noses of learned Readers, was followed in 1575 by an authorized edition, The Posies of G. G. Esquire . . . (not dated).
Gascoigne had an adventurous and original mind, and was a pioneer in more than one direction. In 1576 he published The Steele Glas, sometimes called the earliest regular English satire. Although this poem is Elizabethan in form and manner, it is written in the spirit of Piers Plowman. Gascoigne begins with a comparison between the sister arts of Satire and Poetry, and under a comparison between the old-fashioned "glas of trustie steele," and the new-fangled crystal mirrors which he takes as a symbol of the "Italianate" corruption of the time, he attacks the amusements of the governing classes, the evils of absentee landlordism, the corruption of the clergy, and pleads for the restoration of the feudal ideal.[1]
His dramatic work belongs to the period of his residence at Gray’s Inn, both Jocasta (of which Acts i. and iv. were contributed by Francis Kinwelmersh) and Supposes being played there in 1566. Jocasta was said by J. P. Collier (Hist. of Dram. Poetry iii. 8) to be the "first known attempt to introduce a Greek play upon the English stage," but it turns out that Gascoigne was only very indirectly acquainted with Euripides. His play is a literal version of Lodovico Dolce’s Giocasta, which was derived probably from the Phoenissae in the Latin translation of R. Winter. Supposes,[2] a version of Ariosto’s I Suppositi, is notable as an early and excellent adaptation of Italian comedy, and moreover, as "the earliest play in English prose acted in public or private." Udal's Ralph Roister Doister had been inspired directly by Latin comedy; Gammer Gurton’s Needle was a purely native product; but Supposes is the first example of the acclimatization of the Italian models that were to exercise so prolonged an influence on the English stage. A third play of Gascoigne’s, The Glasse of Government (published in 1575), is a school drama of the "Prodigal Son" type, familiar on the continent at the time, but rare in England. It is defined by Mr C. H. Herford as an attempt "to connect Terentian situation with a Christian moral in a picture of school life," and it may be assumed that Gascoigne was familiar with the didactic drama of university life in vogue on the continent. The scene is laid at Antwerp, and the two prodigals meet with retribution in Geneva and Heidelberg respectively.
The Spoyle of Antwerpe, written by an eyewitness of the sack of the city in 1576, has sometimes been attributed to Gascoigne, but although a George Gascoigne was employed in that year to carry letters for Walsingham, internal evidence is against Gascoigne’s authorship. A curious editorial preface by Gascoigne to Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s Discourse of a Discoverie for a new Passage to Cataia (1576) has led to the assertion that Gascoigne printed the tract against its author’s wish, but it is likely that he was really serving Gilbert, who desired the publication, but dared not avow it. The Wyll of the Devill . . . (reprinted for private circulation by Dr F. J. Furnivall, 1871), an anti-popish tract, once attributed, on slender evidence, to Gascoigne, is almost certainly by another hand.
Gascoigne’s works not already mentioned include: "G. G. in commendation of the noble Arte of Venerie," prefixed to The Noble Art of Venerie or Hunting (1575); The Complaynte of Phylomene, bound up with The Steele Glas (1576); The Droomme of Doomes-day (1576), a prose compilation from various authors, especially from the De contemptu mundi sive de miseria humanae conditionis of Pope Innocent, III., printed with varying titles, earliest ed. (1470?); A Delicate Diet for daintie mouthde droonkardes ... (1576), a free version of St Augustine’s De ebrietate. The Posies (1572) included Supposes, Jocasta, A Discourse of the Adventures of Master F[erdinando] J[eronimi], in imitation of an Italian novella, a partly autobiographical Don Bartholomew of Bath, and miscellaneous poems. Real personages, some of whom were well known at court, were supposed to be concealed under fictitious names in The Adventures of Master F. J., and the poem caused considerable scandal, so that the names are disguised in the second edition. A more comprehensive collection, The Whole Workes of G. G.... appeared in 1587. In 1868–1870 The Complete Poems of G. G.... were edited for the Roxburghe Library by Mr W. C. Hazlitt. In his English Reprints Prof. E. Arber included Certayne Notes of Instruction, The Steele Glas and the Complaynt of Philomene. The Steele Glas was also edited for the Library of English Literature, by Henry Morley, vol. i. p. 184 (1889). A new edition, The Works of George Gascoigne (The Cambridge English Classics, 1907, &c.) is edited by Dr J. W. Cunliffe. See also The Life and Writings of George Gascoigne, by Prof. Felix E. Schelling (Publications of the Univ. of Pennsylvania series in Philology, vol. ii. No. 4 [18941); C. H. Herford, Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 1 49164 (1886); C. H. Herford, "Gascoigne’s Glasse of Government," in Englische Studien, vol. ix. (Halle, 1877, &c.).
