country’ were the theme of applause with Lord-keeper Bacon, Lord-treasurer Burghley, and ‘the rest of the Queen's most honourable Privy Councell;’ while ‘the petty bookes he wrote corresponding with the times’ tended ‘to the promoting of religion, the safety of his Prince and good of his country, … and his sundry excellent speeches in Parliament, wherein he expressed himselfe in such sort to be a true and zealous Philopater,’ gained him the title of ‘Master Norton, the Parliament man.’
His relentless persecution of Roman catholics obtained for him a different character among the friends of his victims. In a rare volume published probably at Antwerp in 1586, and entitled ‘Descriptiones quædam illius inhumanæ et multiplicis persecutionis quam in Anglia propter fidem sustinent catholici Christiani,’ the third plate representing ‘Tormenta in carceribus inflicta,’ supplies a caricature of Norton. The descriptive title of the portrait runs: ‘Nortonus archicarnifex cum suis satellitibus, authoritatem suam in Catholicis laniandis immaniter exercet’ (Brydges, Censura, vii. 75–6).
Norton owes his place in literature to his joint authorship with Sackville of the earliest tragedy in English and in blank verse. Sackville's admirers have on no intelligible ground contested Norton's claim to be the author of the greater part of the piece. Of ‘The Tragedie of Gorboduc,’ three acts (according to the published title-page) ‘were written by Thomas Nortone, and the two last by Thomas Sackuyle,’ and it was first performed ‘by the Gentlemen of Thynner Temple’ in their hall on Twelfth Night, 1560–1. The plot is drawn from Geoffrey of Monmouth's ‘History of Britain,’ book ii. chap. xvi., and relates the efforts of Gorboduc, king of Britain, to divide his dominions between his sons Ferrex and Porrex; a fierce quarrel ensues between the princes, which ends in their deaths and in the death of their father, and leaves the land a prey to civil war. The moral of the piece ‘that a state knit in unity doth continue strong against all force, but being divided is easily destroyed,’ commended it to political circles, where great anxiety prevailed at the date of its representation respecting the succession to the throne. Norton had himself called attention to the dangers of leaving the question unsettled in the House of Commons (Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. x. 261–3, by Leonard H. Courtney). The play follows the model of Seneca, and the tragic deeds in which the story abounds are mainly related in the speeches of messengers. Each act is preceded by a dumb show portraying the action that is to follow, and a chorus concludes the first four acts. Blank verse had first been introduced into English literature by Henry Howard, earl of Surrey [q. v.] Nicholas Grimoald [q. v.], who, like Norton, contributed to Turner's ‘Prerogative,’ and was doubtless personally known to him, had practised it later. But Norton and Sackville were the first to employ it in the drama. They produced it with mechanical and monotonous regularity, and showed little sense of its adaptability to great artistic purposes.
The play was repeated in the Inner Temple Hall by order of the queen and in her presence, on 18 Jan. 1560–1, and was held in high esteem till the close of her reign. Sir Philip Sidney, in his ‘Apology for Poetry,’ commended its ‘stately speeches and well-sounding phrases climbing to the height of Seneca his style, and as full of notable morality, which it doth most delightfully teach, and so obtain the very end of poesie;’ but Sidney lamented the authors' neglect of the unities of time and place.
The play was first printed, without the writer's consent, as ‘The Tragedie of Gorboduc,’ on 22 Sept. 1565. The printer, William Griffith, obtained a copy ‘at some young man's hand, that lacked a little money and much discretion,’ while Sackville was out of England and Norton was out of London. The text was therefore ‘exceedingly corrupted.’ Five years later an authorised but undated edition was undertaken by John Day, and appeared with the title, ‘The Tragidie of Feerex and Porrex, set forth without Addition or Alteration, but altogether as the same was shewed on Stage before the Queenes Maiestie, about nine Yeares past.’ It was again reprinted in 1590 by Edward Allde, as an appendix to the ‘Serpent of Division’—a prose tract on the wars of Julius Cæsar—attributed to John Lydgate. Separate issues have been edited by R. Dodsley, with a preface by Joseph Spence, in 1736; by W. D. Cooper, for the Shakespeare Society, in 1847; and by Miss Toulmin Smith in Vollmöller's ‘Englische Sprach- und Literaturdenkmale’ in 1883. It also appears in Dodsley's ‘Old Plays’ (1st ed. 1774, 2nd ed. 1780); Hawkins's ‘English Drama,’ 1773; ‘Ancient British Drama’ (Edinburgh), 1810, and in the 1820 and 1859 editions of Sackville's ‘Works.’
Besides ‘Gorboduc’ and the translations from Peter Martyr, Calvin, and Alexander Nowell which have been already noticed, Norton was, according to Tanner, author of the anonymous ‘Orations of Arsanes agaynst Philip, the trecherous king of Macedone, with a notable Example of God's vengeance uppon a faithlesse Kyng, Quene, and her children,’ London, by J. Daye, n.d. [1570], 8vo. He was also responsible for the following tracts: 1. ‘A Bull granted by the Pope to Dr. Harding and other, by reconcilement and assoylying of English Papistes, to undermyne Faith and Allegeance to the Quene, With a true Declaration of the Intention and Frutes thereof, and
