Some, like critic Stanley Wells, argue that the language of Renaissance texts should be modernized to avoid the creation of a barrier between the work and modern reader. Scragg argues that in the case of John Lyly, style and meaning are inextricably related, and modern spellings would obscure fundamental features of his work.

Copyright Oxford University Press(England) Feb 1999

The closing lines of the second of Stanley Wells's two major contributions to the debate over the modernization of spelling in twentieth-century editions of Renaissance texts, particularly those designed for the student or general reader,¹ pose a series of questions that reach to the heart of current editorial practice: Sometimes I think I ought to be more radical than I am prepared to be at present: in these moments I ask myself whether, for example, any point is served by printing 'owe' where we should say 'own', by retaining 'an' before aspirates which are now sounded (as in `an humble') or before vowels which now have a consonantal sound (as in `an eunuch'), or 'mine' when we should use 'my'; whether we should not print 'flee' where this would be the modern equivalent of Elizabethan 'fly'; even whether anything would be lost by abandoning obsolete inflections such as 'spake', and prefixes as in 'infortunate', 'incivil', 'unjustice', and 'ingrateful'.²

The reflections constitute the logical culmination of the argument Wells pursues throughout. Rightly insisting that no useful end is served by seeking to preserve a `linguistic climate'<sup>3</sup> that creates a barrier between text and reader which would not have existed for an original audience for whom the work was in modern English, he argues for the retention of Renaissance spellings only where the discrepancy with contemporary usage is a self-conscious feature of the text (e.g. archaism and the representation of dialect), or where modern spelling might provide a misleading indication of a word's meaning through proximity to a familiar contemporary term. While acknowledging the problems modernization creates in relation to rhyme, word-play, and pun, Wells counters that changes of pronunciation have also acted to obscure these features and that annotation is a recognized means of alerting the reader to discrepancies between Renaissance and contemporary usage. At the heart of the argument lies the question of the extent to which modernization obscures or promotes understanding, and in the case of Shakespeare it is hard to resist the conclusion that there is no virtue in the `conscious conservation of archaic and obsolete spellings'.⁴

The issue is more problematic, however, in relation to a writer for whom style and meaning are inextricably related. John Lyly, for example, the supreme exponent of the euphuistic mode, exhibits his wit and promotes his view of an unstable world through a complex system of sound patterning, and the relationships set up between words and clauses may be lost for the twentieth-century reader when modern English forms are preferred. The final question Wells poses over the value of preserving obsolete prefixes offers a useful example here. The Epilogue to Gallathea, the third of Lyly's court comedies, closes with a use of the 'un' prefix that supports the proposition that nothing is lost through regularization (passages are quoted in modern English, where editions allow, in order to isolate unfamiliar lexical items):

Here the substitution of 'impossible' for 'unpossible' sustains the link with 'infallible', and has no impact on the rhythm of the passage. In IV. ii of the same play, however, the 'un' prefix is woven into the syllabic patterning of the scene, and to modernize would undermine not only the aural structure of the passage, but the associations through which the irresistible nature of love and irreversibility of the temporal process are promoted:

TELUSA. Come, Cupid, to your task. First you must undo all these lovers' knots, because you tied them.

CUPID. If they be true love knots, 'tis unpossible to unknit them; if false, I never tied them.

RAMIA. Why, how now? You tie the knots faster!

CUPID. I cannot choose. It goeth against my mind to make them loose.

EUROTA. Let me see. Now 'tis unpossible to be undone.

CUPID. It is the true love knot of a woman's heart, therefore cannot be undone. (IV. ii. 21-36)

A similar example, where the use of the 'un' prefix is clearly a self-conscious feature of the text, occurs in Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit, where an even stronger link is forged between significant words by the use of alliteration in the following syllable. Uncertain how Euphues will respond to her account of the weakness of women, Lucilla laments, `If thou hast belied women, he will judge thee unkind; if thou have revealed the truth, he must needs think thee unconstant' (p. 26). Other archaic prefixes are used for comparable effects. In Endymion, for example, Favilla tells Sir Tophas that `Our love we may dissemble, disgest we cannot' (II. ii. 159),⁶ while Philautus advises Euphues in The Anatomy of Wit that `he that feeleth his stomach enflamed with heat, cooleth it eftsoons with conserves' (p. 31).

