Tudor school-boy life: the dialogues of Juan Luis Vives

by Juan Luis Vives

Euphrosynus Lapinius

In 1568 was published by Euphrosynus Lapinius at the Junta Press in Florence, an edition of Vives’ School Dialogues. This also included the commentary of Peter Motta and, in addition, an index of certain words in Vives’ Dialogues, with a translation of them into Etruscan.[10]

Vives’ School Dialogues, we have seen, had a circulation, with vernacular vocabulary, in Spain, France, Germany, Italy (there does not seem to have been any edition with an English vocabulary). The inclusion of the Greek words, it is not unreasonable to suppose, met a need amongst learned schoolmasters, and since sufficient translations of the hard words, both Greek and Latin, were forthcoming, the book was made available even in those cases where schoolmasters had not sufficient knowledge to translate all the passages in which the pupils might stick.

Style

Erasmus in his Ciceronianus thus describes the style of Vives: “I find lacking in Vives neither innate power, nor erudition, nor power of memory. He is well provided with luxuriance of expression even when, in the beginning of a [xxxvii]work, he is a little hard; day by day his eloquence matures more and more as he proceeds.... Daily he overcomes himself, and his genius is versatile enough for anything. Yet sometimes he has not achieved some portion of the Ciceronian virtues, especially in the direction of charm and mildness of expression.” (Quoted by Namèche, Mémoire sur la vie et les écrits de J. L. Vives.)

Characteristics of Vives as a Writer of Dialogues

Vives’ characteristics have been well described by Bömer, who says: “In the dialogues of Vives we constantly have the pleasure of listening to conversations rich in thought, made spicy at the right moments with pointed wit, so that we are obliged to make an effort to understand the separate words.” It may be added that Vives is always desirous to help forward the cause of learning, yet, on occasion, he can detach himself from his learning and become a boy among boys. He has a strong sense of humour. He can tell a joke against himself, as for instance about his gout,[11] or again about his singing.[12]

Vives as a Precursor of the Drama

It might, with some ground, be urged that Vives and other writers of school dialogues are the precursors of the drama. For not only are there touches of wit and humour in the conversations, but there is a considerable amount of characterisation in the interlocutors. The right person says and does the right thing, and situations are sometimes hit off exquisitely with an epithet. It is clear that a training in following the school dialogues in the generation preceding the [xxxviii]Elizabethan dramatists may have had a distinctly preparative place in rendering the dialogue of the drama more familiar and attractive as a literary method. For a preparation in the power of audiences following the dialogues of the Elizabethan drama may be regarded as requiring an explanation, when we remember that the interest in and concentration on the dialogue was more urgent than now, owing to the absence of scenery and the other visual effects to which we are accustomed. The element in the drama which is conspicuous by its absence in the school dialogues is the plot. Yet in the school dialogue there is a definite method of construction observed. In the old methods of Latin composition, wherever there is a thesis, the writer must have regard to the sequence of the introduction, the narration, the confirmation, confutation, and the conclusion.

With regard to the school training towards the appreciation of the drama in the Tudor age, it must be remembered that the school-play was a recognised institution, especially the acting of the old plays of Terence, Plautus, and eventually of Greek tragedies. The school dialogue, it should be noted, was one of the earliest of school text-books, and its object, as already stated, was to train the child in readiness of expression in the speaking of Latin. The study of rhetoric followed, and this included not only the study of apt figures of speech in Latin conversation, but also the accompaniment of right gestures of the face, hands, and body. Hence it will be seen that the grammar schools of the early part of the sixteenth century paved the way for an intelligent appreciation of the Elizabethan drama. For the drama not only requires writers; to some extent an intelligent response is necessary in the spectators, at any rate when the plays involve the intellectual elements characteristic of the later part of the sixteenth-century drama in England.