“Baldwyne’s worthie name,
whose Mirrour doth of Magistrates
Proclayme eternal! fame.”
Heywood. 1560.
[41] John Skelton, poet laureat, born ...... died 21 June, 1529.
[42] John Dolman was student and fellow of the Inner Temple. He translated Those fyue Questions which Marke Tullye Cicero disputed in his manor of Tusculanum, 1561.
[43] Thomas Sackville was born at Buckhurst, in the parish of Withiam, in the county of Sussex. He was the only son of Sir Richard Sackville, knight, Chancellor of the Court of Augmentation to King Edward the VIth. afterwards to Q. Mary, and Under Treasurer of the Exchequer to Q. Elizabeth, (by Winifred Brydges); at whose death the jury upon the inquisition found that he died 21st April, in the eighth year of the reign of Elizabeth (1566), leaving his son Thomas S. then twenty-nine years of age, thereby making the time of his birth in 1537, a year later than that mentioned by all his biographers. Probably it should stand 1536-7. He was first sent to Hart-hall, Oxford, but removed to Cambridge, where he took the degree of Master of Arts, and was celebrated as a Latin and English poet at both universities. Like Phaer, Ferrers, and other contemporary wits, he was entered in the Inner Temple, and so far persevered in the study of the law as to be called to the bar. The earliest effort of his unrivalled genius that has been preserved was a joint production, and forms the first legitimate tragedy existing in our language. It was called by the authors Ferrex and Porrex, but is more generally known as the tragedy of Gorboduc, and only composed for “furniture of part of the grand Christmas,” or revels, a species of amusement that combined dramatic representations with feasts and balls, and then occasionally kept with great magnificence by the society of the Inner Temple. This dramatic piece was first performed by the students in their hall, and afterwards by them on the 18th Jan. 1561, before Elizabeth at Whitehall. In this composition he is supposed to have assisted Thomas Norton, as, according to the title of the spurious edition of the play, of 1565, “three actes were written by Thomas Nortone, and the two laste by Thomas Sackvyle;” but the authorised edition of 1570, only extends to say it was “never intended by the authors thereof to be published,” and without attempting any thing like the above apportionment. The claim of Norton has been repeatedly doubted. Warton observes thereon: “The force of internal evidence often prevails over the authority of assertion, a testimony which is diminished by time, and may be rendered suspicious from a variety of other circumstances. Throughout the whole piece, there is an invariable uniformity of diction and versification. Sackville has two poems of considerable length in the Mirrour of Magistrates, which fortunately furnish us with the means of comparison: and every scene of Gorboduc is visibly marked with his characteristical manner, which consists in a perspicuity of style, and a command of numbers, superior to the tone of his times. Thomas Norton’s poetry is of a very different and a subordinate cast.” Certainly all the choruses bear such strong similarity to our author’s style and versification, as to leave no question of his well-founded claim to the entire outline of the whole performance. There cannot here be omitted: “the Order and Signification of the Domme Shew before the fourth Act. First the musick of howeboies began to playe, during which there came from under the stage, as though out of hell, three furies, Alecto, Megera, and Ctisiphone, clad in blacke garmentes sprinkled with bloud and flames, their bodies girt with snakes, their heds spred with serpentes instead of haire, the one bearing in her hand a snake, the other a whip, and the third a burning firebrand; ech driving before them a king and a queene, which moved by furies unnaturally had slaine their owne children. The names of the kings and queenes were these, Tantalus, Medea, Athamas, Ino, Cambises, Althea; after that the furies and these had passed about the stage thrise, they departed, and than the musick ceased: hereby was signified the unnaturall murders to follow, that is to say: Porrex slaine by his owne mother; and of king Gorboduc, and queen Videna, killed by their owne subjects.” This shadowing out of the plot, and the extraordinary characters to be personified in the procession, are too similar to the model upon which the Mirror for Magistrates was to have been completed, had he carried his own plan into effect, to let us doubt, without supposing the author a mannerist, that the composing the Induction and the drama were nearly coeval, and that before entering his twenty-fifth year he had entirely forsaken the Muse. This circumstance leads to an inquiry of his other poetical effusions, which are supposed to be lost, or remain undiscovered. Jasper Heywood, in a poetical address before his translation of the tragedy of Thyestes, 1560, has the following lines:
There Sackvylde’s Sonnets sweetly sauste,
And featly fyned bee:
There Norton’s Ditties do delight,