Bulletin Hispanique

Cervantes and English literature of the seventeenth century

E.M. Wilson

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Wilson E.M. Cervantes and English literature of the seventeenth century. In: Bulletin Hispanique, tome 50, n°1, 1948. pp. 27-
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CERVANTES AND ENGLISH LITERATURE

OF THE SEVENTEENTH GENTÜRY1

I propose to discuss bow some of Cervantes's writings were

used by three or four English authors of the seventeenth century.
I cannot prétend that I have inade any sensational discoveries

1 This article was originally given as the second public lecture in a series of four
at King's Collège, London, in November 1947, in célébration of the quatercentenary
of Cervantes's birth. The other lecturers were Sir Henry Thomas, ProfessorW. J. Ent-
wistle and Dr. Enrique Moreno Báez.
The following abbreviations are used in the notes :
Becker. — Die Aufnahme des Don Quijote in die englische Literatur. Von
Gustav Becker. Palaestra xm. Berlin, 1906.
Casalduero. = Sentido y forma de las Novelas ejemplares. Por Joaquín Casal-
duero. Buenos- Aires, 1943.
Chelli- 1923. = Le drame de Massinger. Par Maurice Chelli. Lyons, 1923.
Chelli— 1926 = Étude sur la collaboration de Massinger avec Fletcher et son
groupe. Par Maurice Chelli. Paris, 1926.
D. Q. = El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha. Por Miguel de
Cervantes Saavadra. Edición y notas de Francisco Rodríguez
Marín. (Clasicos castellanos.) Madrid, 1922.
Gayley. = Beaumont the Dramatist. By C. M. Gayley. New York, 1914.
Gayton — Pleasant Notes uponDon Quixot.By Edmund Gayton, Esq.
don, 1654.
Genuine Remains = The Genuine Remains in Verse and Prose of Mr. Samuel Butler,
Author of Hudibras. Published... by R. Thyer... in two
volumes. London, 1759.
Hudibras = Hudibras in Three Parts, Written in the Time of the Late Wars :
Corrected and Amended. With large annotations, and a
préface, by Zachary Grey, Ll. D. Cambridge, 1744.
K. B. P. = The Knight of the Burning Pestle. (Quotations from this play
and The Chances are taken from the second folio of Beaumont
and Fletcher, published in London, 1679.)
Koeppel— 1895 = 'Quellen-Studien zu der Dramen Ben Jonson's, J. Marston's und
Beaumont und Fletcher's.' Von E. Koeppel. Erlangen, 1895.
Koeppel — 1898 = 'Don Quizóte, Sancho Panza und Dulcinea in der englischen Lit-
teraiur bis zur Restauration.' Von E. Koeppel. Archiv für das
28 BULLETIN HISPANIQUE

about this subject, or that I hâve any very startling criticisms to

offer ; in one lecture I cannot even hope to cover the ground. I
want to point out how some English draïnatists and poets treated
their sources and to assess the merits of their treatment. Perhaps
this procédure may enable us" to see qualities in some of Cervan-
tes's works which are not usually noticed, or which hâve been
obscured by récent criticism. The study of comparative litera-
ture need not only go one way ; even an inferior imitation may be
a useful pointer backwards. I do not want merely to repeat what
James Fitzmaurice-Kelly 1 (to whose leaming Sir Henry Thomas
paid tribute last week) said to the British Academy in 1905. And
so, rather than give a complete account of ail the works that deri-
ved from Cervantes in the English seventeenth century, I shall
discuss four works in some détail. In my discussion I hope I shall
make clear how much each work owes to its Cervantine source
and whether it seems to me to be worth attention for its own
sake.
Most modem readers of Cervantes keep at the back of their
minds a notion that was often expressed last century. Cervantes,
according to this notion, is the creator of a misunderstood idealist
called Don Quixote, whose heroism and nobility of soûl triumph
over the petty ridicule and stupid practical jokes of his prosaic

Studium der neueren Spracken und Litter aturen. Brunswick,

1898.
Me Keitkan = The Debt to Shakespeare in the Beaumont-and- Fletcher Plays. By
D. M. Me Keithan, Austin, Texas, 1938.
Maxwell = Studies in Beaumont, Fletcher and Massinger. By Baldwin
well. Chapel Hill, 1939.
N. E. = Obras completas de Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Novelas exem-
plares. Edición publicada por Rodolfo Schevill y Adolfo Bonilla .
Madrid, 1922.
Oliphant = The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. By E. H. C. Oliphant, New
Haven, 1927.
Shelton — 1612 = The History of Don Quixote of the Mancha. Translated from the
Spanish of Miguel de Cervantes by Thomas Shelton, annis
1612, 1620. With Introductions by James Fitzmaurice-Kelly.
4 vols. London, 1896. (Tudor Translations.)
Shelton - 1652 = The History of the Valorous and Witty-Knight-Errant, Don
Quixote, of the Mancha. Translated out of the Spanish ; now
newly Corrected and Amended. London, 1652.
1. James Fitzmaurice-Kelly. « Cervantes in Eogland. i Proceedings of the British
Academy, 1905-1906, pp. 11-31.
CERVANTES AND ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE XVIIth CENTURY 29

fellow men. Unamuno, for instance, considered Cervantes an

imbécile scribbler who, despite his lack of any artistic talent, was
inspired by the most splendid inspiration that ever came to a
secular writer ; this inspiration ís at bottom that of the romantic v
Quixote. Other more recent writers 1 have tried to place Cervantes
in the history of thought ; we have been shewn an enlightened,
agnostic Cervantes who, boldly, yet cautiously, kept alive the fire
of Renaissance humanism in the dark night of Post-Trid entine
Spain — and another baroque Cervantes who upheld all the tea-
chings of the Roman Catholic Church. Such ideas are interesting
enough, but this evening we must dismiss them from our minds.
Wecannot expect the men of the seventeenth century to look
at Cervantes with nineteenth- or twentieth-century eyes.
What did his own Spanish contemporaries think of Cervantes?
Don Quixote was a best-seller ; the Exemplary Novéis were admi-
red and imitated. Cervantes himself was less esteemed than Lope
de Vega, Calderón, Quevedo or Góngora, but he nevertheless cap-
tured the imagination of his country. In the Spanish drama there
are numerous références to pseudo-knights-errant with rídiculous
squires, to battles with windmills and to non-existent Dulcineas 2.
Such références are usually farcical, and so are the two most
famous contemporary derivatives of Cervantes's masterpiece :
the spurious Second Part of Don Quixote by Avellaneda (whoever
he may have been), and the poetical Testamento de Don Quijote of
Quevedo. If the farcical side oí Don Quixote a^fpealeà most stron-
gly to Cervantes's fellow-countrymen, there is no reason to
suppose that the Englishmen of that age would be more discerning.

