AN APULEIAN MASQUE?
THOMAS HEYWOOD’S LOVE’S MISTRESS (1634)

STEPHEN HARRISON

I. Introduction

Thomas Heywood (c. 1570–1641) was a contemporary of Shakespeare and Jonson, and a vastly prolific author of dramas for the English stage as well as of many other literary works.¹ In 1633, towards the end of his career, he describes himself as having had ‘an entire hand or at least a maine finger in two hundred and twenty plays’.² Twenty-three plays and eight masques survive which are wholly or partly by him, the best known of which is his tragedy A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603).³ The classical education Heywood pursued at Cambridge is clear from the time of his early work in the 1590s: the poem Oenone and Paris (1594) makes use of Ovid’s Heroides 5 as well as Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis (1593). Later, he published prose translations of Sallust’s Catiline and Jugurtha (1608; from the French) and the first complete English verse translation of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, Love’s School (c. 1610, popular and much reprinted).⁴ His narrative poem Troia Britannica (1609) in seventeen ottava rima cantos, dedicated to James I, begins with the Creation and moves through classical mythology and the fall of Troy, before ending with a whirlwind history of Britain, from Brute’s founding of London (or ‘New Troy’) to the accession of James (a structure which recalls that of Ovid’s Metamorphoses). His spectacular, pageant-like plays known as The Ages followed, using many of the same classical myths. The Golden Age (printed 1611) tells the story of Saturn, Titan, and Jupiter; The Silver Age (printed 1612) concerns the further adventures of Jupiter and the early labours of Hercules; The Brazen Age (printed 1613) concerns the later labours of Hercules, and Jason and the Golden Fleece; and the two-part The Iron Age (printed 1632) tells the story of the Trojan War, strongly influenced by Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. In 1624, Heywood adapted Plautus’ comedy Rudens for the London stage under another Plautine title, The Captives.⁵

Heywood’s Love’s Mistress, or the Queen’s Masque, the object of this study, was a successful commercial play in 1634–5, which was then given court performances at Queen Henrietta Maria’s personal theatre at Denmark House, including one on the king’s birthday, 19 November 1635, as a present from the queen.⁶ In its royal productions it was given new scenery by Inigo Jones and probably acquired its sub-title;⁷ the text may well have been revised to give it more features of the contemporary court masque,⁸ although it remains fundamentally a play-text (one much longer than those of masques, which are rarely more than a few hundred lines). Masques were spectacular big-budget entertainments for royal pleasure and participation with music, dance, and splendid scenery. In these productions, elevated characters were sometimes contrasted with low-life characters in an ‘anti-masque’ episode (cf. the clown and swains in Love’s Mistress, discussed below).⁹

In Love’s Mistress we see not only an interesting adaptation of the Apuleian story of Cupid and Psyche that has features of the Caroline court masque, but also a commentary by the author Apuleius, appearing as a character, which uses the kind of allegorical interpretation of the narrative favoured in Renaissance editions of the Metamorphoses. This allegorical element is another link with masques, in which characters were often allegorical abstracts and quasi-mythological plots had contemporary symbolism. We also see an eclectic use of other classical authors to generate a text which classically educated elite contemporaries would have appreciated, as well as clear uses of Shakespeare. The play was a success and was re-produced a number of times after the 1660 Restoration (Samuel Pepys records seeing it five times in the years 1661–68).¹⁰ The present chapter adds to recent work on this drama, focusing particularly on the issue of its adaptation of classical sources.¹¹

II. Cupid and Psyche: the Apuleian material

For the reader’s convenience, I here set out a brief summary of the story of Cupid and Psyche as it is narrated in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (4.28–6.24), followed by a rough division of Apuleius’ material into possible dramatic scenes. It is worth noting that dramatic adaptations of the Cupid and Psyche story were common from its first appearance in print in 1469.¹²

