Castara, or Cruelty Without Hate: Difference between revisions

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Ferrand, James. ''Erotomania, or a Treatise Discoursing of the Essence, Causes, Symptomes, Prognosticks, and Cure of Love, or Erotiqve Melancholy''. Oxford: L. Lichfield, 1640.
Ferrand, James. ''Erotomania, or a Treatise Discoursing of the Essence, Causes, Symptomes, Prognosticks, and Cure of Love, or Erotiqve Melancholy''. Oxford: L. Lichfield, 1640.
Jordan, Thomas.  '' Poeticall varieties: or, Varietie of fancies''. London: Humphry Blunden, 1637.  
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Jordan, Thomas.  '' Poeticall varieties: or, Varietie of fancies''. London: Humphry Blunden, 1637.</li>


[[category:Love]][[category:Poetry]][[category:Paradoxical titles]][[category:Marriott's List]]
[[category:Love]][[category:Poetry]][[category:Paradoxical titles]][[category:Marriott's List]]

Revision as of 11:21, 8 January 2010

Anon. (?after 1634)


Historical Records

Among the twenty-one plays entered on Marriott's List (1653):

Castara or Cruelty without hate


Theatrical Provenance

Unknown


Probable Genre(s)

Unknown. The general frame of reference is love-poetry, given the apparent connection to Habington's Castara and the Petrarchan flavour of the subtitle.


Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

None known


References to the Play

None known


Critical Commentary

Bentley (5.1301) observes:

Castara is the title of William Habington's popular collection of poems first issued in 1634, and since Habington did write one play, The Queene of Aragon, it is conceivable that he wrote Castara, or Cruelty without Hate, but there is no evidence whatsoever, and Allott (ed., Poems of William Habington [1948], p.xlvii) ignores the possibility.
It might be argued that the title of the play derives from Habington and that it was therefore written after 1634. In the absence of other evidence, however, there is no sufficient reason for any date beyond the terminal one of Marriott's entry.


For What It's Worth

For discussion of Marriott's list, follow this link: Marriott's List (1653)

EEBO-TCP gives us fragments of information to make the argument for a post-1634 date a little more solid. It demonstrates that, firstly, that Habington seems to have invented the name "Castara" as far as EEBO-TCP is concerned, since it currently does not detect the word earlier than the first edition of Castara. Equally, EEBO-TCP shows that he by no means possessed a copyright on it thereafter, and that it rapidly becomes a generic name for a woman one might be in love with. Thomas Jordan uses it as a mistress's name in a lyric printed in 1637:

Then I may
Enjoy my Rosa, spend the Am'rous day
Within her armes, and at the night retire
To Violetta, quench another fire
In her cold bosome, but ere day doth rise
Salute the Morne in my Aurora's eyes:
There like to an Idolater ile gaze
Till my Honoria rids me of the maze
And draws me to her Bower, where having spent
Some heavenly houres, ile find out Millescent
(That wonder of perfection) we two,
Can teach the Turtles what they ought to doe;
With kisses moyst her Ruby lips ile cover.
But then Castara sayes I doe not love her...

(Jordan, "A Gentleman in love with twenty Mistresses", in Poetical Varieties, 2).

Similarly, one F. Palmer, writing a dedicatory poem praising the quality of a book, uses the name in a similarly generic way:

Whilst I doe read and Meditate this book,
I dare the utmost Charmes of any Look.
Nay I could gaze eu'n on Castara's face
And nere be blind nay Kisse her if she was
Here, yet nere perish for't...

(F. Palmer, "To the Author on his Love-Melancholy", in Ferrand, Erotomania).

In the period after 1634, then, "Castara" was indeed a fashionable new name for a mistress.



Works Cited

Ferrand, James. Erotomania, or a Treatise Discoursing of the Essence, Causes, Symptomes, Prognosticks, and Cure of Love, or Erotiqve Melancholy. Oxford: L. Lichfield, 1640.

Jordan, Thomas. Poeticall varieties: or, Varietie of fancies. London: Humphry Blunden, 1637. Site created and maintained by Matthew Steggle, Sheffield Hallam University. Updated 10 January 2010.