Tasso's Melancholy

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Historical records

Performance Records (Henslowe's Diary)

y^e 11 of aguste 1594	ne….	Res at tassoes mellencoley	……….	iij^ll iiij^s
y^e 18 of aguste 1594	……….	Res at tassoes mallencoley	……….	xxxxvij^s

F. 10 (Greg I. 19)

y^e 3 of septembȝ 1594	……….	Res at Tasso	……….	xxxxvj^s
y^e 18 of septembȝ 1594	……….	Res at tasso	……….	xxvij^s vj^d
y^e 8 of octobȝ 1594	……….	Res at tasso	……….	xxvij^s

F. 10^v (Greg I. 20)

y^e 23 of octobȝ 1594	……….	Res at tasso	……….	xxiij^s
y^e 12 of novembȝ 1594	……….	Res at tasso	……….	xxv^s
y^e 3 of desembȝ 1594	……….	Res at tasso	……….	vj^s

F. 11 (Greg I. 21)

y^e 11 of Jenewary 159[4]5	……….	Res at tasso	……….	xx^s
y^e 21 of Jenewary 1595	……….	Res at tasso	……….	xxxvj^s
y^e 15 of febreary 1595	……….	Res at tasso	……….	xix^s

F. 11^v (Greg I. 22)

y^e 14 of maye 1595

……….

Res at tasso

……….

xx^s

Henslowe Papers

Greg, Papers (Appx. I, art. 1, p. 117. l. 75)

Under the heading “The Enventary tacken of all the properties for my Lord Admeralles men, the 10 of Marche 1598”:

Item, ... Tasso picter ...

Under the heading “The Enventorey of all the aparell of the Lord Admeralles men, taken the 13 of Marche 1598, as followeth”:

Item, Tasoes robe.

Payments to Playwrights (Henslowe’s Diary)

F. 96 (Greg I.153)

Lent vnto Thomas deckers at the a||}

poyntment of the company the 16 of||}

Janewary 1601 toward the alterynge of }|||xx^s

tasso the some of .....||}

F. 108 (Greg I.171)

Lent vnto my sone E Alleyn the 3 of novembȝ 1602||}

to geue vnto thomas deckers for mendinge of the||} xxxx^s

playe of tasso the some of .....||}

F. 108^v (Greg I.172)

Lent vnto w^m birde the 4 of desembȝ 1602||}

to paye vnto thomas deckers in pt of pay||} xx^s

ment for tasso the some of .....||}

Theatrical Provenance

Henslowe records performances by the Admiral's Men at the Rose in 1594-5.

The records of payment to Thomas Dekker for revisions in 1602 suggest that a revival by the Admiral's Men at the Fortune was at least planned (Wiggins #963).

Probable Genre(s)

Tragedy (?) (Harbage)
Romance (Wiggins #963)

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

The poet Torquato Tasso (who died in 1595, the year after this play premiered) was mentally ill and for a time was incarcerated in an asylum for the insane. Lea and Gang (25-30) show that English writers of the 1590s were aware of Tasso's poetry; they were also aware of his mental troubles, but no surviving English text is detailed enough to have served as a source for the play.

Lea and Gang (28) note a brief description of Tasso's madness appears in John Eliot's Ortho-Epia Gallica (1593):

Torquato Tasso, a fine scholer truly, who is yet living, the last Italian Poet who is of any great fame in our age, but worthie of the first honour; besides that he is a divine Poet, he is also a most eloquent Oratour and Rhetoricyan, as his missive Epistles do shew very well. This Youth fell mad for the love of an Italian lasse descended of a great house, when I was in Italie. (G3^v)

They also note Gabriel Harvey's allusion in Pierce's Superogation (1593), which refers to the "surmounting rage of Tasso in his furious angoy [sic]" (D2^r)

An undated epigram by Sir John Harington (d.1612) offers a more detailed description of Tasso's activities during his madness:

43 to Itis, alias Ioyner, an vcleanly token, conuayed in cleanly tearmes.

Torquato Tasso, for one little fault,

That did perhaps deserue some small rebuke,

Was by his sharp and most vngratefull Duke,

Shut vp close prisoner in a loathsome vault;

Where wanting Pen and Inke by Princes order,

His wit, that wals of Adamant could pierce,

Found meanes to write his mind in excellent verse:

For want of Pen and Inke, with pisse and ordure.

But thy dull wit damn'd by Appollos crew,

To dungeon of disgrace, though free thy body,

With pen, nay Print, doth publish like a noddy

Base taunts, that turn'd vpon thy selfe, are true.

And wanting salt thy wallowish stile to season,

And being of uncouth tearmes a senslesse coyner,

Thou call'st thy selfe vnproperly, a Ioyner,

Whose verse hath quite disseuer'd rime and reason:

Deseruing for such rayling, and such bodging,

For this, Torquatos Inke, for that, his Lodging. (201-2)

References to the Play

Wiggins (#963) speculates that Antony Scoloker's Daiphantus, or the Passions of Love (1604), which compares Tasso's madness with that of Hamlet, might incorporate memories of the play:

Now with his fingers, like a Barber snaps,

Playes with the fire-pan, as it were a Lute,

Vnties his shoe-strings, then his lips he laps,

Whistles awhile, and thinkes it is a Flute:

At length, a glasse presents it to his sight,

Where well he acts, fond loue in passions right.

