ITALY AS A CULTURAL CATALYST : ENGLAND'S SEARCH FOR ENGLISHNESS-A STUDY OF ELIZABETHAN DRAMA

2006 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 16520173
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: ヨーロッパ語系文学
• Research Institution: Takushoku University
• Principal Investigator: TOMITA Soko Takushoku University, Engineering, Professor of English, 工学部, 教授 (30197925)
• Project Period (FY): 2004 – 2006
• Keywords: Elizabethan / translation / Italy / publication / George Whetstone / Promos and Cassandra / drama / influence

Research Abstract

In the 1560s Italian books suddenly started to be published in England in large quantities, mostly in translation and some in the original Italian or Latin. However, only seven Italian plays that were either translated or adapted were published in England. During this period English society became increasingly self-aware through its contacts with Italy. England favored what was Italian and incorporated it into its culture. In the Elizabethan period, English society was asserting its own identity through its intense curiosity and love of multiplicity. Drama functioned as a major expressive means in its search for Englishness.
The purpose of this project is to illustrate, despite the small number of translated or adapted Italian plays published in England at the time, how English identity manifested itself most vividly through drama. The study focuses on Promos and Cassandra by George Whetstone, which epitomises the early articulation of the awareness of the English mind.
Promos and Cassandra was an academic literary exercise and was never performed. In this sense Whetstone's play did not impress its stamp on the English audience of his time. Nonetheless, the work was published. The book awoke a responsive cord in its readers such as Marston and Shakespeare, who saw great dramatic possibilities there and reworked it for their own plays for the public theatre audience as well as for the court. His encounter with the Italian world was a creative experience. In examining Promos and Cassandra, I have observed that, in this period, which tends to be regarded by literary historians as bleak and stagnant, a search for Englishness was under way which prepared the ground for the full blossoming of English drama, represented by the work of Shakespeare.