authority, for others only two. A selection of nine plays is more frequently met, and in older copies; while of these again, seven, five, and three were variously selected; the last—Hecuba, Orestes, Phœnissæ—accordingly more copiously annotated and better preserved than the rest. Thus a large part of our treasure is not due to the greater popularity of Euripides, though such was probably the Byzantine opinion, but to the mere accident of the Florentine C and the Palatine P being preserved.
113. The first Greek tragedies printed were four plays of Euripides, in capital letters, at Venice, in 1494; an experiment attempted with only four other books, of which the Anthologia is the only one common in our libraries. An edition, in 1503, of all the plays (except the Elcctra, printed 1545), by Aldus, is the proper princeps; so that to Euripides (except the four plays) was never vouchsafed the honour, as to Homer and Isocrates, of being published in the fine old characters which disappeared before the far inferior types of Aldus. But still he kept in advance of the other tragic poets. In 1518, when Æschylus was being first printed, Erasmus already published a Latin verse translation of two plays (Hecuba, Iphigenia in Aulis), and, what was far more significant, about 1540, Ludovico Dolce began to adapt them for the Italian stage. Of his versions four are still accessible, the Thieste, the Hecuba (hardly altered), the Ifigenia (in Aulis), and Giocasta (considerably modified). Buchanan produced an elegant and faithful Latin Alcestis and Medea about 1570.
114. But the Giocasta (Phœnissæ) of Dolce is to us far more interesting, inasmuch as the Iocasta of George Gascoigne, Shakspere's predecessor, appeared in 1566, and may have directly suggested a celebrated passage in his Henry IV.[1] Gascoigne's
- ↑ By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap,
To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon,
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,
Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,