II

Before I begin to talk about the use made of Cervantes by the

Jacobean dramatists, I shall examine briefly a commentary on
the first part of the Quixote that was published in London in 1654
— as far as I am aware, the first Cervantine commentary to be

1. See Américo Castro, El pensamiento de Cervantes. Madrid, 1925, and Casalduero.

2. See Miguel Herrero García, Estimaciones literarias del siglo XVII. Madrid, 1930,
pp. 353-420.
30 BULLETIN HISPANIQUE

published in any country. The title is Pleasant (or Festivous)

Notes upon Don Quixot and the author was Edmund Gayton 1, a
minor writer, who had been a fellow of an Oxford collège and one
of the « sons of Ben. » His book helps us to see why Don Quixote
was popular in England, even if it does little to illuminate that
masterpiece.
Gayton probably knew a few scraps of Spanish 2, but his Notes
are based on the 1652 édition of Shelton's translation 3. The notes
themselves are almost entirely facetious, although the author
makes a great display of Latin tags and erudite allusions that at
least shew some learning. There are many allusions to the English
théâtre, to contemporary characters and buffoons, and to folk
customs ; there are also a lot of coarse jokes. The language is
often involved and obscure; the humour is broad, sometimes
brutal. There is no trace of any moral intention. Gayton wrote
a work of entertainment that took the form of aburlesque
commentary on what he must hâve regarded as a burlesque
novel.
Gayton 's method is simple enough. He pická out those of
Shelton's sentences that suit his purpose and plays with them.
Sometimes he quotes a scurrilous anecdote, sometimes he applies the
sentence to some contemporary custom or event, but more often
he expands and élaborâtes it with a number of puns and conceits
that are implicit in the original or that he has derived from his
own fancy. At times he parodies what is clearly serious in his
source ; for instance, Don Quixote's discourse in praise of the

1. The word t Festivous • occurs as the running title in Gayton. An account of

Gayton's Ufe can be found in the Dictionary of National Biography. Some account of
the view he takes of Don Quixote and oí Sancho can be found in Becker, pp. 77-82. A
revised édition, in which the text was expurgated, contracted, and sometimes rewrit-
ten, was published in 1768 ; it is, oí course, useless for our purpose.
2. Gayton's line :ilam Don Quixot's guartha, my spatha » (p. 87) seems to con-
tain an attempt to mock the Spanish pronunciation of the letter d.
3. Gayton does not always quote accurately from Shelton, but his quotations are
closer to the 1652 édition than to that of 1612 :
t if thou beest afeará, goe aside and pray. » Shelton — 1612. 1, 109.
« if thou beest afraid, goe aside and pray. » Shelton - 1652. 12 v.
t if thou art afraid, go aside and pray. » Gayton. 28.
• which in mine opinion smells of gentility. » Shelton — 1612. 1, 109.
c which in my opinion smells of gentillisme. » Shelton — 1652. 22 v.
« which in my opinion is a kind of Gentilisme. > Gayton. 55
CERVANTES AND ENGLtSH LITERATURE OF THE XVIIth CENTÜRY 31

Golden Age is turned into very mediocre burlesque couplets K So

that we must be careful when we use Gayton's work as évidence
of how the seventeenth century regarded Don Quixote; at times
anyone can see that this professional entertainer was trying to be
funny when the original gave him no excuse for it. When, howe-
ver, the same ideas constantly recur in his burlesque, they may
help us to see some general aspect of the source that was obvious
to his contemporaries also.
After Don Quixote had his misadventure with the Yanguesian
carriers, he repaired to an inn, where in an « ungracious bed did
Don-Quixote lie, and presently the Hostesse and her daughter
anoint him all over ». Gayton at this point is reminded of an
indécent story and then continues with his commentary :

they did Hog-grease his body, and smiFd and twitter'd at the bumps
in his flesh, whioh was like a bruised Pig, (but not so white) splotch'd
all over, or like a mouldy Cheese, where three parts are blewand vin-
now'd, or like a musty pie. The Hils and Dales in his Body wasted her
spike-nard extreamly : Indeed, he was more fit to hâve been delivered
over to a plasterer, who with a shovell or two of mortar and a trowell,
would hâve daub'd up the gaps and Cosmas of his dilapidated Car-
kasse; that done to a Carpenter to hâve new planckt him, his
muscles were so extended and contunded, that he was not Corpus
mobile ; after that, to the joyner with him, to shave and smooth the
knobs made by the Yanguesian Rockers ; and after that, a Mason and
other Tradesmen, for the réparation of the Oeconomie of his whole
body, which was all out of order, both Timber and Stonework2.

Don Quixote is compared with an animal, but even this is not

comic enough ; his body is a ruined hovel that needs the rough
hands of artisans to repair it. The sufferings of the hero provoke
a heartless caricature ; Quixote is deliberately made to appear
less human than a « bruised Pig ».
At various times Quixote is likened to other animais3. His

1. Gayton, p. 43.
2. Shelton - 1652, p. 29 r. ; D. Q., I, xvi ; Gayton, p. 71.
3. The références in this paragraph are as follows :
D. Q., 1, 1 ; Shelton - 1652, p. 1 r. ; Gayton, p. 2.
D. Q., I, m ; Shelton - 1652, p. 5 r. ; Gayton, p. 10.
D. Q., I, y ; Shelton - 1652, p. 8 r. ; Gayton, p. 17.
D. Q., I, x ; Shelton- 1652, p. 17 v. ; Gayton, p. 41.
32 BULLETIN HISPANIQUE

household, you will remember, consisted of himself, « a woman

servant of about fourty yeers old, and a Neece not yet twenty,
and a man that served him both in fîeld and at home ». Gayton
comments : « His Family (himself e included) like that of the Arke,
two and two, Maie and Female, but not of so many persons by
halfe, yet hère was as greatBeasts1. » « When Quixote watched
« his Armes in a great Yard that lay neere unto one side of the
Inné », he is compared to a poor snake by a cistern, and his hisses
to those of « some other créature (as watcbfull) who sav'd some-
time the Capitoll ». When he returned from his fîrst sally on the
ass's back, Gayton observes that « One Créature is ready to help
another, though Homo homini Lupus ». When he and Sancho feed
on herbs, we are told : « He had been the only companion for Nebu-
chadonozor, when he was chang'd into a Beast. » Cervantes relates
how Don Quixote « lay with his eyes open like a Hare» ; Gayton
adds : « A thousand feares, fancies, Chimaeras keep our Don not
only like a Hare in his eyes, but his braines also. » When Sancho
was being tossed in the blahket and beheld his master on
Rocinante from the air, Gayton tells us that Quixote looked to him
« no bigger than a Toad upon- a Bucking-stoole »... A pig, a snake,
a goose, an ass, the mad Nebuchadnezzar, a hare and a toad :
there are the animais Don Quixote conjured up for Gayton. The
Knight's appearance and cljaracter are consistently demeaned
and debased : « his withered face, or dried flesh... may render him
âuspected for an Eunuch » ; only when he laughs at « the simpli-
city of his Squire » are we allowed to think him rational ; other-
wise he is called a fool, a lyer, revengeful and a « scarcrow », one
whose legs are too « visibly flexible ». Gayton's Quixote is a
caricature ; there is no reason to suppose that this author ever sus-

