Category Archives: 16th century

Strange Bedfellows? “King Lear” and “The Natural History of Ants”

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Some strange things happen to King Lear in Shakespeare’s tragedy about the proud king of ancient Britain who gives away his crown, loses all — including his wits — and finds himself in tatters on a heath in a raging storm, accompanied only by his (perhaps witless) court fool and a truly noble, young nobleman pretending to be a madman (Edgar).  At one point, the three of them crowd together inside a hovel to seek nighttime protection from a raging storm — a mad king, a fool, and a nobleman feigning madness, all huddled together: strange bedfellows, indeed!

Title page: "The Junior Class-Book," by William Frederick Mylius (London: M.J. Godwin, 1813) Cotsen new accession.

Title page: “The Junior Class-Book,” by William Frederick Mylius. 3rd ed. London: M.J. Godwin, 1813. (Cotsen 91614717)

But even this amazing juxtaposition might not seem stranger than finding a (greatly shortened) version of King Lear cheek-by-jowl with “The Natural History of Ants,” which outlines the behavior of ants and uses it to model virtuous conduct for children.  Yet, that’s just what I came across recently while cataloging a newly-acquired Cotsen Library book: The Junior Class-Book, or, Reading Lessons for Every Day of the Year, by William Frederick Mylius (London: M.J. Godwin, 1813).

How did such seemingly disparate items as Lear and ants  come to be yoked together?  Credit a literary miscellany for children, a genre featuring abbreviated excerpts (fiction, prose, poetry, religion) from a wide variety of authors on an intentionally wide variety of subjects and topics.  Like the once-popular literary miscellanies for adults, those for children were samplers of sorts, but they were also meant to subserve an underlying didactic purpose as well. The sheer variety in the selection of materials in children’s literary miscellanies was intended to make them both more engaging and more readily-digestible to young minds, as per Enlightenment thinking on education.  It was also meant to provide a wide array of information on all sorts of topics that educators of the time thought children should know about: morality, history, geography, natural science, and classical mythology, among them.

Religion, once the exclusive foundation of early childhood learning (“A is for Adam”) was no longer the sole basis for childhood reading by the time of this book’s 1813 publication.  In a Preface, Mylius, the book’s compiling editior, is quite explicit about the role he intends the miscellany to play and how this differs from prior practice:

It is now a maxim sufficiently established in schools that children of both sexes are to be practiced and perfected in the art of reading by a miscellaneous collection.  Fifty years ago, the Bible was the only book used for English reading… a miscellany has great advantage… a stepping stone and ladder to all knowledge…

The variety of a miscellany for children is thus the point, as well as one of its key means to achieving its pedagogical ends.  The unusual range of material in The Junior Class-Book certainly got my attention!

But to be accurate, I should also stress how stress that Mylius imposes considerable didactic order on his selections — this is definitely not free-form, study-what-you-will learning!  The eclectic overall work is carefully divided into weekly reading selections — to be commenced on the week “after the Christmas Holiday” — and each week’s reading is further subdivided into six passages, one for each day of the week.  (“Six days a week,” you ask?  Sunday, while a day of rest, was presumably not a day without reading and study in Mylius’s eyes, but one still revolving around the Bible, not assignments from his book.)

Contents

First page of “Contents” for “The Junior Class-Book”: from Fenelon to French Cookery to Shakespeare.

The first “Contents” page listing of readings should, I hope, give you with some idea of the variety of the content and format, as well as how the clearly didactic orientation is leavened by literature and variety: “Industry & Idleness,” “On Lying,” and “The Folly of Ambition” (almost sermon-like in their moral titles) are accompanied by “Of Bird’s Nests.” (Yes indeed, this passage discusses how birds’ nests are actually made, but it also stresses what humans can learn from observing how birds themselves learn how to build nests: learning from others’ learning — quite a sophisticated, psychologically-oriented  approach, when you think about it.)