II.1. Summary of Apuleius ‘Metamorphoses’ 4.28–6.24

Psyche, a princess feted for her great beauty, thereby incurs the wrath of Venus and is told by an oracle that she will marry a terrifying winged monster and should be exposed on a rock. On the rock, and expecting death, she is taken away to the luxurious but mysterious palace of Cupid, who has fallen in love with her. Cupid visits her bed nightly but forbids her to see him face-to-face or to ask his identity. Psyche asks for her sisters to visit. They, jealous, make her curious and trick her into finding out who her husband is, suggesting that he is a monster and that she should kill him. On discovering what Psyche has done, Cupid leaves her. Psyche, now pregnant, tries and fails to commit suicide and searches for Cupid in various wanderings, while Venus, still hostile, harasses her. Psyche surrenders to Venus and is set a number of arduous tasks. Psyche completes these with indirect help from Cupid, but on her return from the final task, involving a descent to the Underworld, Psyche is again overcome by her curiosity and almost perishes on her return journey. She is rescued by Cupid and admitted to the company of the gods, where the pair, reconciled with Venus, live happily ever after, and have a daughter, Pleasure.

II.2. Division of original narrative into possible dramatic scenes¹³

AP1. Met. 4.28–35: The beginning of Psyche’s story up to her arrival at Cupid’s palace. [5 pages]

AP2. Met. 5.1–4: Psyche comes to the palace and is united with Cupid. [2 pages]

AP3. Met. 5.5–8: Psyche’s sisters arrive at the palace and see its wonders. [2.5 pages]

AP4. Met. 5.9–20: Psyche’s sisters incite her to kill Cupid as a monster. [7.5 pages]

AP5. Met. 5.21–4: Psyche’s attempt to kill Cupid and the revelation of his true identity. [2.5 pages]

AP6. Met. 5.25–27: Psyche attempts suicide in the river, which rescues her, is comforted by Pan, and takes vengeance on her sisters. [2 pages]

AP7. Met. 5.28–31: Venus discovers Psyche’s identity, rebukes Cupid, and furiously pursues Psyche, heedless of the attempts of Ceres and Juno to soften her. [3 pages]

AP8. Met. 6.1–5: Psyche asks Ceres and Juno for help in vain. [3 pages]

AP9. Met. 6.6–10: Psyche is sought by Venus via Mercury’s proclamation and surrenders to her on Olympus. She is harshly treated and beaten. [3 pages]

AP10. Met. 6.11–16: First part of Psyche’s enforced labours for Venus: (i) sorting out a heap of mixed grains, aided by ants; (ii) getting wool from golden-fleeced sheep, aided by the reed; (ii) fetching water from the cliff-top spring, aided by the eagle. [3 pages]

AP11. Met. 6.16–22: Psyche’s last labour: descent to the Underworld to fill a box with Proserpina’s face-powder. Psyche is advised in detail by a magic tower as to how to succeed and does so. On her return, Psyche opens the box and falls into a deep and deadly sleep, from which she is rescued by Cupid. [3 pages]

AP12. Met. 6.22–4: Jupiter makes Psyche a goddess after some negotiation. Cupid and Psyche are married and have a daughter, Pleasure. [1.5 pages]

III. Heywood’s ‘Love’s Mistress’

Here, again for the reader’s orientation, I give a summary of Heywood’s play, which is approximately the same length as Apuleius’ original. The metre is largely iambic pentameter, with occasional heroic couplets, some prose scenes, and lyric songs, very much in the Shakespearian manner. It is a free adaptation which retains the main narrative arc of Apuleius’ plot. I have tried to indicate Heywood’s main imitations and innovations, marking with an asterisk new scenes added by him.

Act 1 [Act 1 Scenes 2–4 = scene AP1 from original; Scene 5 = scene AP2 from original]

*Scene 1 Dialogue between Apuleius (holding a pair of ass’ ears, alluding to his supposed identity with the asinine protagonist of his novel) and Midas, who tells the Ovidian story of his golden touch. Apuleius claims that his story of Cupid and Psyche will show (like Apollo’s song in Ovid) that he is a true artist.

Scene 2 Admetus the Arcadian king comes with his three daughters (Astioche, Petraea, and Psyche) to the Delphic oracle to ask about the future husband of the youngest (Psyche). Apollo replies with the response that Psyche should be exposed on a rock (as in Apuleius) and will marry a monster, but also reveals more of the future than the original (Psyche must not look at her husband but will eventually become immortal).