SIR WILLIAM GASCOIGNE (c. 1350–1419), chief justice of England in the reign of Henry IV. Both history and tradition testify to the fact that he was one of the great lawyers who in times of doubt and danger have asserted the principle that the head of the state is subject to law, and that the traditional practice of public officers, or the expressed voice of the nation in parliament, and not the will of the monarch or any part of the legislature, must guide the tribunals of the country. He was a descendant of an ancient Yorkshire family. The date of his birth is uncertain, but it appears from the year-books that he practised as an advocate in the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II. On the banishment of Henry of Lancaster Gascoigne was appointed one of his attorneys, and soon after Henry’s accession to the throne was made chief justice of the court of king’s bench. After the suppression of the rising in the north in 1405, Henry eagerly pressed the chief justice to pronounce sentence upon Scrope, the archbishop of York, and the earl marshal Thomas Mowbray, who had been implicated in the revolt. This he absolutely refused to do, asserting the right of the prisoners to be tried by their peers. Although both were afterwards executed, the chief justice had no part in the transaction. It has been very much doubted, however, whether Gascoigne could have displayed such independence of action without prompt punishment or removal from office following. The oft-told tale of his committing the prince of Wales to prison must also be regarded as unauthentic, though it is both picturesque and characteristic. The judge had directed the punishment of one of the prince’s riotous companions, and the prince, who was present and enraged at the sentence, struck or grossly insulted the judge. Gascoigne immediately committed him to prison, using firm and forcible language, which brought him to a more reasonable mood, and secured his voluntary obedience to the sentence. The king is said to have approved of the act, but there appears to be good ground for the supposition that Gascoigne was removed from his post or resigned soon after the accession of Henry V. He died in 1419, and was buried in the parish church of Harewood in Yorkshire. Some biographies of the judge have stated that he died in 1412, but this is clearly disproved by Foss in his Lives of the Judges; and although it is clear that Gascoigne did not hold office long under Henry V., it is not absolutely impossible that the scene in the fifth act of the second part of Shakespeare’s Henry IV. has some historical basis, and that the judge’s resignation was voluntary.
GASCONY (Wasconia), an old province in the S.W. of France. It takes its name from the Vascones, a Spanish tribe which in 580 and 587 crossed the Pyrenees and invaded the district known to the Romans as Novempopulana or Aquitania tertla. Basque, the nationa1 language of the Vascones, took root only in a few of the high valleys of the Pyrenees, such as Soule and Labourd; in the plains Latin dialects prevailed, Gascon being a Romance language. In the 7th century the name of Vasconia was substituted for that of Novempopulana. The Vascones readily recognized the sovereignty of the Merovingian kings. In 602 they consented to be governed by a duke called Genialis, but in reality they remained independent. They even appointed national dukes, against whom Charlemagne had to fight at the beginning of his reign. Finally Duke Lupus II. made his
- ↑ “Againe I see, within my glasse of Steele
But foure estates, to serve each country soyle,
The King, the Knight, the Pesant, and the Priest.
The King should care for al the subjects still,
The Knight should fight, for to defend the same,
The Pesant, he shoulde labor for their ease,
And Priests shuld pray, for them and for themselves.”—
(Arber’s ed. p. 57.) - ↑ The influence of this play on the Shakespearian Taming of the Shrew is dealt with by Prof. A. H. Tolman in Shakespeare’s Part in the Taming of the Shrew (Pub. of the Mod. Lang. Assoc. vol. v. No. 4, pp. 215, 216, 1890).