D. Q., I, xvi ; Shelton - 1652, p. 30 r. ; Gayton, p. 73.

D. Q., I, xvii ; Shelton - 1652, p. 32 r. ; Gayton, p. 84.
The other quotations are in Gayton, pp. 2, 29, 53, 57, 86 (see also 66), 180 and again on
p. 180.
1. The reader may remember that even in the Second Part of Don Quixote,
Cervantes gives some excuse for this conceit. In chapter xxix we read : t Volvieron a sus
bestias, y a ser bestias, don Quijote y Sancho, y este fin tuvo la aventura del
encantado barco. » Shelton translated the passage thus : « Don Quixote and Sancho like
beasts turne to their beasts : and this end had the Adventure of the Enchanted
Barke. » Shelton- 1652, p. 190 v.
CERVANTES AND ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE XVlV*1 CENTÜRY 33

pected that Cervantes íntended the Knight of La Mancha to be

anything else.
And Sancho x? Sancho looks like a dromedary when he is riding
on his ass ; he is « a very Ingrum as they cali him, he could neither
write ñor read, a very beast, and fit for nothing but to pick sal-
lets » ; at other times he is called : « a most grosse f eeder », a cor-
morant, a clod ; his nose is « seldome out of the Manger » ; his
« tongue was like a Bels clapper, beating others and ever beat
itself » ; his wit less than that of his ass ; when he looked that
animal in the eyes, the two of them were « mutuall mirrors » to one
another. Only occasionally is there any allusion to Sancho 's com-
mon sensé or to his fidelity to his master. For Gayton the squire
in usually just a clod or a cormorant.
Gayton's insensitiveness to Cervantes's finer qualities is
apparent in the passages quoted and in many more besides. Like
Avellaneda and Quevedo, the commentator takes Don Quixote purely
as a burlesque and he exaggerates and coarsens its caricatures —
those portions of the novel to which modem critics pay least
attention. As a whole the Pleasant Notes upon Don Quixot are not
criticism, but they at least act as a pointer to certain incidents in
the novel which are none the less ridiculous, even if they can be
regarded as serious at the same time. Cervantes may hâve meant
them to be both, but we are wrong when we underrate — as I
think many modem readers do — the humorous side of the
misadventures of Quixote and his Squire.
Hère I think we must also remember how much more vivid the
burlesque attitude to Don Quixote must hâve been to the seven-
teenth century than it is to us today. The parody of the romances
of chivalry was something immediately humorous to Cervantes's
contemporaries, because they knew ail about Amadis and Palme-
rin. Today, we find difficulty in reading the parodies because we
do not know exactly what is being parodied ; Amadis and Palme-
rin are dead as mutton, but at that time they were alive enough.
Also, the First Part of Don Quixote is more of a parody than the
Second; moreover the First Part had (in England) an eight

and1. 141
The(see
références
also p. to
57).
Sancho occur in Gayton, pp. 41, 42, 43, 45, 65, 143, 66, 189, 38,

Bull, hispanique. 3
34 BULLETIN HISPANIQUE
years' start over the more subtle sequel. First impressions are
often strong ; many readers of that day probably read the Second
Part without seeing much more in it than they had already obser-
ved in its fore-runner. Even in Part I itself, the first hints given
of the characters of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are crude,
compared with the révélation of thèse two figures as they gra-
dually grow in the consciousness of the reader ; you will remem-
ber that Cervantes introduced Don Quixote as a man who had
read so many novéis of chivalry that he « dryed up his braias in
such sort, as he lost wholy his Judgenient » ; he introduced Sancho
as « one of a very shallow wit 1 ». As we read the novel Cervantes
himself shews us that both thèse statements are too simple ; but
the seventeenth-century reader can hardly be blamed if, like
Gayton, he saw in this great novel, only the taie of a madman
squired by an idiot. For that is what its author said it was.

III

The Pleasant Notes upon Don Quixot seem to me to display

something of what other Englishmen of that time thought of Don
Quixote : that it was less a work of édification than of entertain-
ment. Richard Brathwaite in 1614 wrote that there were certain
histories that he altogether exclused from « his (Economie or
prívate family », and that among thèse were « the phantasticke
writings of some supposed Knights, (Don Quixotte transformed
into a Knight with the Golden Pestle) with many other fruitlesse
inuentions, moulded only for delight without profit2 ». Some
years previously, (before the publication of Shelton's translation)
Beaumont and Fletcher's play The Knight of the Burning Pestle

1. D. Q., I, i, and I, vu ; Shelton- 1612, I, 25 and 67.

2. See The Schollers Medley, p. 99. Quoted by Edwin B. Knowles Jr., 'Allusions to
Don Quixote before 1660'. Philological Quarterly, XX (1941), p. 575. My friend Don
José Antonio Muñoz Rojas has pointed out to me another référence to Don Quixote
that has escaped the attention of the scholars : Sir Robert Kerr wrote to Mr. Rawlings
on 31Bt January, 1617 : « for as Alexandor knew his mortality by lechery, and sleep,
and some other good guesses, I know the narrowness of my understanding be not yett
knowing what maye be contenid in a booke praseit be the witty pated wrytter of Don
Quixote. » Correspondente of Sir Robert Kerr, First Earl of Ancram and his son William,
Third Earl of Lothian. Edinburgh, 1875, p. 3.
CERVANTES AND ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE XVIIth CENTURY 35

appeared on the London stage. All but a few critics agrée that
some portions of this play were derived from Don Quixote1. In
both works there is a modem knight-errant who goes forth to
right wrongs in a commonplace, everyday world. One is a half-
crazed Spanish gentleman, the other a London grocer's appren-
tice, who knows all the time that he is acting a part. Quixote has
his idealízed love, Dulcinea, a village girl, whom his disordered
brain turns into an imaginary princess ; Ralph has his Susan, « the
Cobler's Maid in Milkstreet », but she is not transformed into a
being of a différent order by too ardent an imagination. Quixote
and Ralph both deliberately parody the absurd style of the
romances of chivalry, but only Quixote really thinks that he is
acting like a character in one of them. Ralph and Quixote both
claim that an inn is a castle and each is confronted by an angry
landlord who demands that his guest should pay for his lodging
and board ; the situations are the same, although Quixote really
mistakes an inn for a castle, whereas Ralph only prétends that it
is one, and the difficulties are solved in différent ways in the two
works. Finally, when Ralph tries to succour Mrs. Merrythought
and gets a good hiding from Jasper for it, when he defeats the
ogre — who is really a barber-surgeon — and rescues the priso-
ners (or customers), we cannot help thinking of the general pat-
tern of Quixote's early adventures, though not perhaps in any
precise way2.
Some of the resemblances that I have just outlined may be for-
tuitous. Similar épisodes can be found in the romances of chivalry
that were parodied in both works. There is however no such
source that can account for the parallel between the inn scènes :
Quixote and Ralph both take an inn for a castle and both are
asked to pay for the hospitality that they have received. This
cóincidence can only be explained as a direct borrowing by Beau-

1. The arguments of Leonhardt in 1885 were accepted in Koeppel- 1895 and 1898,
Becker and many other works. The arguments against Leonhardt's contentions may
be found in Gayley (pp. 321-331) and in the prpface to the édition of the play by
Murch (Yale Studies in English. New York, 1908), pp. xxxiii-lviii.
2. t The Cobler's Maid in Milkstreet » — K. B. P, p. 59 b ; inn-castle situation,
D. Q., I, xvn ; K. B. P., 57 b ; Ralph's fight with Jasper, K. B. P., 54 b ; the barber
and his customers, K. B. P., pp. 58 b-59 b.
36 BULLETIN HISPANIQUE

mont (to whom the critics assign the plan and most of the writing
of this play) from Cervantes. Whether Beaumont had read Don
Quixote wjien he wrote The Knight of the Burning Pestîe is doubt-
ful, but there is no reason why he may not hâve heard about the
novel and hâve seen that some of its features were suitable for
his purely comic intentions. The play cannot hâve been written
earlier than 1607 ; the First Part oîDon Quixote appeared in Spa-