Scene 3 Venus calls for her son Cupid, who comes and reports that Juno and Ceres were summoned but say they will come ‘anon—forsooth’. Enter Pan and Apollo. Venus reports to them that men honour Psyche and not herself and appeals to them for help in revenge (if they encounter Psyche, they should get Mercury to bring her to Venus or imprison her themselves; Venus promises them a ‘sweet kiss’). Cupid is asked to make Psyche fall in love with ‘some ill-shapen drudge’, but after all the others leave he says he has fallen in love with Psyche himself and calls on Zephyrus to carry Psyche to his palace.

Scene 4 Psyche and her family are at the foot of the rock of exposure; Psyche’s two noble brothers-in-law, Menetius and Zelotis, try to save her, but she insists on facing apparent death all alone. All lament, and Psyche’s sisters promise to visit her the next day if she is still alive.

Scene 5 Zephyrus rescues Psyche and takes her to a banquet in Cupid’s palace. Her hesitant monologue is met by echoes (in the manner of Echo’s speech in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 3.359–401), and then by disembodied laughter. Zephyrus serves her with drink, and Cupid enters invisible to Psyche. The two lovers converse, and Cupid warns Psyche about her sisters.

*Scene 6 Re-enter Apuleius and Midas (cf. Scene 1). Apuleius refers to his time as an ass (i.e. the rest of the Metamorphoses), and introduces a sequence of dancing asses of various kinds and also some human types deemed to be asinine. Midas attacks poets and the story of Cupid and Psyche. Apuleius justifies his tale by a symbolic and allegorical moral interpretation of the story.

Act 2 [Act 2 Scene 1 = scene AP3 from original; Scene 4 = scene AP4 from original]

Scene 1 Psyche welcomes her sisters to Cupid’s palace [Echo again]—Astioche is envious of her sister’s husband, Petraea glad for Psyche’s good fortune.

*Scene 2 Admetus, Menetius, and Zelotis await the sisters’ return; the sisters report Psyche’s good fortune and return to her with Admetus’ blessing.

*Scene 3 Prose scene. A clown appears with several swains. They discuss Cupid and his powers, as celebrated by poets. On poetry, the clown gives a parodic summary of the Iliad as a pastoral comedy and of pastoral love, and gives cod translations of Latin phrases, defying Cupid. Cupid enters and punishes the clown with his arrow, which inspires love.

Scene 4. Psyche enters in doubt about her sisters. Cupid warns her. Her sisters return and Astioche urges Psyche to reveal and kill her monstrous husband.

*Scene 5 Midas and Apuleius re-enter (cf. end of Act 1). Midas criticizes Apuleius’ story and offers an Arcadian rustic dance in response. Apuleius then gives an allegorical moralizing account of his story (cf. end of Act 1 again).

Act 3 [Act 3 Scene 1 = scene AP5 from original; Act 3 Scene 2 includes parts of AP 9 and AP 10]

Scene 1 Psyche seeks to kill Cupid but is discovered and sent away [with dialogue] back to her father.

Scene 2 Clown, Amaryllis, and swains: in prose, the Clown reports a poetic contest between Pan and Apollo which is then staged in verse with Midas as judge; Apollo is represented by a choir of voices, Pan by the Clown (each sings a praise of their own god, short and elevated for Apollo, longer and more comic for Pan). Midas rules in favour of Pan and is cursed with ass’s ears by Apollo. Psyche, transformed and ugly, returns to her father but is rejected by him and her sisters as an impostor. Her sisters recognize her eventually, her father still hesitates; Cupid intervenes but reluctantly rejects her for her disobedience. Her father now knows her but disowns her, banishing her from his court. Enter Mercury, who arrests Psyche to take her to Venus (she goes willingly). Venus, angry at Adonis’ death, beats Psyche and imposes the first test of grain-sorting. Mercury helps Psyche and liberates Cupid to aid her in this task.

