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"What's in a Name?" Tragicomedy, Romance, ·Or Late Comedy

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128 johnjowet{ Hoy, C. (1956-62). The Shares of Fletcher and his Collaborators in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon 7 pans. SIt/dies in Bibfiography, 8 (1956), 129--46; SB 9 (1957), 143-62;SB'11 (1958), 85"':'~06;~S, 7 12 (1959), 91-116; SB 13 (1960), 77-108; SB 14 (1%0, 45-68; SB 15 (1962), 71-90. \ ." Jackson, M. P. (1979). Studie.s in Attribution.. Middle/on and Shakerpeare. Salzburg: University of Salzb~~~ --(1996). Stage Directions and Speech Headings in Act 1 ofTitus Andronims Q (1594): Shakespe "What's in a Name?" or Peele? Studie.s in Bibliography, 49, 134-48. Jowett, J. (1983). New Created Creatures: Ralph Crane and the Stage Directions in Shakespeare SurHY, 36, 107-20. Tragicomedy, Romance, ·or --(2001). The Audaciry of Measure/or Measure in 1621. BenJonsonJournal, 8, 1-19. Klein, K. (ed.) (2001). Timon ofAthem. Cambridge: Cambridge Universiry Press. Late Comedy Lake, D. J. (1975). The Canon oj ThQma.f Middleton's Plays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McGann, J. J. (1991). The Textual Condition. Princeton, N]: Princeton University Press. Barbara A. Mowat McMullen, G. (1996). "Our whole life is like a play": Collaboration and the Problem ofEditing. 9,437---60. --(ed.) (2000). King Henry VIll. London: Thompson learning. Maguire,1. E. (1996). Shakerpearean Suspect Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Masten, ]. (1997). Te-\:tualllltercoUf'se: Collaboration; Authorship, and Sexi/alities in Renaissance Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Metz, G. H. (1985). Disputed Shakespearean Texts and Stylometric Analysis. Text, 2, 149-7l. story of the generic placing of four of Shakespeare's late plays - Pericles, Middleton, T. (forrhcoming). Collected Works, 2 vols., ed. G. Taylor et al. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ·.·.···.·tC)'mbdi." The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest - began as an unintended consequence Mbntaigne, Michael, Lord of(1904--6). Essayes, trans. John Florio (London, 1603),3 vols. London: University Press. the founding in 1874 of the New "Shakspere Society, which had as its purpose the Oliver, H. J. (ed.) (1959). Timon ofAthem. London: Methuen. close study of the metrical and phraseological peculiarities of Shakspere, to get Orgel, S. (1981). What is a Text? Research OpportitnitiiJs in Re1l£llJSana Drama, 24, 3-6. his plays as nearly as possible into the order in which he wrote them" (FurnivalL 1874: --(ed.) (1987). The Ttmpest. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Among its first accomplishments, the Society established the existence ofa group Potter, 1. (ed.) (1997). The Two Noble Kiwmen. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons. oflate Shakespeare dramas in need ofgeneric classification. Until 1874 there had been Schoenbaum, S. (1966). blkrnal EvidetJo"e andElizabethan Dramatk AuthQrship,,'An Essay in Literary History and Method. London: Edward Arnold. little thought that these four plays had much in common, either chronologically 'or Shakespeare, W. (1986). Complete Works, gen. eds. S. Wells and G. Taylor. Oxford: Clarendon Press, generically. Earlier; in the century, Malone, Knight, and others had attempted to Smith, M, w: A. (1991). The Authorship of Timon ojAthens. Text, 5, 195-240. at:range Shakespeare's plays in the order oftheir writing, and Malone (who recognized Spedding, ]. (1850). Who Wrote Shakespeare's Henry VIII? Gmtlemari's Magazine, n.s., 34, 115-23, that "the versification of (Cymbeline) bears ... a much greater resemblance to that of 381-2. the Winter's Tale and the Tempest, than to any of our author's earlier plays") (Malone Taylor, G.·(1986). The TransmissionofPericJes. Papers ofthtBibliagraphiCal Society ofAnierica;"BO, 193-217. 1821: 453);ar"one point tentativeliplaced Cymbeline among'the later pla'ys, but his' --(1987). The Canon and Chronology ofShakespeare's Plays. In S. Wells and G. Taylor, with]. Jowett and others' belief that Cymbeline showed marked connections with Macbeth and, espe~ and W. Montgomery, William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 69-144. --(995). Shakespeare and Others: The Authorship of Henry the Sixth Part One. Medieval and Renai's, dally, King Lear oo:;:luded any evidence that would have separated it chronologically sanee Drama in England, 7, 145-205. from Lear and the other Holinshed-based plays.l Thus, until 1874 The Tempest had Taylor, G. and Jowett, J. (1993). Shakejpeafe Reshaped 1606-1623. Oxford: Clatendon Press. been identified as "late" (ca. i610-12); The Winter's Tale, after considerable uncer­ Wayne, V. (1998). The Sexual Politics of Textual Transmission. In T. 1. Berger and 1. Maguire (eds.) tainty about possible early dates, had also been identified- as "late";2Cymbeline had Textual Formatiam and Rifarmation. Newark: University of Delaware Press. - been classified as "middle" (ca. 1604-6); and Pericles sometimes as "late" and some­ times as "very early" (with Charles Knight placing its writing in the late 1580s) (Knight 1854: 844). Only the mounting evidence of metrical tests supported and t:::£.