“Florizel and Perdita” provides a more distinctly “literary” reading selection for the opening weeks, although a title perhaps not as immediately familiar to a modern reader as it would have been at the time of the Junior Class-Book‘s publication.  A retelling of an episode from Shakespeare’s The Winters Tale, “Florizel and Perdita”  is abridged from Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare, first published in 1807 to huge critical acclaim and general popularity and never since out of print.  Intended as an introduction to the then utterly-canonical (more unquestionably so then than today, believe it or not) plays of Shakespeare, the Tales were abridged narrative versions of twenty plays, intended as “easy reading for young children,” as the Lambs wrote in their own Preface.  But the selections are also quite didactic in their import, as the Lambs made clear at the end of the Preface, where they refer to their Tales as:

strengtheners of virtue, a withdrawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet and honorable thoughts and actions, to teach courtesy, benignity, generosity, humanity… examples teaching these virtues…

Florizel

Beginning of “Florizel & Perdita,” adapted from Lamb’s “Tales of Shakespeare.”

Encouraging virtue and providing lessons for both thought and conduct: classic goals of didactic literature.

Reading the Tales now, their didacticism is striking and unambiguous — as you might expect in a version of Shakespeare from this time aimed at “young children.”  And this is is even more explicit in Mylius’s abridgement of Lamb in his Junior Class-Book.  The innocent virtue of Perdita — described as a “poor deserted baby” — is explicitly rewarded with happiness, marriage, and celebration, all traditional hallmarks of comic dramatic structure.  King Leontes, her father, repents the jealousy and wrath that led him to banish his daughter (his actual intent being her death).  Yet Mylius manages to distill Lamb’s twelve-page rendition of Winter’s Tale into a four-page anecdote of climactic discovery and reconciliation that captures the essence of the longer version to a remarkable extent, at least in my opinion — and one that does reasonable justice to the original play too.

Lear

Reading for the 18th Week: “King Lear” in 8 pages.

The complex psychological and moral story of King Lear is similarly pared down by Mylius into just eight pages — compared with about fifteen pages in Lamb’s retelling of Shakespeare; his version also endeavors to tell more of the original story of Lear, not just focus on the final episode, as his “Florizel and Perdita” did.  Mylius outlines the context of the original story — Lear compelling his three daughters to compete in extolling how much they each love him — although he refers to Cordelia’s “plainness of speech” in refusing to “flatter” Lear, rather than her “appearance of ingratitude,” as Lamb phrases it.  Similarly, Mylius describes Lear as “incensed,” “full of wrath,” and “so little guided by reason and so much by passion,” in lieu of Lamb’s “dotage to old age…clouded reason…[inability] to discern truth from flattery…[and] fury of resentment.”  Likewise, near the end of his narrative, Mylius (rightly) labels Goneril and Regan as “wicked women” but not “monsters of ingratitude,” as Lamb terms them.  In all three cases, Mylius seems to be deliberately simplifying not just the language, but also the emotions, psychology, and motivation of the characters to make them more self-evident and comprehensible to younger readers.  Ingratitude, dotage, and flattery’s deceptiveness are, after all, pretty complex ideas for a child to grasp — and hard to do justice to in eight pages, either!  (Sub-plots and some characters are also eliminated, including Edgar, in both retellings of Lear for children, I should add, changing the cast of Shakespeare’s “strange bedfellows” referred to above.)

Much of the horror of Shakespeare’s play is mitigated — or left out altogether — in the retellings of both Mylius and Lamb — but both include the death of Lear, an “unhappy and misguided old man,” as Mylius terms him, at the end of his “tragical and instructive narration.”  (Some eighteenth-century versions of the play for adults changed Shakespeare ending to create a happy reconciliation of Lear and Cordelia, more akin to comedy or romance than tragedy.)  Lear’s life thus provides a cautionary tale, his fate something to be avoided by avoiding such character flaws and behavior.

Lear-p2.1

Conclusion of “King Lear”: “By the help of sleep and medicine, [Cordelia] and her physicians at length succeeded in winding up the untuned and jarring senses” of Lear.