*Scene 3 Dialogue of Midas and Apuleius commenting on the action of the story, punctuated by a dance; more allegorical moralizing interpretation of the narrative.

Act 4 [Act 4 Scene 1 has elements from AP10 and AP11 in the original]

Scene 1 Vulcan in his workshop with the Cyclopes complains of his workload and is visited by his son Cupid, who charms him into striking off his shackles despite Venus’s ban. Psyche enters, having completed her first task, and seeks help from Cupid directly with her second, the filling of a vessel with infernal water. He cannot intervene personally but advises her what to do and she leaves. Enter Pan and Venus, Pan revealing to Venus that Cupid has fled to Vulcan for help. Venus rebukes both Cupid and Vulcan, who appeals to Pan, who asks for more work from Vulcan and makes fun of him as a cuckold. Psyche enters with the water and is given a third task, despite the pleas of Vulcan, Cupid, and Pan, to fetch a ‘box of beauty’ from Proserpina. Enter Mercury, who summons all the gods to appear ‘at Ceres’ plain / To entertain the fair Proserpina’. They all leave except Cupid. Psyche re-enters and Cupid gives her detailed advice on how to navigate the Underworld. Psyche’s continuing ugliness is stressed (cf. Act 3 Scene 3).

*Scene 2 Enter clown and swains, who comment on the actions of Cupid (prose scene). The clown again holds forth about poets (cf. Act 2 Scene 2): ‘Homer was honourable, Hesiod Heroical, Virgil a Vicegerent, Naso Notorious, Martial a Provost, Juvenal a Jovial lad, and Persius a Paramount’. Amaryllis is comically compared in beauty to Mopsa, with allusions to contemporary court fashions. The clown sings a comic song in praise of Amaryllis. The scene ends with a plan to steal for Amaryllis the box of beauty carried by Psyche.

*Scene 3 As is now regular at the end of an act, Midas and Apuleius enter, Midas commending the last scene. Apuleius, to please the low taste of his companion, asks the Cyclopes to perform: ‘’Tis musick fitting thee, for who but knows / The vulgar are best pleased with noise and shows?’. They dance with Vulcan. The scene finishes with another allegorical commentary, this time on the meaning of Psyche’s labours, and with a promise of successful passage through the Underworld and a happy ending.

Act 5 [Act 5 Scenes 1–2 expand scene AP11 from original; Act 5 Scene 3 expands AP 12]

Scene 1 Mercury speaks to the assembled gods of the Underworld. It is a festival of Ceres to which Proserpina is invited, but first Psyche must carry out her errand. Proserpina and Pluto seem to support Venus in opposing Psyche and wishing to retain her in the Underworld. Comic Underworld apparatus (Charon, Aeacus, Minos [who sees fair play], Rhadamanthus, Cerberus); Mercury says Psyche has been forewarned of how to succeed, and the scene recalls the tests she passes in her journey in the original. Psyche abases herself and refuses infernal hospitality, vexing Pluto but allowing return to the world above with the box. Pluto admits she is worthy of being Cupid’s wife and asks Proserpina to intervene with Venus in her favour. Proserpina is taken off to the festival by Mercury.

Scene 2 Back on earth, Cupid sees Psyche on her way back from the Underworld and witnesses her encounter with the Clown, who seeks to steal her box (see Act 4 Scene 2); he hopes to be a new Phaon (cf. Ovid, Heroides 15) or Corydon (Virgil, Eclogue 2). Psyche opens the box and falls asleep; Cupid substitutes another box for that of Proserpina, and this box is appropriated by the Clown, whom Cupid charms asleep. Cupid inveighs against women’s vanity. Psyche awakes and is told by Cupid that she will be a goddess and to use the beauty. The Clown awakes after the magic and opens the box, which is full of ugly cosmetics. He now hopes to exceed Ganymede, Phaon, Cupid, and Corydon. Enter swains, Colin, Dickon, Hobinall, summoning the Clown for his wedding to Amaryllis. They laugh at his new appearance, but the Clown believes he looks good, and offers others the beauty from his box.