If Beaumont took so much from Cervantes, why did he not

take more? What about Sancho and Rocinante? not to mention
the profounder aspects of Don Quixote himself ? Those who ask
thèse questions 2 are expecting a man of the seventeenth century
to react as they do themselves in the twentieth. We hâve seen
what use Gayton made of Don Quixote and of Sancho ; there is
no reason to suppose that Beaumont (and still less Fletcher) had
any more refïned impressions of thèse characters than Gayton
had. In any case we cannot demand that the author of a play
that satisfies us (the qualification is essential to my argument
later) shall reproduce in it ail the quàlities that we of a différent
age may admire in one of its sources. Surely, he need only take
those quàlities that suit his purpose. Beaumont aimed at making
fun of the theatrical tastes of London grocers and their appren-
tices and at satirising ham-acting ; if he had made Ralph half as
complex as Don Quixote, how could he have done that? He may
well have left Sancho out because old Merrythought and the
Citizen's Wife provided ail the contrast required to set off the
absurdity of Ralph's heroics. As for Rocinante, I would like to
ask one question : how often did horses appear on the Elizabethan
stage?
The Knight of the Burning Pestle derives directly or by hearsay
from Don Quixote. Besides the similarities between certain
incidents in the novel and others in the play, there are other more

1. In this paragraph I have used the arguments, and statements of Oliphant in the
section devoted to the K. B. P., particularly pages' 170-173. The argument that the
inn-scene comes rather from the part of Puntarvolo in Jonson's Every man out of his
Humour may be found in Gayley, pp. 327-328. The resemblance between D. Q. and
K. B. P. seems to me to be much closer than that between K. B. P. and Everyman out
of his Humour.
2. Gayley, Murch and other authors quoted by them.
CERVANTES AND ENGLISH LITERATÜRE OF THE XVIIth CENTURY 37

general resemblances in the attitudes expressed by Cervantes and

Beaumont. We still find both works amusing although their
original purpose was to satirise literary fashions that no longer hâve
any but an académie interest to us. The satire in both is kindly. In
Don Quixote we are continually brought face to face with the oíd,
popular, traditional civilisation of the Spanish peasantry ; in The
Knight of the Burning Pestle the Citizen's Wife, with her
impertinences, her folk-remedies, her absurd réminiscences and her fa-
mily pride, recréâtes a différent popular civilisation — that of the
English shop-keeper. Beaumont had not Cervantes's genius, and
his play, though it is spírited and humorous, can hardly be coun-
ted among the very finest of Elizabethan and Jacobean
comedies ; nevertheless there is a Cervantine quality in its
présentation of lif e and in its humour, which is not merely the resuit of a
clever, but obvious, imitation of certain épisodes. Not the least
of its merits is that it has a more human treatment both of the
sham knight and the popular background than we find in any
other English derivative of Don Quixote before the time of Fiel-
ding.
Of courge there were other représentations of, or allusions to,
Don Quixote in the Jacobean théâtre. Their interest is small. No
one can take any serious account of the ridiculous disguised
servant in Massinger's Picture or a purely burlesque figure who
appears in Shirley's masque The Triumph of Peace. Gayton's
deformed caricature is more lively than these. Ñor are the stage
derivatives of Sancho Panza much better; I doubt whether
anyone could now raise a smile, let alone receive any more serious
pleasure, fromthe parts of Castruccio in Fletcher and Massinger's
Double Marriage, of Geta in'their Prophetess, and of Borachio in
D'Avenant's Cruel Brother1.

IV

Don Quixote was not the only work by Cervantes which the
Jacobean dramatists made use of. The Persiles and the Exemplary

1. The scene in The Picture is the first in the second act. See also Koeppel- 1898,
Chelli - 1926, p. 108, for íurther détails. The Double Marriage, V, 2, is derived írom
Shelton's version oí D. Q., II, xlvii.
38 BULLETIN HISPANIQUE

Novéis also provided sources for Fletcher, Massinger, Middleton,

Rowley and Field1. 1 have not time this afternoon to talk atout
ail thèse adaptations, but perhaps the examination of one play
by Fletcher will suffice for my purpose. This play, The Chances,
is a dramatisation of the Exemplary Novel of La señora
Cornelia.
It is instructive to compare the claims made for the Exemplary
Novéis with those for the English plays, in the early éditions. Cer-
vantes's introduction is clear and downright. He explains that
the novéis are exemplary, and that they are to provide enter-
tainment also. He was, he says, over 64 when he wrote them, and
at that age one cannot affordto play tricks with the life to come.
But people cannot spend ail day in church or in serious business,
and thèse novéis, though he trusts that they will never occasion
evil thoughts or desires, are to be justified in the same way that
the planting of avenues or the curious cultivation of gardens can
be justified : they are for the hours of récréation in which the

1. Fletcher and Massinger's The Custom of the Country is taken from the English
translation of the Persiles by Matthew Lownes. Massinger's The Renegado uses
material from D. Q. The most important plays derived from the Exemplary Novéis are :
The Spanish Gipsie — Middleton and Rowley : La gitanilla and La fuerza de la
sangre.
The Queen of Corinth - Fletcher, Massinger and Field (see Oliphant) : La fuerza de
la sangre.
Love's Pilgrimage — Fletcher, Beaumont and Jonson (see Oliphant) : Las dos
doncellas.
The Fair Maid of the Inn - Fletcher, Massinger, Webster and Ford (see Oliphant) :
La ilustre fregona.
Rule a Wife and Have a Wife — Fletcher : El casamiento engañoso.
The Chances — Fletcher : La señora Cornelia.
The claim that A Very Woman derives from El amante liberal should be abandon ed
— see Maxwell, pp. 181-191. There also seems to be little reason to consider that The
Beggar's Bush is in any way indebted to La gitanilla. For The Queen of Corinth see
Me Keithan, p. 154 ; for The Fair Maid of the Inn, see Maxwell's article, t The Source
of the Principal Plot of The Fair Maid of the Inn », Modem Language Notes, vol. LIX,
pp. 122-127. For the plays derived from the interpolated novel of The Curious
Impertinent in D. Q. see A. S. N. Rosenbach- 'The Curious Impertinent in English Dramatic
Literature', Modem Language Notes, 1902. Lockert, in the introduction to his édition
of Massinger'6 The Fatal Dowry, points out that « the identification of the situation at
Aymer's house in IV, n (of this play) with a scène in Cervantes's El viejo celoso... is
extremely fanciful > (The Fatal Dowry, by Philip Massinger and Nathaniel Field, edi-
ted byC. L. Lockert, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1918.) I have not examined the works
of the lesser Jacobean or Caroline dramatists in this connexion, nor have I sought to
estímate the importance of Cervantine influence in the post-Restoration théâtre.
CERVANTES AND ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE XVIIth CENTÜRY 39

afflicted spirit may rejoice \ Fletcher never made such claims for
his works2, but Shirley, in the préface to the first folio of Beau-
mont and Fletcher, tells us at least what he considered was the
result of the performance of thèse plays on English theatre-goers.
He says that in them we may find « the Authentick witt that
made Blackfriers an Academy, where the three howers spectacle
while Beaumont and Fletcher were presented, were usually of more
advantage to the hopefull young Heire then a costly, dangerous,
forraigne Travell, with the assistance of a governing Mounsieur,
or Sígnior to boot ; And it cannot be denied but that the young
spirits of the Time, whose Birth and Quality made them
impatient of the sowrer wayesof éducation, hâve, from the attentive
hearing thèse pièces, got ground in point of wit and carnage of
the most severely employed Students, while thèse Récréations
were digested into Rules, and the very Pleasure did édifie. How
many passable discoursing diníng witts stand yet in good crédit
upon the bare stock of two or three of thèse single Scènes ».
Cervantes, then, aimed at pleasing and morally improving his rea-
ders ; Fletcher pleased his hearers and taught them étiquette !
Cervantes was not the only Spanish author whom Fletcher
found useful. Flores, Alemán, Céspedes y Meneses, Lope de Vega,
Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola and Salas Barbadillo also gave
him material for his plots3. Generally speaking, Fletcher and his
collaborators drew on those novéis that dépend on intricacy and