It is not simply archaic prefixes, however, that pose problems in relation to the modernization of works in which verbal patterning plays a prominent part. Isocolon, parison, and paromoion are closely linked in the euphuistic mode and twentieth-century usage does not always correspond to the aural (and visual) schemes that form one aspect of the pleasure that Lyly's work is designed to afford. Lucilla's assurance to Euphues that 'Ferardo shall sooner disherit me of my patrimony than dishonour me in breaking my promise',⁷ for example, loses both the equality of syllables between 'dishonour' and 'disherit' and the repetition of the first four (as opposed to three) letters if the expanded modern form, 'disinherit', is preferred. Similarly, the syllabic patterning of Philautus' `extasie through the extremitie of hys passions's is eroded if 'extasie' becomes 'ecstasy', as in all modern editions. Equally damaging is the loss involved through modernization of internal rhyme. One of the most beautifully patterned passages of euphuistic prose in the Lylian dramatic corpus, the long speech in the first scene of Gallathea in which Tyterus explains the origins of the virgin sacrifice, concludes:

Then might you see ships sail where sheep fed, anchors cast where ploughs go,
fishermen throw their nets where husbandmen sow their corn, and fishes throw
their scales where fowls do breed their quills. Then might you gather froth where
now is dew, rotten weeds for sweet roses, and take view of monstrous mermaids
[Q 'maremaids'] instead of passing fair maids. (I. i. 32-9)

Here, the closing effect is largely vitiated for the twentieth-century reader if the final disyllabic rhyme has to be recovered by means of a footnote. All the examples quoted above are clearly self-conscious features of the text and, with the exception of the last, are capable of accommodation within a tradition of modernization which admits the occasional use of an unfamiliar form in the interests of `rhyme, word-play, and characterful idiosyncrasy'.<sup>9</sup> More problematic for the modern editor are those instances in which balance is produced by an archaic spelling which may or may not be a product of authorial intention. Lucilla's assertion to Euphues with regard to Philautus that `it is not his great mannors, but thy good manners, that shall make my marriage"¹⁰ is made more emphatically balanced by the use of a double 'n' which may be the product of compositorial rather than authorial preference, and a similar difficulty arises in Love's Metamorphosis, with Erisichthon's this is the ods, we miserable, and men; they immortall, and gods' (III. ii. 13-14).¹¹ Easier to ascribe to authorial intention but no less difficult to accommodate within contemporary practice is the insistent punning, characteristic of Lyly's style, frequently linked with some species of verbal repetition, syllabic patterning, or rhyme. The pun involved at III. i. 13-16 of Sappho and Phao, for example,

ISMENA. Belike you are a male-content [Q male content].

PANDION. It is true, and are not you a female content?

TRACHNUS. Soft, I am not content that a male and female content should go together,¹²

may be resolved, as in the edition quoted above, by signalling the pun within the text (though this produces a nonce word and overemphasizes one aspect of meaning), but greater difficulties arise when the representation of the relevant word involves a more radical departure from modern spelling. In his edition of The Woman in the Moon, for example, Carter A. Daniel uses the same spelling for the name 'Ganimede' (one of the play's characters) throughout,¹³ obscuring Pandora's contempt in III. ii for the effeminacy of her lovers, conveyed in part through a play on words. The passage reads as follows in Bond's old-spelling edition:

PAN[DORA]. Are these the shepherds that made loue to me?

MELOS. Yea, and the shepherds that yet loue thee still.

IPHI[CLES]. O that Pandora would regard my suite!

PAN. They looke like water Nymphes, but speake like men:
Thou should be Nature in a mans attire,
And thou young Ganimayde Minion to loue. (III. ii. 143-8)

Passages of extended word-play, inevitably, are yet more difficult to represent in modernized form. The evasive wooing of the two maidens in Gallathea, for example, is conducted through a series of highly equivocal exchanges, and their final agreement to give formal expression to their affection involves a pun, modern English mistress/mysteries, that has defeated the best efforts of the play's editors.

The Quarto reads:

PH[IDA]. Seeing we are both boyes, and both louers, that our affection
 may haue some showe, and seeme as it were loue, let me call thee Mistris.

GA[THE]. I accept that name, for diuers before haue cald me Mistris.

PH. For what cause?

GALA. Nay there lie the Mistrisse.

The inadequacies of a modern-spelling version of the exchange are evident in Anne B. Lancashire's representation of the passage:

PHYLLIDA. Let me call thee mistress.

GALLATHEA. I accept that name, for divers before have call'd me mistress.

PHYLLIDA. For what cause?

GALLATHEA. Nay, there lie the mistress, (IV. iv. 16-20)^₁₄

and my own, equally unsatisfactory:

PHILLIDA. Let me call thee mistress.

GALLATHEA. I accept that name, for divers before have called me mistress.

PHILLIDA. For what cause?

GALLATHEA. Nay, there lie the myst'ries. (IV. iv. IR-22)

A scene in Endymion, in which the positive and negative aspects of marriage to Dipsas are simultaneously listed, illustrates a rather different problem arising from the same area of difficulty. The negative aspect is conveyed through a series of puns, two of which lose much of their force when the exchange is regularized, as in David Bevington's edition, to conform to twentieth-century usage:

EPITON. Why, in marrying Dipsas, he shall have every day
twelve dishes of meat to his dinner, though there be none
but Dipsas with him. Four of flesh, four of fish, four of fruit.

SAMIAS. As how, Epi?

EPITON. For flesh, these: woodcock, goose, bittern, and rail.

DARES. Indeed, he shall not miss if Dipsas be there.

EPITON. For fish, these: crab, carp, lump, and pouting.

SAMIAS. Excellent! For, of my word, she is both crabbish, lumpish, and carping.