To an adult reader today, King Lear might not seem like the best source of a story for children: a father behaving badly and driven mad by old age and pitiless remorse; resentful, spiteful children who lie to him and plot revenge; and a certain level of violence ending in suffering and death.  But Shakespeare was seen as a “special” writer in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (again, even more so than now), an unmatched user of language and a perfect portrayer of human nature and activity.  And children can better appreciate complex character and motivations — even evil — and some level of violence in a story better than many of us once thought.  Just look at the popularity of the Harry Potter stories with children, some quite young; seldom have child readers (or movie-goers) found them too frightening or too violent to be compelling. Or perhaps that’s actually  part of their appeal?  Some parts can verge on being too scary or too extreme, but there are lines that don’t get crossed.

Regulus2-Turner

“Regulus,” as envisioned by painter J.M.W. Turner.

Mylius’s adaptation of King Lear is not unique among his selections in dealing with complex or potentially-disturbing stories either.  He also includes one titled “Regulus, the Roman Patriot” (adapted from Baldwin’s History of Rome) a history-based account of a Roman general captured by the Carthaginians during the Punic Wars, imprisoned for six long years, then sent back to Rome to urge peace terms favorable to the Carthaginians but not in Rome’s best interests.  Refusing to do so once back in Rome, Regulus returns to Carthage under the terms of his release, only to be subject to “excruciating torments” by the “cruel” Carthaginians for his refusal to place his own life before Rome’s interests.  This is hardly “kid stuff” and would probably not find its way into most books for children today.  But it is a compiling story — as anyone who has seen J.M.W. Turner’s stunning painting Regulus can attest — and it tells a story of stoical courage, patriotism, and “nobility” of character that was not so unusual in British children’s stories of the time, especially those for boys.

Readings for Weeks 18 to 20: From "King Lear," to the "Natural History of Ants," to "Robinson Crusoe"

Readings for Weeks 18 to 20: From “King Lear,” to the “Natural History of Ants,” to “Robinson Crusoe.”

As such, “Regulus” presents an important facet of the sort of reading material that educators thought children should read in 1813 — and which they no doubt did actually read. Turner must have gotten the original germ of an idea for his 1828 painting from somewhere and the dates are suggestive!

But what about the ants?  After all, I did mention them in the title of this blog posting.  And the “Natural History of Ants” does help us better understand Mylius’s overall miscellany, in particular because it’s the selection immediately preceding “Regulus”!  Reading for a Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday (“Regulus” is a two-day reading selection, as is “Florizel and Perdita” — “King Lear” is a unique five-day reading epic in The Junior Class-Book, a testament to both the complexity of the plot and its perceived importance as a piece of literature.)

Ants

Beginning of the “Natural History of Ants”: “They are seen diligently going from the ant-hill in pursuit of food for themselves and their associates…”  (“Associates”?  Are they all part of a law firm?)

Worker ants are presented as models of cooperation and diligence; they work together and they work hard; they “work continually … not sharing in the pleasures of the other parts of their community” (i.e. their “idler” children, who get to remain snug in the ant-hill!).  Ants also plan and defend their mound in concert, again working in “community” and even caring for the wounded and dead, according to the passage.  This rendition of “natural history” may seem a little poetic and anthropomorphized to a reader today, and Mylius’s selection is based on a work originally authored by poet Oliver Goldsmith (who also displayed his interest in children’s educational materials in works published by John Newbery).  Nevertheless, Mylius presents ants as models of social virtue, general benevolence towards their ‘associates,” and even patriotic virtues.  And he includes some of Goldsmith’s points of distinction between English and other European ants to make even clearer another at least implied meaning of the passage.  Rule Britannia!

So, we’ve seen how Mylius shapes material taken from Shakespeare and about Roman history, bird’s nests, and ants into the larger didactic whole of his miscellany.  Personally, I’m convinced that he does a masterful job of this.  But his didactic motivation is not without a sense of humor.  He includes William Cowper’s playful poem, “Dispute Between Nose and Eyes,” in which Nose and Eyes contend for ownership of the spectacles, using Tongue to argue and Baron Ear to hear the case (get it?).

And the verdict?

… whenever Nose puts his spectacles on,
Either by daylight or candle-light, Eyes should be shut.