1. See N. E., I., pp. 22-23.

2. Fletcher made a few remarks about the nature of tragicomedy inhis préface to
The Faithful Shephe/dess ; they tell us little about his moral intentions.
3. Fletcher's W ornen Pleased is taken from a translation of the Historia de Aurelio
y Jsabella by Juan de Flores. Fletcher and Massinger's The Spanish Cúrate and The
Maid in the Mili (which Oliphant attributes to Fletcher and Rowley) both derive
from Léonard Digges's translation of the Poema trágico del español Gerardo by
Céspedes y Meneses. It is not perhaps absolutely certain whether The Little French
Lawyer derives from Alemán's Guzmán de Alfarache or from some common source.
Fletcher's The Pilgrim is taken from the translation of Lope de Vega's novel El
peregrino en su patria. His Island Princess comes from the original Spanish of Bartolomé
Leonardo de Argensola's Conquista de las Islas Malucas (see Stiefel's article, 'Uber die
Quelle von J. Fletcher's Island Princess' in Archio., CIII, pp. 277-308). Rule a Wife
and Have a Wife owes its main plot to Salas Barbadillo's novel, El sagaz Estacio,
marido examinado. Spanish parallels have also been found for Love's Cure, or The
Martial Maid (attributed by Oliphant to Jonson, Beaumont and Massinger) and for
The Eider Brother.
40 BULLETIN HISPANIQUE

surprise of plot, rather than on those that are distinguished by

their realistic observation and psychological insight ; so that our
dramatists usually adapted those of the Exemplary Novéis that
we today fînd least repaying. I think they did this because they
were more anxious to surprise their audiences than to persuade
thenr of the truth of their observations. Williams Cartwright,
who called Shakespeare dull compared to Fletcher, praised the
latter for the way in which he kept his audience in suspense :

None can prevent the Fancy, and see through

At the first opening ; ail stand wondring how
The thing will be untill it is ; which thence
With fresh delights still cheats, still takes the sence1...

Surprise is désirable in a work of art, but surprise must not

exclude other important qualities. Fletcher strained after
surprise and therefore he selected his materials less wisely than he
might hâve done. It would be uncritical to judge him adversely
only because he selected his source material badly, but perhaps
the bad sélection tells us something about his taste.
Fletcher's play The Chances is a dramatic version of the
Exemplary Novel La señora Cornelia. The story is a complicated one of
the conflict of love and honour. Cornelia is a noble lady of Ve-
rona, who is loved by the Duke of Ferrara, and to whom she
bears a son on the night that the Duke was going to take her off
to Ferrara to marry her. Through a series of « chances », two Spa-
nish gentlemen, don Antonio and don Juan, find themselves pro-
tecting the child and its mother. Don Juan, also by chance, res-
cues the Duke from the angry brother of Cornelia. The
complications increase with the flíght of Cornelia from the Spanish gentle-
men's lodgings, and their actions on behalf of her brother to
induce the Duke to marry her. However, after a series of
incidents that it would be tedious to relate, the Duke and Cornelia
are brought together and ail ends happily.
Fletcher follows the twists and turns of this story faithfully
and with some dexterity. Often he follows it very closely indeed.

1. See his complimentary verses at the beginning oí First and Second Beaumont
and Fletcher Folios.
CERVANTES AND ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE XVIIth CENTURY 41

When Don Frederick (that is the don Antonio of the novel) tells
don John :
I hâve a few Dévotions
To do first, then I am yours...

(Dévotions, by the way, were not the chíef occupation of many of

Fletcher's young gentlemen) ; when Constantia (the Cornelia of
the novel) begs Don Frederick
that presently
With all convenient haste, you would retire
Unto the street you íound me in...

and when the Duke asks

Am I a person
To be your sport, Gentlemen?

Fletcher is only paraphrasing Cervantes1. (I am sure, from the

first of these quotations, that he had read the Spanish text and
not the French translation of 1615 2.) The play, scène by scène,
follows the novel, almost page by page. Fletcher's construction
is really that of Cervantes. But there área few omissions and
additions in The Chances that let us see what Fletcher was about
when he adapted this story to the English stage.
The first omission concerns Cornelia's baby. In both novel and
play, there is some humour in the spectacle of a young unmarried
Spanish gentleman who, while he roams the streets of Verona at
night, suddenly finds that the mysterious parcel that he has been
given contains a live baby, Fletcher, naturally, made the most of
this opportunity. Later in the novel, Cervantes touchingly
describes how Cornelia tries to suckle the baby which she does not
réalise is her own, and her joy when she finds out that the baby

1. For those who wish to verify this statement, here are Cervantes's words :
(a) « Dixo don Antonio a don luán que el se quería quedar a rezar ciertas deuociones,
que se fuesse, que luego le seguiría. » N. E., III, 71.
(b) t Y bolued luego al mismo lugar que me topastes. • N. E., III, 79.
(c) • Quedo tan corrido el Duque, que casi estuuo por pensar si hazian los españoles
burla del. » N. E., III, 118. In The Chances, the remarles oceur in I, i ; I, x, and IV, m.
2. The French translator, in the first of the above passages, wrote c Dom Antoine
dit à Dom Iuan qu'il se vouloit arrester à quelque chose qu'il auoit à faire au logis ».
Les nouuelles ¿le Miguel de Cervantes Saauedra... traduictes par F. de Rosset et le
Sr Audiguier. Paris, 1620. The passage is identical in the 1615 édition.
42 BULLETIN HISPANIQUE

is really hers : of this scène, by far the most memorable in the

whole of La señora Cornelia, there is not a glimpse in The Chances.
There, the baby is lost sight of as soon as it can no longer be
funny. Fletcher has missed out any référence to the finest scène
in the novel, the scène that reveáis the power and beauty of
maternai love.
Another signifîcant omission, or perhaps altération, occurs in
the dénouement of the story. In Cervantes, the happy ending is
brought about in the house of a priest ; behind all the
complications of the story, there is a sense of the religious nature of family
life : the priest, who is to marry the I)uke to Cornelia, contrives
first to settle the difïïculties that have kept thèse noble lovers
apart. So that the Church makes the marriage practicable and
then sanctifies it. The final scène of The Chances takes place in
the house of Peter Vecchio, « a Teacher of Latine and Musick, a
reputed Wizard ». Priests, whatever their faults, are less mere-
tricious than sham wizards, even if the latter also teach « latin
and music ». Fletcher has eut out the religious élément from his
source, to leave us with a clever, but superficial, story of how his
Constantia is made an honest woman. Obviously, he was not inte-
rested in depicting either the religious or the deep human
émotions about family life that Cervantes expressed or implied 1 ; to
Fletcher, marriage was merely a convenient convention for ending
a comedy. He dispensed with just those ingrédients that gave the
original story its most profound meaning, but he kept the
swashbuckling, the coïncidences and the gallantry. I suppose we
have all seen the same sort of thing happen when we have been to
see one of out favourite novéis as a film2.
Fletcher's omissions from his source shew how he limited it ;
his additions, how he coarsened it. Weneed not take much notice
of his irascible old gentleman Antonio, a stock figure whom we
can find in half a dozen other plays. Instead, let us look at Gil-

