Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 10, 2025
He wrote several dramas, most of which are on classical and mythological subjects, including Campaspe and Sapho and Phao , Endymion , and Midas . His chief fame, however, rests on his two didactic romances, Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit , and Euphues and his England . These works, which were largely inspired by Ascham's Toxophilus, and had the same objects in view, viz., the reform of education and manners, exercised a powerful, though temporary, influence on the language, both written and spoken, commemorated in our words "euphuism" and "euphuistic."
We have seen that Lyly's Euphues and Sidney's Arcadia contain the germs of romance. Greene's novel Pandosto suggested the plot of The Winter's Tale, and Lodge's Rosalind was the immediate source of the plot of As You Like It. Although Greene died in want at the age of thirty-two, he was the most prolific of the Elizabethan novelists.
Lucilla, who is fickle, suddenly dismisses her new cavalier for yet a third, while Euphues and Philautus, in the light of their common misfortune, fall upon each other's necks and are reconciled. Both profess themselves to have been fools, while Euphues, as the greater and more recent fool, composes a pamphlet against love.
I saw young men, panting, seize hand or arm and strive to pull toward them some reluctant fair; others snatched kisses, or fell on their knees and began speeches out of Euphues; others commenced an inventory of their possessions, acres, tobacco, servants, household plenishing. All was hubbub, protestation, frightened cries, and hysterical laughter.
Its attraction is mainly one of style. It goes, you feel, one degree beyond Euphues in the direction of freedom and poetry. And just because of this greater freedom, its characteristics are much less easy to fix than those of Euphues. Perhaps its chief quality is best described as that of exhaustiveness.
Strange it is that princely collectors of yore appear not to have cared for Euphues. Surely one would not venture to affirm that John, Duke of Roxburghe, might not have had it if he had wanted it.
He unlocks maidenheads with his language, and speaks Euphues, not so gracefully as heartily. His discourse makes not his behaviour; but he buys it at court, as countrymen their clothes in Birchin Lane. He is somewhat like the salamander, and lives in the flame of love, which pains he expresseth comically. And nothing grieves him so much as the want of a poet to make an issue in his love.
Read Euphues, and you will say to yourself, 'That book must have been written three hundred years ago, and it looks its age. Yet it has its virtues.
"Euphues" was published in 1580, when Shakespeare was only sixteen years old; and this passage, although it may have been written or perhaps altered later, was probably a part of the play as it was first produced. The scene ends with the following speech by Helen, which, for its peculiar characteristics, is worth quoting entire.
And in the meanwhile, let those who have not read "Euphues" believe that, if they could train a son after the fashion of his Ephoebus, to the great saving of their own money and his virtue, all fathers, even in these money-making days, would rise up and call them blessed.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking