Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes
The History of the Two Valiant Knights, Sir Clyomon Knight of the Golden Shield, Son to the King of Denmark, and Clamydes the White Knight, Son to the King of Suavia[1] is an early Elizabethan stage play, first published in 1599 but written perhaps three decades earlier (c. 1570). It is often regarded as a characteristic example — perhaps the best surviving example — of the type of drama that was extremely popular in the early Elizabethan period. The work "best represents the characteristics of pre-Greenian dramatic romance."[2]
Publication
Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes[3] was first printed in 1599, in a quarto issued by stationer Thomas Creede.[4] The title page makes no attribution of authorship; it does state that the play was "sundry time" performed by Queen Elizabeth's Men. Since that playing company originated in 1583, it could not have produced the work new; its version must have been a revival.
Genre
The play has been called a "comedy, or, more properly, tragicomedy,"[5] though it falls securely into the category of romance, enormously popular in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.[6] A modern reader or critic might classify it as an "adventure melodrama."
"Clyomon and Camydes" is an extravagant example of stage romance. In his Defense of Poetry, Sir Philip Sidney generally defended the poets and poems of his era from their critics; but in a famous and often-quoted passage he also ridiculed the fanciful and wild romances then common on the popular stage, in which:
- "...you shall have Asia on the one side, and Affrick on the other, and so many other under-kingdoms, that the player, when he commeth in, must ever begin with telling where he is, or else the tale will not be conceived. Now you shall have three ladies walk to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. By and by, we hear news of shipwreck in the same place, and then we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock. Upon the back of that comes out a hideous monster, with fire and smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a cave. While in the meantime two armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field?"[7]
A quick summary of the physical locations in this play confirms and even accentuates Sidney's description: the drama opens in Scandinavia, then moves "to the Forest of Marvels on the borders of Macedonia, to the Isle of Strange Marshes twenty days' sail from Macedonia, to the Forest again, to the Isle again, to Norway, to the Forest, to the Isle, to the Forest, to a road near Denmark, to the Isle, to Denmark."[8]
Verse
The play is composed in the rhymed fourteener or heptameter verse that was popular in its era. When the heroine Neronis (daughter of Patranius, King of the Isle of Strange Marshes) enters the Forest of Marvels in male disguise, she speaks this:
- As hare the hound, as lamb the wolf, as foul the falcon's dint,
- So do I fly from tyrant he, whose heart more hard than flint
- Hath sack'd on me such hugy heaps of ceaseless sorrows here,
- That sure it is intolerable, the torments that I bear....[9]
The meter has a jog-trot rhythm to a modern ear, but poets like Sidney and Arthur Golding employed it for works of serious intent.
Authorship
The is no evidence from the Elizabethan era to indicate the author of Sir Clymon and Sir Clamydes. Scholars and critics have proposed George Peele, Thomas Preston, Robert Wilson, and one Richard Bower.[10] No convincing case has been made for any single candidate.
Shakespeare
Crude as it is, Clyomon and Clamydes is thought to have had an influence on several of Shakespeare's plays. Most notably, Rosalind in As You Like It disguises herself in male clothing and flees courtly life for residence among simple shepherds — just as Neronis does in her play.[11] In A Midsummer Night's Dream, the playlet of the mechanicals in Act V bears a resemblance with Clyomon and Clamydes, though in this case the resemblance is clearly in a spirit of parody.[12] And the late romance Cymbeline bears a significant relationship with Clyomon and Clamydes.[13]
Synopsis
Clamydes, son of the King of Suavia, has a problem: he cannot marry his beloved, Juliana, until he slays a flying dragon that has been killing and eating maidens and matrons. Clamydes must bring Juliana its severed head. Juliana's brother Clyomon, son of the King of Denmark, takes Clamydes' place when the Suavian king is knighting his son — effectively stealing his brother-in-law-to-be's knighthood. Sir Clyomon sets off on his knightly adventures, which lead him to the Macedonia of Alexander; he is accompanied by Subtle Shift (a version of the Vice character in the medieval morality play). Clamydes pursues Clyomon, seeking revenge for his stolen knighthood; menawhile he kills the dragon in an offstage fight. But he falls victim to the spells of the evil magician Bryan Sans Foy, who steals Clamydes' arms and apparel (and his dragon's head). Bryan intends to take Clamydes' place and marry Juliana.
Clyomon falls in love with Neronis, princess of the Strange Marshes; he vows his love to her — and returns to his adventures. (He has sworn to meet and fight with Clamydes, so his knightly honor compels him.) Thrasellus, the King of Norway, also loves Neronis; she has rejected him, and so he kidnaps her. She, however, escapes for him, and in male disguise seeks refuge with the shepherd Corin. Clyomon tries to rescues Neronis; he meets, fights, and kills Thrasellus. Yet since the man is a king, Clyomon gives him an honorable burial, decorating the hearse with his own shield. Neronis finds hearse and shield, and mistakes the dead man for Clyomon. In grief, she sings a song and tries to kill herself with Clyomon's sword — when Providence descends from the heavens to stop her. He assures her that she will find her living beloved soon. Neronis, still in disguise, takes service as page to Clyomon.
(Thrasellus's hearse remains onstage from one Forest scene to the next — even though an Isle scene intercedes between them.)
After their abundant adventures, problems are resolved in the end. The two knights become friends when Clamydes realizes that Clyomon is a prince of Denmark and Juliana's brother. Clamydes chases away the cowardly Bryan Sans Foy. the couples plan their weddings as the play concludes.
Notes
- ^ Spellings and punctuation are modernized in titles and quotations. "Suavia" or "Swavia " is Sweden; Norway and Sweden were a united monarchy through much of their history.
- ^ Maurice Hunt, "Romance and Tragicomedy," in Kinney, p. 386.
- ^ The modern critical literature utilizes various shortened titles for the play; this is perhaps the most common. Others are Syr Clyomon and Clamydes and Clyomon and Clamydes.
- ^ Chambers, Vol. 4, p. 6.
- ^ Forsythe, p. 313.
- ^ Prose romances of chivalry — the type of novel satirized by Cervantes in Don Quixote — were very much in fashion in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, in England as elsewhere in Europe. Multi-volume novels like The Mirror of Knighthood and Palmerin of England sold widely in Shakespeare's generation, and the generations before and after him. Spencer's The Faerie Queen is a more serious, elevated, elegant approach to the same literary tradition.
- ^ Chambers, Vol. 3, pp. 40-1.
- ^ Chambers, Vol. 3, p. 39.
- ^ Bullough, Vol. 2, p. 257.
- ^ Chambers, Vol. 4, p. 6.
- ^ Bullough, Vol. 2, pp. 155-7.
- ^ Salingar, pp. 69-70.
- ^ Forsythe, pp. 313-14.
References
- Bullough, Geoffrey, ed. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. 8 Volumes, New York, Columbia University Press, 1957–75.
- Chambers, E. K. The Elizabethan Stage. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923.
- Forsythe, R. S. "Imogen and Neronis." Modern Language Notes, Vol. 40 No. 5 (May 1925), pp. 313-14.
- Kinney, Arthur F., ed. A Companion to Renaissance Drama. London, Blackwell, 2002.
- Salingar, Leo. Shakespeare and the Traditions of Comedy. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1974.