1. My view oí La señora Cornelia is largely derived from Casalduero. This boqk

contains some brilliant perceptions oí the Exemplary Novéis, although the author's
enthusiasm sometimes leads him to pitch his claims too high or to express himself
carelessly.
2. The commercialisation of the théâtre of Fletcher and Massingeriswell brought
out in Chelli 1923 and 1926.
CERVANTES AND ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE XVIlth CENTURY 43

lian, the gentlemen's landlady, and at Don John. Cervantes's

landlady is kept in the background, but she is a garrulous oíd wo-
man, who makes a few malicious remarks about the two Spa-
niards and so persuades Cornelia to abandon their lodgings. Her
plebeian outlook and her evil tongue set oiî the noble behaviour
of the two young men. Fletcher took Cervantes's hint and deve-
loped it in his own fashion. He also took another hint : his
landlady exclaims :
You'll leave this roperie \
When you come to my yeares.

You may remember that Juliet's Nurse had also said :

I pray you, sir, what saucy merchant was this, that was so full of
his ropery?

The landlady is not called Gillian until the last scene in The
Chances, but iñ the third act she tells a servant that :
Thou lyest lewdly,
Thou tookst me up at every word I spoke,
As I had been a Mawkin, a flurt Gillian.

Juliet's Nurse had also said :

Scurvy knave ! I am none of his ílirt-gills.

Juliet's Nurse said she was not a « flirt-gill » ; the landlaáy first
declares that she is not a « flurt Gillian » and finally announces
that her ñame is Gillian after all. Either Fletcher has nodded, or a
clumsy réviser has botched the détail. In any case, her origin is
clear enough : her part owes as much to Shakespeare as to
Cervantes 2.
The Don John of the play is the counterpart of the don Juan
of the novel. He does the same things and occasionally he speaks
the same words as the other, but the whole conception of the part
is made différent by another hint from Shakespeare. In the novel,
the two young Spaniards are so entirely governed by the gentle-
manly code of honour that, unless we keep their names firmly in

1. First folio reads : t roperie » ; second folio : • Roguery •.

2. For this section see N. E., II, pp. 103-106 ; The Chances, III, i ; Romeo and
Juliet, II, iv, 148 and 155. Also see Oliphant, p. 136 and Me Keithan, pp. 111-112.
44 BULLETIN HISPANIQUE

our minds as we read, we may well be muddled as to which is

which at any given moment. Fletcher differentiates them by ma-
king his Don Frederick echo the Gervantîne don Antonio whe-
reas his Don John, besides being gallant and brave, is also foul-
mouthed and a bit of a rake. Typical of his way of speech is the
following from the scène with Don Frederick, after the latter has
introduced him to Constantia as a man, honest
And modest to converse with, as your blushes.

As soon as Constantia has left the stage, Don John bursts out :
Art thou an Ass?
And modest as her blushes? What block-head
Would e're hâve popt out such a dry Apologie,
For his dear friend? and to a Gentlewoman,
A woman of her youth, and delicacy.
They are arguments to draw them to abhor us.
An honest moral man? 'tis for a Constable :
A handsome man, a wholsome man, a tough man,
A liberal man, a likely man, a man
Made up like Hercules, unslak'd with service :
The same to night, to morrow night, the next night,
And so to perpetuitie of pleasures,
These had been things to hearken to, things catching :
But you hâve such a spic'd considération,
Such qualms upon your worships conscience,
Such chil-blains in your blood, that ail things pinch ye,
Which nature, and the liberal world makes custom,
And nothing but fair honour, O sweet honor,
Hang up your Eunuch honour : That I was trusty,
And valiant, were things well put in ; but modest !
A modest Gentleman ! O wit where wast thou *?

To say that this passage is coarse in feeling, hard-boiled and of

doubtful morality need not be a criticism of it. Coarseness may be
a necessary part of a whole that is irreproachable. There is howe-
ver no sign that Fletcher in any way disapproved of the attitude
here expressed, even if these words were only intended to raise a
laugh. The style is superficially lively, but the passage can only
amuse us the first time we corne across it, because it is répétitive
and diffuse. Nothing, as the Spaniards say, is left in the inkwell.
Fletcher let his pen run away with him ; the resuit is cheap. As

1. The Chances, II, m.

CERVANTES AND ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE XVIIth CENTURY 45

Gillian partly derives from Juliet's Nurse, so Don John partly

derives from one aspect of Mercutio ; but the copy is crude and
second-rate.
Fletcher's procédure was simple. He took the Spanish novel,
eut out its more profound passages, developed and exaggerated
such parts of it as suited hís boisterous conception of comedy, and
added two or three stock figures that owed a good deal to the
original créations of his predecessors. What in Cervantes is
délicate, carefully modulated prose, becomes that monotonous, end-
stopped, répétitive verse that Fletcher habitually wrote. As
Fletcher's verse is inferior to that of Jonson, Webster and Middle-
ton, so his constructions (or fabrications) are inferior to those of
his Cervantine sources. What I have said about The Chances also
applies to Rule a Wife and Have a Wife1, Lovés Pilgrimage, The
Queen of Corinth and The Custom of the Country 2. Fletcher syste-
matically debased whatever he took from Cervantes.

Samuel Butler, the author of Hudibras, once described the cha-

racter of An Imitater. In it he wrote that

His (the imitator's) Muse is not inspired but infected with another
Man's Fancy ; and he catches his Wit, like the Itch, of somebody else
that had it before, and when he writes he does but scratch himself.*..
He melts down his Wit, and casts it in a Mold : and as Metals melted
and cast are not so firm and solid, as those that are wrought with the
Hammer; so those Compositions, that are founded and runin other
Men's Molds, are always more brittle and loóse than those, that are
forged in a Man's own Brain... He runs a whoring after another Man's
Inventions (for he has none of his own to tempt him to an incontinent
Thought) and begets a Kind of Mungrel Breed, that never comes to
good3.

1. For the debt of this play to The Taming of the Shreiv, see Me Keithan, pp. 129-
133. Chelli considered it « plutôt une succession d'épisodes amusants qu'une action
qui se développe » (Chelli - 1923, p. 99).
2. Bond, in his introduction to his édition of this play in the first volume of the
Variorum Edition of Beaumont and Fletcher (London, 1905), and Chelli, in his work
of 1926, both study the use of Cervantine material bu Fletcher and Massinger in this
play.
3. Genuine Remains, II, 217.
46 BULLETIN HISPANIQUE

