[From The Defence of Poesie (1595, William Ponsonby; S. R. 29 Nov. 1594), reprinted as An Apologie for Poetrie (1595, Henry Olney), and with 1598 and later editions of Arcadia. Among many modern editions are those by E. Arber (1868), E. Flügel (1889), A. S. Cook (1890), E. S. Schuckburgh (1891), J. C. Collins (1907), and in Gregory Smith (1904), i. 148. The date 1583 is conjecturally assigned by Cook on the ground of the stylistic development since the Arcadia (1580-3). But any date is possible between 1579, when Gosson's School of Abuse, which probably stimulated it, and Spenser's Faerie Queene, which it mentions, appeared, and Nov. 1585, when Sidney went to the Low Countries. The book contains a general valuation of poetry, on humanistic lines, together with a criticism of English poetry in particular. Only a few pages are devoted to the drama.]
P. 44. 'Perchance it is the Comick, whom naughtie Play-makers
and Stage-keepers, have iustly made odious. To the argument of
abuse, I will answer after. Onely thus much now is to be said, that
the Comedy is an imitation of the common errors of our life, which
he representeth, in the most ridiculous and scornefull sort that may
be. So as it is impossible, that any beholder can be content to be
such a one. . . . So that the right vse of Comedy will (I thinke) by
no body be blamed, and much lesse of the high and excellent Tragedy,
that openeth the greatest wounds, and sheweth forth the Vlcers, that
are couered with Tissue: that maketh Kinges feare to be Tyrants,
and Tyrants manifest their tirannicall humors: that with sturring
the affects of admiration and commiseration, teacheth, the vncertainety
of this world, and vpon how weake foundations guilden roofes
are builded. . . . But it is not the Tragedy they doe mislike: For it
were too absurd to cast out so excellent a representation of whatsoeuer
is most worthy to be learned.' P. 50. Answers criticisms
of poetry as the 'Nurse of abuse', &c. P. 63. Criticizes 'Our
Tragedies and Comedies (not without cause cried out against)'. Even
in Gorboduc, much more in other plays, the unities are disregarded
(cf. quotations in ch. xix). 'Besides these gross absurdities, how
all theyr Playes be neither right Tragedies, nor right Comedies:
mingling Kings and Clownes' in a 'mungrell Tragy-comedie. . . .
Our Comedians thinke there is no delight without laughter. . . .
Delight hath a ioy in it, either permanent, or present. Laughter,
hath onely a scornful tickling. . . . But I haue lauished out too
many wordes of this play matter. I doe it because as they are excelling
parts of Poesie, so is there none so much vsed in England, and none
can be more pittifully abused.'
xxxv. 1584. Thomas Lodge.
[From An Alarum against Usurers (1584; S. R. 4 Nov. 1583), edited
with Defence of Poetry by D. Laing (1853, Sh. Soc.).]
[Extract from Epistle to Inns of Court.] 'About three yeres ago,
one Stephen Gosson published a booke, intituled The Schoole of Abuse,
in which having escaped in many and sundry conclusions, I, as the
