto. Scragg, Introduction to her MSR edition of Gallathea (IV, B), nds no rm evidence to support the suggestion in Pincombe (I, A) that there were substantive changes to the text (the omission of a sequence of scenes) between its rst entry in the Stationers Register in 1585 and rst publication in 1592; Hunter (Editions, above) notes the possibility of some revision before the court performance recorded in 1588. Scragg, Old Versus New Spelling: John LylyA Special Case? RES 50 (1999), 5359, discusses the problems involved in modernizing spelling in texts heavily dependent upon verbal wit. Tiffany Stern, Documents of Performance in Early Modern England (2009), pp. 12545, cites the songs in Lylys plays in enumerating the reasons why songs were often omitted from early play texts. V. State of Criticism Since 1990 critical response to Lyly has diversied. His works, while still valued as giving access to sixteenth-century culture, have increasingly been claimed for present-day concerns. Gender studies have ourished, with the intellectual charms of Neoplatonism forsaken for various eroticisms extending from Ovidian to transvestite, from heterosexual to homoerotic to androgynous to homonormative, from utopian lesbian to lesbian separatist, from erotic autonomy to eroticized consumer pleasures. Discussions of euphuism have shifted from formal rhetorical analysis toward the socioeco 2011 English Literary Renaissance Inc.

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nomic implications of the style. The commonplaces regarding Lylys career and the plays theatricality have been challenged. Even so, the issues of court politics and royal authority remain staples of Lyly criticism, and Euphues is still dened in terms of its humanist heritage. The compartmentalism of Lyly scholarship has persisted, since very few critics engage with both plays and prose narratives. And Lyly is often marginalized, limited in many studiesspecic as much as general to a section or chapter or the odd mention in passing. The resources now available in the complete Revels series offer more opportunities for scholarship in the future, including perhaps a new full-length biography that incorporates recent critical insights (to replace Hunters 1962 volume) as well as new general studies of the plays (the last full-length study was 1996) and/or the prose narratives. Then, too, there could be more exploration of how other aspects of contemporary popular culture inuenced the works; more attention paid to the Euphues sequel and the less fashionable plays; and more consideration of the plays in the context of 1580s adult theater. SEE I. General Studies A. Biographical Studies Oakes, Elizabeth. Polonius as a Stage Analogue of Lyly, HSt 21 (1999), 15461. B. Critical Studies Fienberg, Nona. John Lyly: The Dramatist in Two Worlds, in her Elizabeth, Her Poets, and the Creation of the Courtly Manner: A Study of Sir John Harington, Sir Philip Sidney, and John Lyly (1988), pp. 158208. Kalas, Reyna. The Language of Framing, ShakS 28 (2000), 24047. West,William N. But this will be a mere confusion: Real and Represented Confusions on the Elizabethan Stage, TJ 60 (2008), 21733. II. Studies of Individual Works A. Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit Bray, Alan. Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship in Elizabethan England, in Queering the Renaissance, ed. Jonathan Goldberg (1994), pp. 4061.
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Kinney, Arthur F. Marketing Fiction, in Critical Approaches to English Prose Fiction, 15201640, ed. Donald Beecher (1998), pp. 4561. Lethbridge, J. B. Anthological Reading and Writing in Tudor England, in Anthologies of British Poetry: Critical Perspectives from Literary and Cultural Studies, ed. Barbara Korte, Ralf Schneider, and Stefanie Lethbridge (2000), pp. 5773. Pincombe, Mike. Pregnant Wit: John Lylys Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit, in his Elizabethan Humanism: Literature and Learning in the Later Sixteenth Century (2001), pp. 10724. Pooley, Roger. I confesse it to be a mere toy: How to Read the Preliminary Matter to Renaissance Fiction, in Critical Approaches to English Prose Fiction, 15201640, ed. Donald Beecher (1998), pp. 10922. B. Euphues and His England Hadeld, Andrew. From English to British Literature: John Lylys Euphues and Edmund Spensers The Faerie Queene, in British Consciousness and Identity: The Making of Britain, 15331707, ed. Brendan Bradshaw and Peter Roberts (1998), pp. 14058. Pincombe, Mike. Lyly and Golding: A New Source for Euphues and His England, N&Q 51 (2004), 24344. C. Gallathea Gras, Henk. Studies in Elizabethan Audience Response to the Theatre: Part 2: As I Am Man: Aspects of the Presentation and Audience Perception of the Elizabethan Female Page (1993), pp. 21019. Ramel, Jacques. Gallathea, by John Lyly, directed by Francis Guinle, Lyon, 12 mars 1998 (review), CahiersE 55 (1999), 98100. D. Endymion Hawamdeh, Mufeed F. The Interchange of Splendour: A Contextual Study of the Allegory in John Lylys Endimion, Mutah Journal for Research and Studies 9 (1994), 13158. King, John N. Queen Elizabeth I: Representations of the Virgin Queen, RenQ 43 (1990), 3074. Leggatt, Alexander. Lyly, Endymion, in his Introduction to English Renaissance Comedy (1999), pp. 1229. Levenson, Jill. Comedy, in The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama, ed. A.R. Braunmuller and Michael Hattaway (2003), pp. 25491. E. Campaspe Hildner, David J. Amor, Poder y Pintura en Calderon y John Lyly, in Vidas Paralelas: El Teatro Espaol y el Teatro Isabelino, 15801680: Parallel
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Lives, Spanish and English Drama, 15801680, ed. Anita K. Stoll (1993), pp. 10916. McKendrick, Melveena, El Libre Albredrio y la Reicacion de la Mujer: La Imagen Pintada en Darlo Todo y No Dar Nada, in Texto e Imagen en Calderon, ed. Manfred Tietz (1998), pp. 15870. Pincombe, Michael. Lylys Campaspe and the Tudor Owlglass, N&Q 44 (1997), 3032. F. Midas Edgecombe, Rodney Stenning. The Nomenclature of the Kings Counsellors in Lylys Midas, N&Q 50 (2003), 401. Roberts, P. B.A Borrowing from Suetoniuss Life of Caligula in Lylys Midas, ANQ 21 (2008), 68. G. Loves Metamorphosis Bardelmann, Claire. La Sirne ou le Chant de LInconnu, Anglophonia 13 (2003), 12535. H. Mother Bombie Roberts, Jeanne Addison. The Crone in English Renaissance Drama, MaRDiE 15 (2002), 11637.

III. Studies of Individual Topics A. Lyly and Others Barbour, Reid. Deciphering Elizabethan Fiction (1993). Dillon, Janette. Elizabethan Comedy, in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Comedy, ed. Alexander Leggatt (2002), pp. 4763. Erne, Lukas. Thoroughly ransackt: Elizabethan Novella Collections and Henry Wottons Courtlie Controuersie of Cupids Cautels (1578), CahiersE 64 (2003), 18. Hadeld, Andrew. The Name Philautus: Barnaby Rich and John Lyly, N&Q 48 (2001), 31314. Pincombe, Mike. Philautus in Rich and Lyly: A Suspicion Conrmed, N&Q 49 (2002), 25354. B. Boys Performing Gibson, Joy Leslie. Squeaking Cleopatras: The Elizabethan Boy Player (2000).
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C. Companies and Theaters Parry, Graham. Entertainments at Court, in A New History of Early English Drama, ed. John D. Cox and David Scott Kastan (1997), pp. 195211.

university of newcastle, australia

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