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John Lyly
First published in 1962, John Lyly marks a shift from the traditional focus on John Lyly as the originator of the strange stylistic craze called Euphuism , and as the dramatist from whose plays Shakespeare deigned to borrow some of his earliest and least attractive comic devices to an author whose works are excellent in themselves. Critics have suggested that an independent reading of Euphues , and more especially of the plays, reveals an attractive delicacy of wit and a refined power of linguistic filigree quite independent of his influence on others or his capacity to illustrate the curious tastes of our forefathers. The eight plays – his most mature artistic achievements – are analysed in detail to bring out their relation to the tradition of court drama. A final chapter compares Lyly and Shakespeare in an attempt to show in operation the different traditions which the book has discussed. This book will appeal to students of English literature, drama and literary history.
388 pages, Hardcover
Published January 30, 2022
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March 16, 2026
While in grad school I found two works by Hunter that came close to changing my life, or at least my career.
After reading this book, about a Renaissance author I’d never heard of, when I got a funding for a year of study in England at the Shakespeare Institute I wrote to G. K. Hunter to study at Warwick University with him for a year. But that year we were “changing places” as he was escaping Thatcher’s UK for a year in the US. Instead I worked w David Lodge and J. P. Brockbank and a very young Russell Jackson, before his Branagh film career. But thanks to Hunter's thorough, thoughtful, sensitive exploration of Lyly's lifelong efforts to parlay his academic and literary gifts and his social contacts (Burghley, de Vere, Marlowe) into a prestigious court post, I identified with this well educated, aspiring young man on the make. And I never forgot the flowery prose of Euphues and those wonderfully courtly love comedies that helped the boy companies rule London in Elizabeth's later years.
Once arriving in the Midlands, I purchases and poured over Hunter's Revels edition of John Marston's most famous play, The Malcontent, and spent months trying to produce a dissertation chapter on it - before realizing that Hunter had seen and said everything that I could possibly offer.
Alongside Madeleine Doran's Endeavors of Art (1964) and Arthur Kirsch's Jacobean Dramatic Perspectives (1972), Hunter's work was and remains formative for me.
After reading this book, about a Renaissance author I’d never heard of, when I got a funding for a year of study in England at the Shakespeare Institute I wrote to G. K. Hunter to study at Warwick University with him for a year. But that year we were “changing places” as he was escaping Thatcher’s UK for a year in the US. Instead I worked w David Lodge and J. P. Brockbank and a very young Russell Jackson, before his Branagh film career. But thanks to Hunter's thorough, thoughtful, sensitive exploration of Lyly's lifelong efforts to parlay his academic and literary gifts and his social contacts (Burghley, de Vere, Marlowe) into a prestigious court post, I identified with this well educated, aspiring young man on the make. And I never forgot the flowery prose of Euphues and those wonderfully courtly love comedies that helped the boy companies rule London in Elizabeth's later years.
Once arriving in the Midlands, I purchases and poured over Hunter's Revels edition of John Marston's most famous play, The Malcontent, and spent months trying to produce a dissertation chapter on it - before realizing that Hunter had seen and said everything that I could possibly offer.
Alongside Madeleine Doran's Endeavors of Art (1964) and Arthur Kirsch's Jacobean Dramatic Perspectives (1972), Hunter's work was and remains formative for me.
Displaying 1 of 1 review