EPITON. For fruit, these: fretters, medlers, hart-i-chockes, and lady-longings. (III. iii. 101-12)

Here, the editor has modernized 'bitter' (the more common term for the bird in the sixteenth century) to 'bittern', clarifying the link with 'woodcock', 'goose', and 'rail', but obscuring the pun by setting up a false association with modern English 'bitten', and has chosen to spell out the play on 'hartichockes' (Quarto reading) in a way that represents neither modern nor Renaissance usage. The play on the word 'bitter' is not exclusive to this passage. The pun also occurs in The Anatomy of Wit where modernization is yet more prejudicial to the verbal wit. Attempting to grapple with a passion for Lucilla that conflicts with his friendship with Philautus, Euphues reflects in Bond's old-spelling edition:

Ah well I perceiue that loue is not vnlyke the Figge tree, whose fruite is sweete, whose roote
is more bitter then the claw of a Bitter, or lyke the Apple in Persia, whose blossome sauoreth
lyke Honny, whose budde is more sower then gall.¹⁵

Here the substitution of 'bittern' for 'bitter' would not merely diminish the force of the pun but disrupt the wider patterning of the passage.

Mother Bombie supplies an example of a superficially similar problem, but one that points, on closer inspection, to a far more fundamental difficulty in presenting the Lylian corpus in modern dress. Quarrelling with Prisius over their children's marriage, Sperantus exclaims (Bond's old-spelling edition):

This is your olde tricke, to pick ones purse & then to picke quarrels:
I tell thee, I had rather thou shouldest rob my chest, than imbesell my sonne. (V. iii. 139-41)

Carter A. Daniel modernizes as follows:

This is your old trick, to pick one's purse and then to pick quarrels.
I tell thee, I had rather thou shouldst rob my chest than embezzle my son.

At first sight the shift from 'imbesell' to 'embezzle' is unproblematic in that it clarifies the relationship between 'rob' and 'imbesell' while having a minimal impact on alliteration and the antithetical patterning of the speech. In fact, however, modern spelling conceals a secondary meaning of the word, and consequently the irony that runs through the lines. Sperantus himself has been unwittingly engaged throughout in attempting to 'imbesell' or 'imbecile' his son, in that he has been trying to marry him to a woman whom he thinks of as an ideal match but who, in fact, is simple-minded. Here the effect of the word-play is more far-reaching than in the example from Endymion quoted above, functioning not simply as a stylistic flourish but as an index to the blindness that has characterized Sperantus throughout, and to the ironic conduct of a group of characters insistently working against their own best interests.

The unexpected implications of bringing a seemingly unproblematic word into conformity with contemporary usage is indicative of the difficulties posed by modernization in texts heavily dependent upon verbal wit, and an incident from Campaspe confirms the necessity for caution in embracing the more radical proposals propounded by Wells. Among the possible emendations proposed in the extract from Re-Editing Shakespeare for the Modern Reader quoted above is the use of "`flee" where this would be the modern equivalent of Elizabethan "fly"'. The word is one with which Lyly makes considerable play, most notably in Campaspe, where Manes, Diogenes' servant, announces that his master proposes to fly, and the populace assemble to witness the feat. The audience has been alerted to the fact that words have `divers significations' (III. ii. 24-5), and this point is then exemplified as Diogenes, rather than taking to the air, 'flies' over the citizens in the sense of castigating them for their vices, and declares his intention, if they fail to amend, to 'fly' from them:

Thus have I flown over your disordered lives,
and if you will not amend your manners
I will study to fly further from you, that I may be nearer to honesty. (IV. i. 58-60)

The range of meanings the word carries here is intrinsic to the representation of character, the evolution of the action, and the manipulation of audience response, and to modernize would not merely obscure a local effect, but abstract the primary building-block upon which the structure of ambiguity is erected.

The problems raised by the examples cited in this note give rise to a series of questions that lie at the opposite end of the spectrum of editorial practice from those propounded by Wells. Rather than prompting reflection upon whether anything would be lost by substituting 'owe' for 'own', 'a' for 'an', etc., they invite consideration of whether, in texts heavily dependent upon aural and visual schemes, even such universally accepted modernizations as 'than' for 'then', 'aye' for 'I', etc., are detrimental, and whether these too should be abandoned in the interests of alerting a modern reader to the complexities of an unfamiliar literary mode. Followed to their logical extremes the two approaches lead to equally paradoxical outcomes that Lyly himself would have savoured. An oldspelling edition, while superficially heightening the reader's awareness of the many facets of the author's wit and thus affording a fuller understanding of the work, simultaneously increases the distance between the audience and the text, rendering a mode already alien in its intricacy yet more remote and difficult of access. A modern-spelling edition, by contrast, while making the work more immediately accessible through its superficial familiarity, simultaneously obscures those very features fundamental to the success of the euphuistic mode, leading to an underestimation of the author's achievement. In brief, in matters of spelling, as with so many other aspects of Lyly's work, `there is nothing but that hath his contraries'.

LEAH SCRAGG University of Manchester