I’ll let you puzzle out the full import of that poem for yourself — some works defy literary exegesis!

 

Mother Goose: a Visual Icon and its Changes…

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A (Very) Short History of “Mother Goose” in Print

In a recent posting on the Cotsen blog, I talked about how American children’s books publisher McLoughlin Brothers depicted the “traditional” figure of Mother Goose and how the always-innovative McLoughlin didn’t hesitate to change, update, or appropriate this depiction for their own purposes.  In doing so, I talked in very general terms about the “traditional” associations of Mother Goose and the roots that stories connected with her have in folk tales. But no matter how much McLoughlin Brothers may have tried to lay claim to the figure of Mother Goose, they obviously didn’t invent her. What sort of traditional literary (and pictorial) antecedents for Mother Goose are they hearkening back to?

Title Page: "Histoire, or Contes du Temps Passe" (Amsterdam, 1697) Cotsen 25130

Title Page: “Histoire, or Contes du Temps Passe.” Amsterdam, 1697. (Cotsen 25130)

The earliest printed version of “Mother Goose” stories was published in Paris in 1697, as: “Histoires, ou Contes du Temps Passe” (“Histories, or Tales of Times Past”). Apparently, this was a popular book, because three unauthorized editions were published the end of the year, probably in Amsterdam. The title page of these versions (one shown at left) plays it cagey, noting: “Suivant la copie à Paris — “following the Paris copy” — with “à Paris” in large capitals, so a casual book-shopper (or unsuspecting cataloger!)  might not notice that this isn’t actually the Paris first edition.

Frontispiece: "Contes de ma Mere L'Oye" (Cotsen 25130)

Frontispiece: “Contes de ma Mere L’Oye” (Cotsen 25130)

Mother Goose isn’t mentioned on the title page either, but the book’s engraved frontispiece has the inset caption: “Contes de ma Mere L’Oye”: “Tales of Mother Goose” (as you can see at right). The frontispiece depicts a somber, oldish woman, telling tales to three children at night, while she spins in front of a roaring fireplace. (Note the bright candle, the cat happily sitting near the fire, and the appearance of the three children, pictured much like miniature adults, as was generally the practice at this time.)

With the perspective of book history, this figure is recognizable as Mother Goose, but it’s definitely a sterner version than we saw in McLoughlin Brothers’ (much later) books — a not altogether surprisingly one for its era.  Also worth pointing out is that “Contes de ma Mere L’Oye” was not first published as a children’s book, but rather as a literary form of tales popular with the French court.

Some thirty years later, the collection of tales was translated into English by Robert Samber and published as: “Histories, or Tales of Past Times” (1729). Numerous versions for children followed, including at least ten editions by Newbery & Carnan or Benjamin Collins, entitled: “Histories, or, Tales of Past Times, told by Mother Goose.”

32589-Newbery.MG

Title page and facing frontispiece of the 10th edition of “Histories,” Histories, or, Tales of past times told by Mother Goose. Collins ed. Salisbury, 1791. (Cotsen 32589)

As you can see from the photo above, Mother Goose is now cited in the title itself: “Tales … told by Mother Goose.” What had previously been suggested visually — that Mother Goose is the teller of the tales — is made explicit on this 1791 title page, which presents her as the nominal author.

And take a look at the woodcut frontispiece facing the title page in this edition. It looks an awful lot like the engraved frontispiece of our faux-Paris edition, doesn’t it?  The English publishers are hearkening back to the earlier French versions by using such a similar illustration.  And the frontispiece here also mentions Mother Goose in its inset caption — “Mother Goose’s Tales” — in a way that reinforces the idea that the teller of tales is Mother Goose herself.  Illustration reiterates text here, as is often the case in children’s books.