Scene 3 Venus comes to Arcadia to seek Psyche. Admetus says he would surrender her but she is not there. Apollo, Vulcan, and Pan plead for Psyche. Mercury enters with Proserpina and summons all those present to Ceres’ annual festival. The queen is elaborately welcomed by all present. Cupid enters with a retransformed Psyche, who presents the box. Cupid reports their marriage and her apotheosis. Venus yields. Mercury asks Admetus to judge the two wicked sisters. Psyche asks for pity rather than revenge and the pair volunteer to be her handmaids. All are to attend Ceres’ festival paired for dancing. A dance. Enter Midas and Apuleius. The former criticizes the latter’s work, but Apuleius suggests that more intelligent spectators will understand its depth. Cupid intervenes and judges Midas a dull ass, Apuleius a poet, and suggests that the story of Psyche can be seen as ‘doubly crown’d’, concluding with an exhortation to faithful love.

IV. Heywood’s modifications of the Apuleian original

Structurally, some of the most significant modifications in Heywood’s version are the framing scenes between Apuleius and Midas, which commence each act and begin and end the play as a whole. In these scenes, the pair contest whether the play has a serious moral or not, a contest which, in some ways, symbolizes the dual nature of the piece as both comic entertainment and intellectually serious classical adaptation. The presentation of the tale’s author as a character is unusual in versions of Cupid and Psyche, and here seems to encourage the spectator/reader to think about the Latin original and its author. The play’s comic plot gains dignity from its explicit association with a Latin writer and text popular with Heywood’s generation, especially since Adlington’s English translation of 1566 and Lyly’s adoption of Apuleius’ elaborate prose style in English in Euphues (1578).¹⁴ It also gathers intellectual weight from the allegorical commentary on the Psyche story repeatedly offered by Apuleius as character. This reflects the tradition of interpreting the love story of Cupid and Psyche as a moral and philosophical allegory, a tradition which goes back at least to Fulgentius in the sixth century CE and was popularized in the Renaissance by Beroaldo’s commentary of 1500.¹⁵ In the scenes in which this commentary is offered, it is commonly presented as a correction by Apuleius of the vulgar and foolish views of Midas, as, for example, in Act 1 Scene 6:

Cupid’s judgement as the divine arbiter in the final scene is that the story appeals to ‘both the apt and dull’, to both the intellectual and non-intellectual, but once again Apuleius the author is given what looks like an authoritative statement approving the more sophisticated approach (Act 5 Scene 3):

The other key structural modification is the addition of the scenes with the clown and swains and their comic plot, which, as we shall see below, owes something to both the masque form and to Shakespearian comedy.

Another feature is the introduction of material from the other books of Apuleius’ novel outside the Cupid and Psyche story (4.28–6.24) in Act 1 Scene 6. There Apuleius as character refers to his time in the shape of an ass in the Metamorphoses (3.25–11.13, two-thirds of the novel), incorporating the belief, common since Augustine’s time (De Civitate Dei 18.18) and found in the preface to Adlington’s 1566 translation, that Apuleius was narrating the story of his own metamorphosis in the person of his protagonist Lucius. To illustrate this episode, Heywood’s Apuleius introduces a dumb-show sequence of dancing asses of various kinds¹⁶ and also some human types deemed to be asinine:

The list of asinine human types which then appear (the proud, the prodigal, the drunken, the usurer, a foolish young girl, the ignorant young man) looks like the anteludia or pre-festival parade of Met. 11.8, where a similar passing series of figures (including an ass) seems to represent some of the (often dubious) characters Lucius the protagonist has encountered in his time as an ass, shortly to come to an end.¹⁷