His chin he strokes, sweares beardles men kisse best,

His lips anoynts, sayes Ladyes vse such fashions,

Spets on his Napkin; termes that the Bathing Iest,

Then on the dust, describes the Courtiers passion.

Then humble cal's: though they do still aspire,

"Ladies then fall, when Lords rise by Desire.

Then stradling goes, saies Frenchmen feare no Beares

Vowes he will trauaile, to the Siege of Brest,

Swears Captaines, they doe all against the heare:

Protests Tabacco, is A smoke-dride Iest,

Takes vp his pen, for a Tabacco-pipe;

Thus all besmeard, each lip the other wipe.

His breath, he thinkes the smoke; his tongue a cole,

Then calls for bottell-ale; to quench his thirst:

Runs to his Inke-pot, drinkes, then stops the hole,

And thus growes madder, then he was at first.

Tasso, he finds, by that of Hamlet, thinkes.

Tearmes him a mad-man; than of his Inkhorne drinks.

Calls Players fooles, the foole he iudgeth wisest,

Will learne them Action, out of Chaucers Pander:

Proues of their Poets bawdes euen in the highest,

Then drinkes a health; and sweares it is no slander.

Puts off his cloathes; his shirt he onely weares,

Much like mad-Hamlet; thus as Passion teares.

(E4^r-v)

Critical commentary

Authorship

Fleay, BCED states that Dekker was probably the original author (2:302). Greg (II.267 ) insists, however, that the original author is unknowable.

Plot and staging

Based on the references in Eliot, Harington and Scoloker, and on other facts and legends about Tasso's madness, Wiggins (#963) constructs a speculative summary of the play's plot. Tasso falls in love with a high-born lady but is driven to melancholy because she is unattainable. He undresses in public, drinks his own ink, and attacks with a knife a servant whom he suspects of spying on him. He is imprisoned and is denied ink and paper, but continues to write his poems using the filth in the dungeon. He then escapes and, disguised as a shepherd, returns home, but his sister fails to recognize him. He tells her that her brother is dead; when she faints, this proves her love for him, so he reveals his identity.

Gurr (50) assumes that Tasso was played by Edward Alleyn.

Wiggins (#963), following Henslowe's 1598 inventories, lists a robe and a picture among the props used in the play. Greg (II.267 ), questioned whether the picture was connected to the play, however, given that there is no evidence of a revival between 1595 and 1602. Wiggins also lists as necessary props (based on his own speculative plot summary) a knife, drinkable ink, a shirt, and a shepherd costume.

Fleay, BCED wonders whether Dekker's 1602 revisions were intended for performance at court during Christmas (2:302).

Madness in theatre

The play is sometimes assumed to have been part of a fashion for stage madness. Neely (41) includes the play among the "intertextual tradition" of plays about madness in the 1590s, along with The Spanish Tragedy, Orlando Furioso, the Ur-Hamlet and Antonio's Revenge. Lee (**) writes of the 1602 revival, "the playgoer of Elizabethan London was thus offered during the same theatrical season an opportunity of contrasting in mimetic representation the pathetic melancholia of Tasso with the no less moving melancholy of Shakespeare’s Prince of Denmark."

Tasso and English drama

Some scholars suggest that the play was part of a fashion for Tassovian material in the 1590s. Wiggins (#958) is presumably referring to Tasso's Melancholy when he notes that "the Admiral's Men had a dramatist who was interested in contemporary Italian literature, and Tasso in particular", a fact that he links to a possible source in Tasso for the lost Galiaso. Lawrence (8-9) links Tasso's Melancholy with the allusions to Tasso in The Four Prentices of London and with the lost play Jerusalem.

Works Cited

Gurr, Andrew. Shakespeare’s Opposites: The Admiral’s Company 1594-1625. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Harington, Sir John. The Letters and Epigrams of Sir John Harington. Ed. Norman Egbert McClure. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1930.
Lawrence, Jason. Tasso's Art and Afterlives: The Gerusalemme Liberata in England. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017.
Lea, Kathleen M. and T.M. Gang, eds. Godfrey of Bulloigne: A Critical Edition of Edward Fairfax's Translation of Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata Together with Fairfax's Original Poems. Oxford: Clarendon, Press, 1981.
Lee, Sidney. "Shakespeare and Tasso's England". Elizabethan and Other Essays. Ed. F.S. Boas. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928. 169-83.
Neely, Carol Thomas, Distracted Subjects: Madness and Gender in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004.

Site created and maintained by David Nicol, Dalhousie University. Last updated 21 July, 2018.

Lent vnto Thomas deckers at the a\|\|}
poyntment of the company the 16 of\|\|}
Janewary 1601 toward the alterynge of	}\|\|\|xx^s
tasso the some of .....\|\|}

Lent vnto my sone E Alleyn the 3 of novembȝ 1602\|\|}
to geue vnto thomas deckers for mendinge of the\|\|}	xxxx^s
playe of tasso the some of .....\|\|}

Lent vnto w^m birde the 4 of desembȝ 1602\|\|}
to paye vnto thomas deckers in pt of pay\|\|}	xx^s
ment for tasso the some of .....\|\|}