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Article Excerpt
Gismond of Salerne, written by five gentlemen of the Inner Temple and performed before Elizabeth I at Greenwich in 1566-67, has received very little critical attention. This chapter argues for the play's engagement with the Elizabethan succession, maintaining that its Cupidean revenge plot warns against a monarch's mistreatment of his/her heirs. Moreover, its anatomization of the lovesick, female body potentially alludes to that of Elizabeth herself. Finally, Gismond will be seen to have invented 'Cupidean tragedy', a dramatic form that would exert a powerful influence upon the more familiar love tragedy.
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CUPID But now the world, not seing in these dayes Such present proues of myne almighty power, Disdaines my name, and seketh sondry wayes To conquer and deface me everie houre. My name supprest to raise againe therfore, And in this age myne honor and renome By mighty act intending to restore, Down to the earth in spite now am I come (Gismond of Salerne, i. 1. 49-56) (1)
The neglect that motivated Cupid to fashion the tragic events dramatized in Gismond of Salerne has subsequently been extended to the play itself. A Senecanstyle love tragedy, written by five gentlemen of the Inner Temple and performed before Elizabeth I at Greenwich in 1566-67, (2) Gismond of Salerne has been reduced to the status of a dramatic precedent (and this largely by default). In the absence of the Romeo and Juliet that Arthur Broke referred to in 1562, it is the first English love tragedy. (3) In the absence of this Ur-Romeo, it is also the first English play based on an Italian novella. Yet there has been very little consideration of Gismond's theatrical and literary interest in its own right. (4) There is no question about the popularity of its source. The Gismond narrative, retold as the first novella of Day 4 of Boccaccio's Decameron, inspired five tragedies in Italy between 1508 and 1614, including the first vernacular tragedy by Antonio Cammelli, Filostrato e Panfila (Ferrara, 1499). (5) In England, between 1532 and 1623, it produced another five tragedies, as well as verse and prose versions, detailed below:
1532 Guystarde and Sygysmonde by William Walter (narrative poem)
1566 'Tancredi Prince of Salerne', no. 39 in William Painter's The Palace of Pleasure, vol. 1 (prose narrative)
1566-67 Gismond of Salerne (play), performed at Greenwich, also MSS
1586-87 Tancred by Henry Wotton (play, now lost), performed at Queen's College, Oxford
1591 Tancred and Gismund by Robert Wilmot (play), printed, re-performed?
1597 The statly tragedie of Guistard and Sismond (narrative poem) in Certaine Worthye Manuscript Poems of great Antiquitie published by J.S.
1602 A Country Tragaedye in Vacunium or Cupid's Sacrifice by William Percy (play), MSS, performed privately? (6)
1623 Ghismonda (anonymous play, lost) (7)
That Gismond of Salerne was a particular success is suggested not only by the fact that one of the original authors, Robert Wilmot, chose to revise and publish the play approximately twenty-four years after its original performance (as Tancred and Gismund), but also by the testimony of William Webbe that, after its initial success, 'by the rare and bewtifull perfections appearing in him, hitherto [he has] never wanted great favorers, and loving preservers'. (8) Nevertheless, for modern critics Gismond of Salerne remains a 'pre-Shakespearean' embarrassment: 'It seems almost sacrilege to suggest such a pitiful predecessor as this for Romeo and Juliet.' (9)
This discussion will argue that Gismond of Salerne deserves more sustained critical attention, and for three reasons. First, it is distinctly Elizabethan, by which I mean that it required the presence of Elizabeth I (literal or imagined) to attain its full political and theatrical meaning. Not only are the two protagonists, Gismond and Tancred, mirrors in which Elizabeth might read herself, but the play's anatomization of the lovesick, female body potentially encompasses the queen herself. Secondly, the play is distinctly Cupidean, by which I mean that it required the presence of Cupid on stage to dramatize the progress of desire through the body and to expose the paradox of a passion that destroys itself. Finally, it can be argued that Gismond of Salerne invented 'Cupidean tragedy', a dramatic form that would exert a powerful influence beyond the private stage. Although the number of plays involved is minor, Cupidean tragedy represents the dark place from which the more familiar love tragedy would emerge.
Frivolous Inconsistency?
The critical reputation of Gismond has foundered on two contradictory assumptions: that it is radically incoherent, but also that it is unrelentingly single-minded and didactic. What unites these perspectives is a sense of the play as an infelicitous blending of Italian novella and Senecan tragedy: 'a dramatically primitive (if erudite) bridge between Senecan classicism and English romanticism'. (10)
The plot is taken entirely from Boccaccio, beginning when Ghismonda, a young and beautiful widow, returns to her father's house after the death of her husband. Unwilling to part with her again, Tancred forbids her remarriage, which forces Ghismonda to pursue a clandestine love affair with one of her father's courtiers, Guiscardo. They meet via a secret cave that gives access into her bedchamber. But when Tancred is waiting for her there, he falls asleep, and wakes to find Ghismonda and Guiscardo having sex. He has Guiscardo arrested and killed, and his heart cut out and delivered to Ghismonda in a golden cup. She fills the cup with poison and drinks from it, making her father promise that she and Guiscardo will be buried in the same tomb.
Along with the action of the play, the dramatists imbibed many of the attitudes of the novella, as stated in its subtitle: 'Wherein is declared the power of Love, and their cruilty justly reprehended, who imagine to make the vigour thereof cease, by abusing or killing one of the Lovers'. (11) Thus Lucrece defends the heroine by insisting that her passion is natural and inevitable; it is Tancred who proves 'unkind' (Gismond, II. 2. 24-29). Moreover, Guiscard echoes the theme of Love's irresistible power by translating the Boccaccian dictum: 'Amor puo troppo pui che ne voi ne io possiamo', (12) in defiance of Tancred's tyranny:
[For] greater lord is love, and larger reigne He hath upon eche god and mortal wight, Than yow upon yor subiectes have, or I Upon my self. (iv. 4. 36-39)
Finally, the play's tragic climax further reproduces the tone of the Italian novella. The lovers' nobility in their willingness to die for love--Guiscard embracing death as an opportunity to prove his devotion to Gismond; Gismond to be reunited with him--is celebrated. The deaths themselves are pitied and deplored: 'For violent is death when he devoures | yongmen or virgins while their youth is grene' (V. 1. 131-32).
However, the process of 'Englishing' the Italian source seems to have required the introduction of a moralizing Chorus. (13) Hence the play reverberates with warnings against illicit desire, and the insistence that the lovers have brought about their own destruction. Where earlier versions had mitigated the lovers' crimes, Gismond of Salerne reinforces them. For example, in Boccaccio the heroine was able to defend her honour, insisting that although she and Guiscardo had met secretly and her father had seen them caressing, there was no greater sin for which repentance was required. (14) In Gismond Tancred watches his daughter and Guiscard having sex. Similarly, whereas in Gilbert Banester's 1445 metrical version all details of the lovers' secret assignations are cut, specifically the tunnel that leads into a cave up into Gismond's bedchamber, in Gismond not only are these details retained but the language used implies the cave's vicious, even hellish associations. The vault is described as 'hideous' (IV. 2. 60), 'dark and...
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