More generally, Heywood’s version contains much more interaction between the two lovers than the original, where, after their initial marriage and separation, Cupid and Psyche really only meet up again when he saves her towards the end. This greater air-time for the couple together is shared with many Renaissance and early modern adaptations, putting romantic love at the centre of the story in a way that appealed to the period (we may compare La Fontaine’s 1669 Les Amours de Psyché et de Cupidon for this same feature). In particular, Heywood makes Cupid help Psyche in her tasks for Venus directly rather than indirectly via the agency of others. There is also a larger role for Psyche’s royal father and sisters, who acquire names (they are anonymous in the original). We shall see below that her father’s name of Admetus recalls another specific classical source, as is also the case for her sisters’ husbands (again named in Heywood but not in Apuleius), whose virtuous conduct, contrasted with the bad behaviour of their wives, perhaps has a Shakespearian source (see further below). In Heywood’s version, the bad sisters are not killed but pardoned, reflecting a more Christian and decorous approach; he also allocates a more pronounced role to the pagan gods. The latter might reflect not only a feature of the masque genre (see further below) but also the context of the court of Charles I and Henrietta Maria, for which (as we have seen above) at least the revised extant version of the play was framed.

In the final act, the assembled gods are greeted by Mercury on behalf of Ceres and Jupiter (neither of whom appears) and invited to Ceres’ festival (Act 5 Scene 3):

The pairing of these two gods here (and the immediately following mention of their daughter Proserpina) suggests that they are a divine couple parallel to the royal couple. In this regard, it is notable that Juno, Jupiter’s usual divine consort, is only mentioned once, early on in a passing allusion to the Latin original (in Act 1 Scene 3), and does not appear as a character, even though (as already noted) Heywood’s version allots more space to the pagan gods, with Pan, Apollo, Mercury, Vulcan, Pluto, and Proserpina all making personal appearances. In the last act, Ceres’ role as an honoured but non-speaking hostess and ‘queen of fertility’ (Act 5 Scene 3) might in fact reflect the role of Henrietta Maria, who would have been heavily pregnant at the performance of the play on the king’s birthday in November 1635, since she was to give birth to Princess Elizabeth on December 28^th. There are further possible hints towards the royal pair at the end of Heywood’s play, where Cupid refers to Psyche as ‘doubly crown’d’ and exhorts the audience to fidelity in love, highly appropriate for a queen’s birthday present to a king (Act 5 Scene 3):

Another clear feature of Heywood’s adaptation of the original is the insertion of a range of non-Apuleian classical material. Amongst the more evident instances, in Act 1 Scene 1 we have a summary of the story of Midas’ acquisition of his golden touch (from Ov. Met. 11.85–145), while Midas receives his own ass’ ears as a mark of his ignorance as a poetic judge in Act 3 Scene 2, reworking another story about him from the same sources (Ov. Met. 11. 172–193). Ovid’s Metamorphoses, perhaps the most read classical text of Heywood’s period,¹⁸ is again drawn upon for a contribution in Act 1 Scene 5 and Act 2 Scene 1, where Psyche’s speeches in Cupid’s palace are answered by exact echoes of her closing words in the manner of Echo’s speeches in Ov. Met. 3.359–401. No doubt Heywood was aware of Apuleius’ own great debt to Ovid’s poem, prominently advertised in the title of his work, Metamorphoses, and clear enough to intelligent readers of both texts.¹⁹ Epic allusion is not limited to Ovid: in Act 4 Scene 1, where Vulcan, in his workshop with the Cyclopes, complains of his workload, we clearly have an entertaining version of the episode in which Vulcan urges on his workers to complete the shield of Aeneas in Virgil’s Aeneid (Aen. 8.423–53). Vergilian poetry is alluded to again in Act 4 Scene 2, where Amaryllis is comically compared in beauty with Mopsa. Amaryllis is a common name of a beloved in the Eclogues (Ecl. 1, 2, 3, and 8), in which Mopsus (the masculine version of Mopsa, not a classical name itself) is also used as a shepherd’s name (Ecl. 5 and 8). Similarly, in Act 5 Scene 2 the clown hopes to be a new Corydon (the male lover of Ecl. 2) once equipped with Proserpina’s beauty. Pastoral allusions are not restricted to Latin pastoral: the names of Heywood’s swains (Act 2 Scene 3)—Colin, Dickon, and Hobinall—are drawn from Spenser’s The Shepheardes Calender of 1579. As we shall see, pastoral colour was a common feature of the masque genre.

