Robert Greene's Pandosto. The Triumph of Time.


Term Paper (Advanced seminar), 2001

22 Pages, Grade: very good


Excerpt


Table of contents

Quotation

1 Introduction

2 Elizabethan prose fiction and Robert Greene

3 Pandosto – an interpretation
3.1 The title
3.2 The story of Pandosto and Bellaria
3.3 The story of Dorastus and Fawnia
3.4 Greene’s world picture in Pandosto: Time and Fortune

4 Conclusion

Bibliography

Eifersucht ist eine Leidenschaft, die mit Eifer Leiden schafft.

(German proverb)

Mangelndes Vertrauen ist nicht das Ergebnis von Schwierigkeiten. Sie haben ihren Ursprung in mangelndem Vertrauen.

(Seneca)

1 Introduction

Robert Greene was one of the most popular English prose writers of the late 16th century and Shakespeare’s most successful predecessor in blank-verse romantic comedy. He was also one of the first professional writers and among the earliest English autobiographers[1]. His early prose works show the influence of John Lyly and the Euphuistic style.[2]

His novella Pandosto. The Triumph of time[3] (first extant edition 1588) is a prose pastoral romance based on Greek tradition that provided Shakespeare with the plot of The Winter’s Tale. The running title of the romance, however, is “The History of Dorastus and Fawnia” . The happy love story of Dorastus and Fawnia is framed by the tragic story of the jealous Pandosto, king of Bohemia, and his wife Bellaria. Pandosto’s jealousy is based on a misunderstanding and leads to the abandonment of his child Fawnia and to the death of his beloved wife Bellaria. Pandosto’s life is therefore determined by grief, and he cannot even find his daughter. Fawnia, however, is found by a shepherd and is raised by him as if it was his child. As time goes by, the son of Egistus, king of Sicilia, falls in love with the shepherdess Fawnia who turns out to be a lost princess. So this love story ends happily, and as Greene already claims in the title, truth may be concealed yet time brings the truth to light: “Temporis filia veritas” – truth is the daughter of time.[4] With this structural arrangement, the second (happy) generation, namely Dorastus and Fawnia, is framed within the story of the first (unhappy) generation.[5]

With his depiction of two worlds that have fortune as their main agent, Greene proposes a world picture which was opposed to that of the prevailing moral. Pandosto is also less didactic than the fiction of contemporary authors.[6] The fusion of pastoral and Greek romance assured Pandosto a great popularity over one and a half centuries.[7]

2 Elizabethan prose fiction and Robert Greene

In the Elizabethan period, fiction underwent far-reaching changes.[8] A rapid social development which also comprised the increasing literacy among Elizabethans as well as a growing publishing industry provided the stimulus for an “[...] expansion of the popular literary audience [...].”[9] The growing audience then also included “[...] non-elite men and women who read print for pleasure”[10], which consequently led to an increasing diversity of the literary audience. The diversity of the literary audience results in the Elizabethan period’s considerable output of prose fiction. So the general social and industrial changes also implied the cultural changes. In brief, the Elizabethan period was a time of rapid social as well as literary development.Thus, prose fiction was subject to significant changes. There was an enormous increase in the production of prose fiction and an expansion of vernacular printed books.[11] Accordingly, a great variety of fiction titles became available to the growing audience.

According to Salzman, “[...] it would be misleading to see Elizabethan fiction as a completely hermetic series of different genres.”[12] As Elizabethan authors liked to mix various genres, the formerly elite works, that is to say the courtly works, influenced the popular works and vice-versa. For that reason, the different kinds of narrative began to merge. It is this combination of narrative types that is the basis for the liveliness of late sixteenth century fiction.

Especially the romance form underwent “various metamorphoses”.[13] According to Salzman, those changes can be traced in the work of Robert Greene and in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia.[14] Many writers in the Elizabethan age dedicated themselves to the exploration of a style suitable for narrative.[15] That is also the reason why the style of the early modern prose narratives often seems pompous from the point of view of today’s readers. Furthermore, Elizabethan writers tended to avoid the realism that by the previous generation was believed to be the nature of the novel.[16] It will be explored later how Greene made use of literary fashions in Pandosto and which themes and motifs he applied.