“Fairburn’s Description of the Popular and Comic New Pantomime…”

While cataloging new Cotsen Library acquisitions recently,  I came across another, quite different, version of Mother Goose: “Fairburn’s Description of the Popular and Comic New Pantomime, called Harlequin and Mother Goose, or the Golden Egg…” (1806).  The text of this little book within paper wrappers is not a tale itself, but rather a play-text and description of a staged pantomime production, a very popular form of English comedic theater, featuring songs and fairly outrageous slapstick humor.  (These stage productions often adapted familiar tales; “The White Cat,” one of the fairy tales collected by Madame d’Aulnoy, provided the basis for another popular English popular pantomime of this era.)

Fairburn

Fairburn’s Description of the Popular and Comic New Pantomime, called Harlequin and Mother Goose … London: Fairburn, 1806? (Cotsen 30522)

Let’s take a closer look at the frontispiece illustration of Mother Goose.  Quite a different depiction than we saw above in the earlier books’ illustrations, or in the later McLoughlin versions!  The caption below tells us this is: “Mr Simmons in the character of Mother Goose.”  In other words, Mother Goose is portrayed as the man who played her role onstage in this pantomime, an interesting piece of gender and role reversal.

Samuel Simmons was one of the stars of the theater company, as evidenced by the 1807 playbill (shown below) for this production at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, where he receives top billing. (Even though the top of the playbill was cropped off by a prior owner, the name of the company remains quite visible).  Note too, this pantomime was the second half of a “double-feature,” with “The Tempest”!  Such twin-bills were common in theater at the time, usually presenting abridged versions of one or both plays.  In an era before television or the Internet, the plays were indeed the thing in terms of popular entertainment.

playbill

Playbill for Thursday, February 26, 1807 for the Covent Garden Theatre. [Playbill for The Tempest and Harlequin and Mother Goose…]. London, 1807. (Cotsen 7251157)

Another, apparently later, version of “Fairburn’s New Pantomine” in Cotsen’s collection instead pictures the era’s famous clown Joseph Grimaldi on its frontispiece and replaces the title page text, “embellished with a colored frontispiece of Mother Goose” with printed decorative rules. (Both seem to be variations of the undated first edition; two later editions note “2nd” and “3rd” editions, resp.)  Why this variation in what seems to be the first edition, though?  Perhaps for the sake of variety, or to freshen up the item for sale?  After all, the play opened in 1806 and ran for ninety two productions; buyers might not take a second took at an “old” booklet they had seen in the shop for months?  Or perhaps Grimaldi got better reviews?  Perhaps Fairburn decided that Grimaldi was a better sales incentive to a potential buyer of the printed “Descriptions”?  Lacking more evidence from the items themselves or from an external source, I can’t say for certain at this point.  But that’s something to work on a bit more, as is the question of dating Cotsen’s different versions of “Fairburn’s Description” with more certainty.

Printed materials like “Fairburn’s Description” or printed play-texts were meant to appeal both visually and textually to potential buyers, but they were ephemeral sports of publications not necessarily meant to last on the shelves of someone’s library; as such they often lack the basic sort of bibliographical information usually found in books, such as a date of publication.  The same is true of playbooks from Shakespeare’s era, as hard as that may be for us to imagine now — relatively cheap pamphlet-like publications, usually undated.

The correlation between the sales of printed items issued by Fairburn  (or printed playbooks authored by Shakespeare & Co.) and the sale of tickets to attend actual theater performances is a tricky one, as those who study Elizabethan playbooks and plays know all too well.  (Changes on the title-pages or covers of Elizabethan playbooks — aka. “quartos” — sometimes seem to have been made just to prompt sales, not necessarily due to any real changes in the text itself, although usually there were indeed “additions” to the text or a new production staged.)  But I think it’s safe to say that the combination of at least three printed editions of “Fairburn’s New Pantomine” and an opening run of over ninety performances of the play itself attests to noteworthy popularity of this version of “Mother Goose.”

And I hope you’ve seen how the depiction of the figure of Mother Goose changed over time, from the stern, story-telling woman of 1697 to the gender-challenging comic depiction in 1807 to the kindly old grandmother depicted by McLoughlin Brothers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Changes inevitably seem to come to even the most seemingly “traditional” literary or cultural figures, prompted by changing times.  “Traditional” doesn’t necessarily mean fixed, static, or unchanging.