Another classical text deployed in the play is the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which emerges in Act 5 Scene 1. There, in an elaborate simile spoken by Mercury, we find the curious story of Iambe (h. Dem. 202–5), the old woman who made Demeter laugh despite her mourning for her kidnapped daughter, and who thus became the origin of iambic poetry:

Later in the same scene we find Mercury commanded by Pluto to take Proserpina off to the festival of Ceres for six months, using Ovid’s doubling in the Metamorphoses (5.564–7) of the three-month stay that we find in the Homeric Hymn (460–69):

It may be that these allusions were prompted by George Chapman’s relatively recent first translation of the Homeric Hymns into English (1624).²⁰

A further classical genre found in Heywood’s play is that of Greek tragedy. The naming of Psyche’s royal father, anonymous in the original, as Admetus inevitably points the classically educated reader to the plot of Euripides’ Alcestis. There, the noble queen Alcestis is willing to suffer death to save her husband Admetus, and it is in the spirit of Alcestis that, in Act 1 Scene 4, Heywood has Psyche insist on facing apparent death all alone. This context of a daughter nobly insisting on self-sacrifice as the consequence of a prophecy also looks to the story of Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis, in which Psyche plays the part of the dutiful Iphigenia and Admetus that of the agonized royal father Agamemnon, torn between sparing his daughter and insisting on the fulfilment of the prophecy.

This deployment of material from various classical genres in his version of the Cupid and Psyche story might reflect an intelligent reading of Apuleius’ narrative by Heywood. Modern scholars agree that Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, and especially its Cupid and Psyche section, draws on a broad range of classical poetic genres, primarily epic but also pastoral, elegy, tragedy, comedy, and satire, to create a rich and entertaining literary texture.²¹

Given the work’s subtitle and the likelihood that it was made more masque-like for its later court performances (see section 1 above), it is also worth considering what features of the masque tradition it displays in its adaptation of the original.²² The overall argument between Apuleius and Midas as to whether the story has a substantive content and moral significance perhaps points towards the general anxiety of the masque genre about its intellectual seriousness, given that it was essentially aimed at dazzling the audience with spectacular effects. This is famously expressed in Jonson’s introduction to Hymenaei, a masque written for the marriage of the third Earl of Essex in 1606, in which the poet presents two levels of appreciation of his work:

This nicely parallels the Apuleius/Midas contest in Heywood, and we may also note the reference to ‘inventions […] grounded upon antiquity, and solid learning’. Classical learning is a regular feature of Jacobean and Caroline masques, and pagan deities are regular figures in them; Jonson’s own The Hue and Cry after Cupid (1606) is a dramatized version of Moschus’ Hellenistic poem on Eros the runaway (Moschus 1). Allegorization of classical figures is also common, not just in the representation of monarchs, princes, and royal favourites as gods or heroes like Hercules (as in Jonson’s Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue, 1618), but also in more explicitly allegorical functions, as in the presentation of Circe as Desire in Aurelian Townshend’s Tempe Restored (1632). As already noted, the comic elements of the pastoral clown and swains parallel similar characters found in the anti-masque sections of masques which presented low-status characters for humorous effect, for example the Country Clown in Francis Beaumont’s The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn (1613). Indeed, even the comic Vulcan and his hammering Cyclopes recall the Cyclopes hammering on stage in Jonson’s The Hue and Cry after Cupid.

A final element of adaptation would seem to be the likely use of two Shakespearian plays, readily available after the Second Folio of 1632; as we saw earlier, Heywood had imitated Shakespeare from the earliest days of his literary career. The first of these is A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In Act 1 Scene 3, Cupid is ordered by Venus to make Psyche fall in love with ‘some ill-shapen drudge’, following the Apuleian original (Met. 4.31.3, ‘See that the girl is seized with consuming passion for the lowest possible specimen of humanity’).²⁴ In Apuleius, this is ironically reversed as it is Cupid himself who falls in love with the girl, as also happens in Heywood. But in Love’s Mistress, the idea of Cupid making a figure fall catastrophically in love is also repeated, in Act 2 Scene 3 where Cupid enters and punishes the clown with his arrow for defiance of his power, which inspires love (eventually) for the old and ill-favoured Amaryllis. The mild resemblance of this scene to the Oberon-inspired infatuation of Titania for the lowly weaver Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is clear (both are punishments from a male power figure), but it is in Act 5 Scene 2 that the parallel with Shakespeare’s play seems most likely. There the clown awakes after being charmed to sleep by Cupid and uses the ointments from the box Cupid has left him, which he thinks make him handsome but in fact make him ugly, as his lowly companions confirm. Here, it is hard not to see an allusion to A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act 3 Scene 1, where Bottom’s transformation into an ass feels good to him but terrifies his companions.