~~" .Pllblished by tqe New Shakspere Society brought together these four plays as a chrono- logical group.3 . Until that moment, the plays' genericdassifications had been determined by the Folio's division of the plays into "Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies." Heminge and Condell (or whoever edited or designed the Folio) had placed The Tempest as the first of the "Comedies" and The Winter's Tale as the last, and this classification had raised no significant generic questions. Samuel Johnson (1765), for instance, viewed The Tempest 130 Barbara A. Mowat Tragicomedy, Romance, or Late Comedy 131 as like A Midsummer Night's Dream, the two cbmed~es representing "the noblest Efforts :a:l:ticular kind ofverse or prose narrative, one usually set in opposition to epic or, ,espe­ ofthat sublime and amazing Imagination, peculiar to Shakespeare," and he found Th'e the eighteenth and niner'~enth centuries, to other kinds of serious prose Winter's Tale, "with all its absurdities, very entertaining" (1: 3; 2: 349). Had the Folio In letters written in 1876 Dowden himself used the term romance to refer to not placed Cymbdine as the last ofthe "Tragedies," surrounding it with misleading para';' iCjust~publishednovel, describing George Eliot's Daniel Deronda as an "ideal romance, textual matter4 ("TheTragedie ofCymbeline" as title and running head),]ohnson might: " calling it a "companion" of the "realistic, satirical" Middlemareh, and point­ well never have attacked the play for "the folly ofthe fiction, the absurdity ofebe conduc:t out correspondences between the "natural mystery and marvel" of Daniel Deronda ... and the impossibility of the events in any system eflife" (Johnson 1765, 7: 403).: the "interpositions of the miraculous" in medieval "Legends and Romances" But "The Tragedie ofCymbeline," printed as it was in th,e Folio in the climactic poi;i~ ',(Dowden 1914: 99-101). In the early nineteenth century the term dramatic romance don after "The Tragedie ofKing Lear," "The Tragedie ofOthello, the Moore ofVenice," appeared. William Hazlitt, for example, wrote in 1817 that Cymbe!ine "may be and "The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra," could hardly have presented itself to co'nsidered as a dramatic romance" (though he also called it '~one of the most delight.,. Johnson as, "with all its absurdities, very entertaining. ,,5 Cymbeline's identification asa ful ofShakespear's historical plays") (p. ~) and in 1820 he wrote a review of"The new Tragedy dtew scholarly attention to its Holinshed-based material, separated it defini­ Dramatic Romance (or whatever it is called) of Th? Vampyre" (which he also described tively from the "Comedies," and made ofthe playa generic puzzle, though scholars did" a "melodrama") (Hazlitt 1971: 204-5).8 It is possible that Dowden, like Hazlitt, not expressly address the genre issue. Pericles, because it was excluded from the First wought of plays like Cymbeline as stories to be read and thUs properly describable as Folio, received little serious scholarly attention - again, unti11874, when the applica_ """;'romances,"9 or it is possible that the theatrical spectacle that accompanied such dra­ tion ofmetrical and verse tests placed the "Shakespearean" partS ofthe play in the matic romances as The Vampyre led Dowden to endow the late plays with the generic group as Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. !'#"'''''''''''"omp romance, (Compare, for example, Dowden's list of the "romantic" elements in Once these plays were linked through the metrical tests and the group was assigned,~ late plays: their "scenic spectacle;" their "beautiful romantic background of sea or to the final years of Shakespeare's productive life, its first generic "naming" followed ".=__ ' mountain," their "grave beauty" and "sweet serenity," with Hazlin's description of almost immediately. G, G. Gervinus, in his 1874 Shakespeare Commentaries, used the' the theatrical setting for The Vampyre: the "hue of the sea-green waves, floating in the newly determined chronological positions of Shakespeare's plays to place them iri beam under an arch-way of grey weather-beaten rocks," a description that con­ significant "periods," and he accepted the evidence that put the writing of Pericles; cludes: "In the scene where the moonlight fell on the dying form of Ruthven (the Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest in Shakespeare's last productive years. But'· Vampyre) it was like a fairy glory, forming a palace of emerald light") ("The Drama," he did not give a name to these late plays,6 nor did he seek for similarities among them. 1820, p, 205)." Indeed, while acknowledging that Cymbeline was probably written in 1609, he placed'" Whatever led Dowden to choose the name "Romances" for this group of plays, the his discussion of the play not with the other late plays but, instead, "next after name itself has been remarkably durable. In contrast, his comments characterizing on account of its internal relation with this tragedy" (p. 644). It was Edward Dowden the plays and their author did not long stand unchallenged. Dowden had focused on who, building on Gervinus's "periods," discussed the late plays as a distinct grOllp 'and'; the fact that the four '''Romances'' were written at the end of Shakespeare's working found a name for them.
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