Tbis passage shews us that Butler was aware of the dangers of

servile imitation, dangers that neither Gayton nor Fletcher avoi-
ded. Nevertheless, Butler's Hudibras has" often been described as
an imitation of Don Quixote. I must therefore see how far this
author escapes his own accusation of being « not inspired but
infected with another Man's Fancy. »
Butler certainly read Don Quixote very carefully, but he shews
no signs of having seen much more in it than Gayton did. It is
quite possible that he had also read Gayton. The figure of
Hudibras is modelled on the burlesque Quixote that so much amused
the seventeenth century. Ralpho, though he may be named after
the hero of The Knight of the Burning Pestle1, is taken from
Sancho Panza, in so far as his role is made to contrast with that of his
master. The caricatures of Gayton are pointless, because their
author looked on them as being automatically funny for their
own sakes, but Butler made his caricatures stand for classes of
people that he disliked : Hudibras is a Presbyterian and Ralpho
an Independent. Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Butler, justly pointed
out that in making Hudibras a knight-errant, Butler in volved hím-
self in a « tumultuous confusion of contradictory ideas », that
Hudibras's « pedantic ostentation of knowledge... has no relation
to chivalry » and that his« martial encumbrances... canaddno-
thing to his civil dignity ». According to the greatest English cri-
tic of the eighteenth century, Cervantes's influence interfères
with Butler's design ; let us see how much Butler may hâve taken
from Cervantes.
The adventures of Hudibras and Ralpho are reflections of
Quixote's and Sancho's2. The two knights are both absurd

1. See the note by Mr. Christopher Byron of Manchester in Hudibras, I, 48-49.

2. Some of the following parallels between Hudibras and Don Quixote are mentio-
ned in Becker, pp. 85-95. Hère are my références to the respective incidents mentioned
in this and the next paragraph :
thistles - D. Q., II, lxi ; Hudibras, Part I, Canto h, lines 836-860.
lady's name - D. Q., I, m, etc. ; Hudibras, I, m, 477-478.
whipping- D. Q., II, xxxiv, etc. ; Hudibras, II, i, etc.
its infliction ... -D. Q., II, xxxv, etc. ; Hudibras, II, n, 486-488.
corpse and skimmington a D. Q.l I, xix ; Hdibras, II, n, 565-888.
sham second parts -D. Q. II, mx. etc. ; Hudibras, II, m, 991-1012.
Hudibras attacked by deTils-D. Q., II. lxviii ; Hudibras, III, i, 1147, etc.
lessons to squire-D. Q., II, x ; An Heroical Epistîe of Hudibras to his Lady,ïiaes 351-352.
CERVANTES AND ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE XVIIth CENTURY 47

figures who ride about the country in search of adventures on

ridiculous horses. When the men of Brentford put thistles under
Ralpho's horse's tail, thereby bringing disaster to Hudibras, we
remember how Quixote was served by the boys of Barcelona.
Like Quixote, Hudibras invokes his mistress to inflame his
courage. The promise of a self-inílicted whipping that Hudibras
makes to the rich widow, recalls the means by which Dulcinea
was to be freed from enchantment. The argument ¿bout the
iníliction of the whipping also owes something to Don Quixote.,
The attack on the skimmington procession is loosely imitated
from Don Quixote's adventure of the corpse. As Cervantes made
his own characters disavow the spurious Second Part of
Avellaneda, so Butler makes his deny the truth of the sham Second
Part of Hudibras. The scène in which Hudibras is cudgelled by
the devils recalls that in which Don Quixote and Doña Rodríguez
were punished by the Duchess's women. And finally, like Don
Quixote, after Hudibras had composed his Heroical Epistle to his
Lady, he
gave it to his faithíul Squire
With Lessons how to observe, and eye her.

These are all extemal similarities, that affect the machinery

of the poem, rather than its texture. Other ideas from Cervantes
are also incorporated in Butler's digressions, descriptions and
discourses. The author or the persons in the poem discuss whe-
ther knights-errant ever eat, and if so, what they eat, the right of
the victor to the spoils of war, the geographical and historical
liberties taken by poets and dramatists, the duty of errant
knights to free distressed damosels, how no honour can be gained
when the foe is a member of the lower classes, the frauds of
judicial astronomy and the nature of pimping : all of these subjects

knight-errant's food - D. Q., I, x ; Hudibras, I, i, 327-336.

victor's spoils -D. Q., I, vm ; Hudibras, I, n, 1000, etc. ; I, m, 891-894.
poetic license - D. Q., I, xlviii ; Hudibras, II, i, 23-26.
distressed damosels — D. Q., passim ; Hudibras, II, i, 777-784.
ignoble foes-D. Q., I, vm ; II, xi, etc. ; Hudibras, II, h, 849-872 ; III, i, 347-348.
judicial astronomy — D. Q., II, xxv ; Hudibras, II, m.
pimping -D. Q., I, xxii ; Hudibras, III, i, 355, etc.
48 BULLETIN HISPANIQUE

are also discussed, in more or less the same way, in Don Quixote.
So many coïncidences cannot be accidental.
Butler took part of the conception of his hero from Cervantes
and followed the latter in many détails of his story ; he also
discussed ideas that had been raised at différent moments in Don
Quixote. Thèse détails and ideas chiefly affected the machinery
of Hudibras, not the manner in which it was written, or its mora-
lity. Perhaps the worst features of the poem come from
Cervantes ; for besides the defect in the hero, to which Dr. Johnson
drew his readers' attention, the mock-heroic descriptions can
hardly amuse anyone todjay; much of the mock-heroic comes
from Cervantes1. Butler's merit lay in his satirical observations
on human conduct, in the examination of base motives, in the
exposure of hypocrisy and in the extraordinary use of metaphor
and paradox to explode or confound absurdities. Hudibras and
Ralpho are not pilloried merely because they were a Presbyte-
rian and an Independent, but because they used an ostentatious
piety to further their own ends. Hère Cervantes was not much
use to Butler, but as Cervantes made the conversations of Quixote
and Sancho shew how each perceived the folly or simplicity of the
other, so those of Hudibras and Ralpho unmask the pedantry,

1. Tbe Sun had long since in the Lap

Oí Tketis, taken out his Nap,
And like a Lobster boyl'd, the Morn
From black to red began to turn ;
When Hudibras, whom Thoughts and Aking,
«Twixt sleeping kept, ail Night, and waking,
Began to rub his drowsy Eyes,
And from his Couch prepar'd to rise,
Resohing to dispatch the Deed
He vow'd to do with trusty Speed,
But first, with knocking loud, and bawling,
He rouz'd the Squire, in Truchle lolling :
And, aiter many Circumstances,
Which vulgar Authors in Romances
Do use to spend their Time and Wits on,
To make impertinent Description,
They got (with much ado) to Horse...' (Hudibras, II, n, 29-45.)
Apenas la blanca aurora habla dado lugar a que el luciente Febo con el ardor de sus
calientes rayos las líquidas perlas de sus cabellos de oro enjugase, cuando don Quijote,
sacudiendo la. pereza de sus miembros, se puso en pie y llamó a su escudero Sancho,
que aun todavía roncaba ; lo cual visto por don Quijote, antes que le despertase, le
dijo... D. Q., II, xx.
CERVANTES AND ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE XVIIth CENTURY 49

hypocrisy, wickedness and absurdity of both of them. Gayton's

caricatures were pointless ; Butler's were serious, I would almost
say, improving.
Cervantes can hardly have influenced Butler's poetic
technique. But when Don Quixote was in the house of Don Diego de
Miranda, he remarked that « Poetry, Signior, in my opinion ; is
like a tender Virgin, Young and most Beautifull, whom many
other Virgins, to wit, all the other Sciences, are to enrich, polish
and adorne1 ». Virginal is not, perhaps, the most appropriate
a,djecvtive to apply to Butler's Muse, but is there any other En-
glish poet who — to use Dr. Johnson's words — « ever brought
so many remote images so happily together » and combined them
with observations on «the opérations of human nature... and the
effects of opinion, humour, interest and passion »? Professor
Grierson considered Butler the last of the Metaphysical Poets 2,
and there is a similarity between his destructive technique and
the brilliant constructions of John Donne. Butler considered
Donne's poetry inconsequential, lacking in purpose3, and though
he may none the less have admired some of it, his burlesque use
of the metaphysical techniques probably helped to discrédit them
in the eyes of his contemporaries. Here I am reminded of
Cervantes and the romances : if Don Quixote is to be regarded as the
last novel of chivalry that « smiled Spain's chivalry away », may
not Hudibras be looked on as the last metaphysical poem, in
which Butler used the devices of his predecessors to cast scorn on
their works? Although some of his predecessors were greater men
than he, his adaptation of the conceit and expanded metaphor to
a satirical purpose was original and remains valid. Our
appréciation of Donne doe&ñot involve necessarily the rejection of Butler.
The metaphysical technique occurs both in Butler's verse and
in his prose. It is apparent in the extract from The Imitater that