Yet another important aspect is that “Elizabethan authors did not share the post-Romantic obsession with originality [...].”[17] A lot of narratives were based on the plots of older stories. Thus Elizabethan writers varied stories which were already known beforehand. This is another case in point for the argument that structure and language mattered more than the plot itself. In order to explain the Elizabethan preoccupation with the narrative mode, Salzman uses the theory of Russian Formalism[18]. Formalist critics concentrated on the distinction between fabula and sujet, “[...] often labelled today ‘story’ and ‘discourse’.”[19] This distinction is also applicable to Elizabethan fiction, while the discourse was of greater significance. Salzman concludes that Elizabethan prose fiction explores the different modes of telling a story:

Elizabethan fiction is hungry for the variety of sujet, of discourse, of narrative method. But it is the individual approach to such narrative variation by the writers [...] that makes Elizabethan fiction so heterogeneous.[20]

Concerning style and language, John Lyly’s Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (published in 1578) and its sequel Euphues and his England (published in 1580)[21] had a great impact on Elizabethan writing. As already stated above, writers were looking for an appropriate style for prose fiction, so it was the style of Euphues rather than the story that strongly influenced prose fiction in the sixteenth century.[22] Lyly’s elaborate and eccentric prose style even became a fashion in everyday speaking and writing.[23] Therefore, the style Lyly used in his most important work acquired the name of euphuism.

The euphuistic literary fashion was marked by a rather intellectual language; bombastic images, highly artificial paraphrases, affected choice of words, antitheses, alliterations, rhetorical figures such as anaphora and epiphora as well as allusions to ancient mythology and various figures of repetition characterize the ornate euphuistic prose style and gave prose sentences a firm shape.[24]

In his early prose works Robert Greene slavishly followed the prevailing literary fashions. He obtained degrees of both Cambridge and Oxford and was very proud of his university education.[25] Born around 1960, Greene began his literary career at the age of twenty. His first work, Mamillia (published in 1583), was clearly influenced by the euphuistic style. Greene’s work clearly reflects the changes in prose fiction. He was the most prolific writer of Elizabethan fiction[26], with thirty-eight publications. Amongst his works were prose romances, pamphlets and dramas; while René Pruvost undertook a division of Greene’s work into eleven periods[27], Walter R. Davis reduces the Elizabethan writer’s literary output to four main stages:

[...] experiments in the Euphuistic mode (1580-84); collections of short tales or novelle (1585-88); pastoral romances strongly influenced by Greek romance (1588-89); and pamphlets of repentance and roguery, in the main nonfictional (1590-92).[28]

From these stages of his literary work one can easily perceive the remarkable versatility of Greene as a writer. He distanced himself from the euphuistic mode of writing and moves from didactic works (Greenes never too late, published in 1590) over to prodigal son stories and later to eposés of the Elizabethan underworld and realistic descriptions of London low-life (his “cony-catching” pamphlets, 1591/92). Anyway, due to Davis’s division of Greene’s work into the four periods we can pigeonhole Pandosto as a pastoral romance that is inspired by Greek romance.

3 Pandosto – an interpretation

3.1 The title

Already in the title of Pandosto, Robert Greene reveals his purpose. The title anticipates the romance’s moral as well as its interpretation. Greene also addresses the reader by stating that his story is for young and old people. For that reason, the title can also be understood as an advertisement for Greene’s novella.

A part of the title reads like a moral motto: the „pleasant History“ reveals „that although by the means of sinister fortune Truth may be concealed, yet by Time, in spite of fortune, it is most manifestly revealed.“[29] This part of the title tells the reader something about the actual interpretation of Pandosto and about Greene’s intention. It seems as if it was a common moral of the day that time wins over misunderstandings and unveils lies so that the truth comes to light: “Temporis filia veritas” – “truth is the daughter of time.”[30] Furthermore, Greene applies a phrase from the Ars Poetica by Horace: “Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci.”[31] – “He has won every vote who has blended profit and pleasure, at once delighting and instructing the reader.”[32]

Concerning Greene’s self-marketing “slogan” that his romance is for young as well as for old people, he makes sure that Pandosto appeals to a broad audience. Greene’s story is “Pleasant for age to avoid drowsy thoughts [...]”[33], which implies that it is entertaining for old people. Secondly, Pandosto is “[...] profitable for youth to eschew other wanton pastimes [...].”[34] Here, Greene gives the hint that his romance entails an effect on a young reader. Supposedly, he bears in mind that the profit of his work for a young reader is the moral that it conveys. To both young and old, Pandosto brings contentment.

As J. H. P. Pafford, the editor of the critical edition of The Winter’s Tale points out, Greene quite frequently made use of the “slogans” quoted above. In his titles, Greene often uses the Horacian principle, which according to Pafford was also “[...] a common motto of the day [...]”[35]. Greene uses Horace’s maxim in many of his titles in order to underline his intention and his story’s merit for a reader.[36] Furthermore, in most of his titles he professes that his story is for pleasure and profit of the readers. But Greene does not attend his novella to a special kind of audience. He often advertises his works with a remark about the suitability for young as well as for old people – as e. g. in Pandosto, see above – or he claims it is for both man and woman: “[...] shewing to the wife how to use Love, and to the fond, how to eschew Lust: and yeelding to all both pleasure and profit.”[37]

[...]


