xlv. 1591. Sir John Harington.
[From A Preface, or rather a Briefe Apologie of Poetrie, and of the Author and Translator, prefixed to Harington’s translation of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1591), reprinted in Gregory Smith, ii. 194.]
Harington upholds poetry on humanist lines, and answers the objections of Cornelius Agrippa. P. 209. ‘The last reproofe is lightnes & wantonnes.... First, the Tragicall is meerly free from it, as representing onely the cruell and lawlesse proceedings of Princes, mouing nothing but pitie or detestation. The Comicall, whatsoeuer foolish playmakers make it offend in this kind, yet being rightly vsed, it represents them so as to make the vice scorned and not embraced.... And for Tragedies, to omit other famous Tragedies, that that was played at S. Iohns in Cambridge, of Richard the 3, would moue (I thinke) Phalaris the tyraunt, and terrifie all tyrannous minded men from following their foolish ambitious humors, seeing how his ambition made him kill his brother, his nephews, his wife, beside infinit others, and, last of all, after a short and troublesome raigne, to end his miserable life, and to haue his body harried after his death. Then, for Comedies, how full of harmeles myrth is our Cambridge Pedantius? and the Oxford Bellum Grammaticale? or, to speake of a London Comedie, how much good matter, yea and matter of state, is there in that Comedie cald the play of the Cards, in which it is showed how foure Parasiticall knaues robbe the foure principall vocations of the Realme, videl, the vocation of Souldiers, Schollers, Marchants, and Husbandmen? Of which Comedie I cannot forget the saying of a notable wise counseller that is now dead, who when some (to sing Placebo) aduised that it should be forbidden, because it was somewhat too plaine, and indeed as the old saying is, sooth boord is no boord, yet he would haue it allowed, adding it was fit that They which doe that they should not should heare that they would not.’