1. D. Q., II, xvi. My quotation is from Shelton - 1652, p. 164 v.

2. Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Oentury — Donne to Butler.
Selected and edited, with an Essay by Herbert J. C. Grierson. Oxford, 1931, p. lviii.
3. t Dr. Donne's Writings are like Voluntary or Prélude, in which a Man is not tied
to any particular design of Air, but may change his Key or Mood at Pleasure ; so his
Compositions seem to have been written without any particular Scope. » Genuine
Remains, II, 498.
BuU. hispanique. 4
50 BULLETIN HISPANIQUE

I read a few minutes ago. It is also présent in his Thoughts on

Various Subjects, of which the following is a spécimen :
Public Actions are like Watches, that hâve fine Cases of Gold or
Silver, with a Window of Christal to see the Pretences ; but the Move-
ment is of baser Metal, and the Original of ail, the Spring, a crooked
Pièce of Steel — So in the Affairs of State, the solemn Professions of
Religion, Justice and Liberty are but Pretences to conceal Ambition,
Rapine and useful Ckeat1.

What begins as a merely ingenious metaphor is suddenly tirans-

formed by the double meaning in the word « crooked » ; it con-
vinces us of the follow fraud of thèse « solemn Professions ». The
same style is used in Hudibras ; the description of thehero's
religion is too well known for me to quote ; but that of the « New
Light » that inspired Ralpho is less familar and, perhaps, as
worth quotation. Thanks to it :
He cou'd deep Mysteries unriddle,
As easily as thread a Needle. (Ralpho had been a taylor.)
For as of Vagabonds we say ;
That they are ne'er beside their way ;
Whate'er Men speak by this New Light,
Still they are sure to be i'th'right.
Tis a Dark Lanthorn of the Spirit,
Which none see by but those that bear it :
A Light that falls down from on high,
For spiritual Trades to cozen by :
An Ignis Fatuus, that bewitches,
And leads Men into Pools and Ditches,
To make them dip themselves, and sound
For Christendom, in dirty Pond ;
To dive like Wild-Fowl, for Salvation,
And fish to catch Régénération 2.

The notion of the « New Light » could be used to justify any ab-
surdity or, in unscrupulous mouths, any roguery ; it dispensed
with time-tried rules of conduct and intelligent moral standards.
Butler mercilessly exposes thèse abuses by comparing its devo-
tees to vagabonds, burglars and thieving tradesmen ; he prétends
that the Light itself is a Will o' the Wisp that persuades men to

1. Genuine Remains, II, 476.

2. Hudibras, I, i, 499-514.
CERVANTES AND ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE XVIIth CENTURY 51

out-door baptism by total immersion. Behind the passage there

is the Biblical parable of the blind leading the blind, only here is
also a foolish knave who holds a dark-lantern and follows an
ignis fatuus. The baptismal practice of one sect becomes typical
of the mistaken enthusiasm of ail fanatic hypocrites. The final
image is not merely ridiculous ; « to dive like Wild-Fowl for Salva-
tion » is as aimless as the wandering of the vagabond. The
différent images hâve an inner consistency, and yet we are surprised
by their variety as well astheir appropriate ingenuity. « Hetero-
geneous ideas are yoked by violence together » for a carefully pre-
pared purpose.
Butler's greatest gift, the technique of satirical paradox, would
seem to owe little to Cervantes. Yet Cervantes gave him the idea
for his poem and many détails in its construction. Without the
example of Don Quijote, Hudibras might never have existed. The
merits of the two books are quite distinct ; and Cervantes cer-
tainly had a wider sympathy and a more humane outlook than
Butler had. Butler however made what he took from Cervantes
into something différent and valuable, even if it has less scope
than the work he took it from. The debt to Cervantes is apparent
both in the materials and in the scaffolding ; without it, one may
doubt whether Butler could have put together such a remar-
kable poem. Despite the merit of his other productions, he re-
mains the author only of Hudibras ; how many people now read
The Characters or The Eléphant in the Moon? Butler took certain
notions from Cervantes and used them productively for his own
purpose. He did something with the material, whereas Fletcher
and Gayton only succeeded in turning out debased copies. Butler
excelled in the art of putting down significant paradoxes ;
Cervantes helped him to string them together.
Cervantes, by his influence on Fletcher, Gayton and Butler,
helped to prepare the way for English humorous literature. The
humour of the seventeenth century, however, tended to become
identified with caricatures, or purely ridiculous distortions of the
normal \ Sometimes it was robust, but often it was merely coarse.

1. The conclusion oí Dr. Johnson's Life of Butler is relevant here : t Ñor even
52 BULLETIN HISPANIQUE

It was not sensitive to gradations of feeling and the burlesque

style suffered in conséquence. Butler is not immune from a
certain monotony of expression that also afflicts Gayton and Flet-
cher, but he saved himself, not only by his extraordinary techni-
cal skill, but also by his concern forintellectualhonestyandinte-
grity. When his humour is successful, it is because he is serious at
the same time.
This brings our survey of Cervantes's influence on our seven-
teenth century to an end. Cervantes was widely read in England
and he exercised some influence on a number of our writers. Gay-
ton's burlesque commentary shews how Don Quixote was looked
on as a purely farcical work. The Jacobean dramatists used much
material from Cervantes, but the only play of importance that
contained it remains The Knight of the Burning Pestle. In Hudi-
bras, Samuel Butler produced the finest work that derives from
Don Quixote of the English seventeenth century, though at
first sight it merely seems to be yet another example of burlesque
that has now ceased to amuse. His caricatures however are the
vehicle of something more serious than is at first apparent. And
perhaps he also shewed later novelists how they might learn from
Cervantes in order to express their own contributions to the art of
fiction.
Edward M. WILSON.

though another Butler should arise, would another Hudibras ob tain the same regard.
Burlesque consists in a disproportion between the style and the sentiments, or bet-
ween the adventitious sentiments and the fundamental subject. It therefore, like ail
bodies compounded of heterogeneous parts, contains in it a principie of corruption.
Ail disproportion is unnatural ; and from what is unnatural we can derive only the
pleasure which novelty produces. We admire it awhile as a strange thing ; but when it
is no longer strange, we perceive its deformity. It is a kind of artifice, wbich by
fréquent répétition detects itself ; and the reader, learning in time what he is to expect,
lays down his book, as the spectator turns away from a second exhibition of those
tricks, of which the only use is to shew that they can be played. » Mr. T. S. Eliot's
remarks about the dissociation of thought and feeling (cf. his essay on The Metaphy-
sical Poets) were in my mind whan I wrote this paragraph).