[1] Greene’s last work, The repentance of Robert Greene (1592), is totally autobiographical. See Davis, Walter R.: Idea and Act in Elizabethan fiction. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969, p. 183.

[2] See Salzman, Paul: English Prose Fiction 1558 – 1700. A critical history. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. p. 59.

[3] This paper is based on the edition given in Shakespeare, William: The Winter’s Tale. Ed. J. H. P. Pafford. The Arden Shakespeare. Walton-on-Thames: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd., 1999. Hereafter cited as Pafford (ed.), The Winter’s Tale. As Pafford points out, the text is “that of the edition of 1595, in modernized spelling and punctuation, collated with the editions of 1588 and 1592.” See p. 181.

[4] See An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction. Ed. Paul Salzman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 399.

[5] See Newcomb, Lori Humphrey: “ ‘Social Things‘: The production of popular culture in the reception of Robert Greene’s Pandosto.“ELH 4/1994, p. 757.

[6] See Davis, Walter R.: Idea and Act in Elizabethan fiction. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969, p. 167.

[7] See Newcomb, Lori Humphrey: “The Triumph of Time: The fortunate readers of Robert Greene’s Pandosto.“Texts and Cultural Change in Early Modern England. Cedric C. Brown and Arthur F. Marotti (eds.). London: Macmillan, 1997.

[8] See An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction. Ed. Paul Salzman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. vii.

[9] Newcomb, Lori Humphrey: “ ‘Social Things‘: The production of popular culture in the reception of Robert Greene’s Pandosto.“ELH 4/1994, p. 753.

[10] Ibid.

[11] See An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction. Ed. Paul Salzman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. x.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid., p. vii/viii.

[14] An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction. Ed. Paul Salzman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. viii.

[15] See ibid., p. ix.

[16] See ibid.

[17] Ibid., p. xi.

[18] See The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Ed. Chris Baldick New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 195f.

[19] An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction. Ed. Paul Salzman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. xi.

[20] Ibid., p. xii.

[21] See Lyly, John: The complete works of John Lyly. Ed. Richard Warwick Bond. Oxford: Clarendon, 1967.

[22] See An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction. Ed. Paul Salzman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. xv.

[23] See An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction. Ed. Paul Salzman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. xv.

[24] For a definition, see The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Ed. Chris Baldick. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 75f.

[25] See An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction. Ed. Paul Salzman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. xvii.

[26] See Davis, Walter R.: Idea and Act in Elizabethan fiction. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969, p. 138.

[27] Pruvost, René: Robert Greene et ses romans (1558-1592). Contribution à l’Histoire de la Renaissance en Angleterre. Paris: Faculté des lettres D’Alger, 1938.

[28] Davis, Walter R.: Idea and Act in Elizabethan fiction. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969, p. 139.

[29] See Pafford (ed.), The Winter’s Tale, p. xxvii.

[30] See An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction. Ed. Paul Salzman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 399.

[31] Horace: Ars Poetica. In: Horace. Satires, Epistles, Ars Poetica. Ed. E. H. Warmington. London [a.o.]: Heinemann [a. o.], 1970 (Reprint of the 1929 ed. With an english translation by H. Rushton Fairclough.), p. 478 l. 343.

[32] Ibid., p. 479.

[33] Pafford (ed.), The Winter’s Tale, p. xxvii.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Pafford (ed.), The Winter’s Tale, p. xxvii, footnote 5.

[36] Greene uses the “omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci” from Horace’s Ars Poetica in the titles of: Arbasto, The Anatomie of Fortune; Orpharion; Metamorphosis; Never too late; Perimedes the Blacke-Smith; Ciceronis Amor; Menaphon; Penelopes Web as well as at the end of Frier Bacon and Frier Bungay. For reference see The Life and Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Robert Greene. Ed. Alexander B. Grosart. New York: Russell and Russell, 1964. 15 Volumes.

[37] Greene, Robert: Morando. The Tritameron of Love. In: The Life and Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Robert Greene. Ed. Alexander B. Grosart. New York: Russell and Russell, 1964.

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Details

Title
Robert Greene's Pandosto. The Triumph of Time.
College
University of Paderborn  (Anglistics)
Course
Hauptseminar William Shakespeare
Grade
very good
Author
Year
2001
Pages
22
Catalog Number
V6570
ISBN (eBook)
9783638141109
File size
537 KB
Language
English
Keywords
16th century, romantic comedy, Shakespeare, The Winter s Tale, Robert Greene, Pandosto - The Triumph of Time
Quote paper
Daniela Esser (Author), 2001, Robert Greene's Pandosto. The Triumph of Time., Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/6570

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