The second Shakespearian play relevant to Heywood’s Apuleian adaptation is King Lear. Apuleius’ scenario of one virtuous sister and two less virtuous ones would naturally recall Shakespeare’s plot of the sisters Cordelia, Goneril, and Regan. Heywood’s extension of the roles of the two evil sisters’ husbands (already noted above), making them virtuous characters who contrast with their wives (cf. Act 1 Scene 4, where they try to save Psyche), might recall the ultimate attempts of Goneril’s husband Albany to restrain his wife and her sister in their villainy. The link with King Lear seems irresistible in Act 3 Scene 2, where Psyche, disfigured by Cupid’s intervention and unrecognizable, is banished from her father’s court with her sisters approval, a comic and softer version of Lear’s effective exiling of Cordelia in the opening scene of Shakespeare’s tragedy. When Admetus says, not recognizing Psyche, ‘Thou art no child of mine’, it is hard not to see a reference to Lear’s fully conscious denial of his daughter, ‘we / Have no such daughter’.²⁵

A fascinating question arises in connection with both of these Shakespearian plays. Modern scholarship on the reception of Apuleius is clear that Lucius’ metamorphosis into an ass in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses is a very likely source for the asinine transformation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and that Psyche and her two sister princesses are probable models for the three royal daughters of King Lear.²⁶ Could Heywood have realized that the Shakespearian episodes he imitates were, themselves, probably Apuleian in origin? Given his considerable classical learning, it is not impossible.

V. Conclusion

This analysis hopes to have shown that Love’s Mistress is a literary work of considerable interest which deploys a number of sophisticated strategies in its adaptation of Apuleius’ Latin prose fiction tale of Cupid and Psyche into a verse play for the English Caroline stage and court. It reshapes the original in the light of the Renaissance tradition of allegorical Apuleian commentary, uses elements from a range of classical literary genres other than that of the novel, shows evidence of crossing the traditional stage play with the courtly masque, and likely echoes some famous Shakespearian scenarios. Above all, the classically educated Heywood seems to have realized the literary complexity and allusivity of his Apuleian original, and to have sought to reflect this in the complex texture of his own work.

Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford

__________

¹ For a convenient summary of his life and works, see D. Kathman, ‘Heywood, Thomas (c. 1573–1641)’, ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/13190 (accessed 20 June 2016)].

² T. Heywood, ‘To the Reader’, in The English Traveller (London 1633) A3.

³ For his dramatic career, see R. Rowland, Thomas Heywood’s Theatre, 1599–1639: Locations, Translations, and

⁴ For a study, see M. L. Stapleton, Thomas Heywood’s ‘Art of Love’ (Ann Arbor 2000).

⁵ See Rowland, Thomas Heywood’s Theatre (n. 3, above) 173–201.

⁶ The text used here is R. C. Shady, Thomas Heywood, Love’s Mistress, or The Queen’s Masque (Salzburg 1977); for the play’s performance history, see R. C. Shady, ‘The stage history of Thomas Heywood’s Love’s Mistress’, Theatre Survey 18 (1967) 86–95; Rowland, Thomas Heywood’s Theatre (n. 3, above) 234–35.

⁷ So Rowland, Thomas Heywood’s Theatre (n. 3, above) 236.

⁸ So Rowland, Thomas Heywood’s Theatre (n. 3, above) 286–87. For some of these, see below.

⁹ For the court masque genre, see The Court Masque, ed. D. Lindley (Manchester 1984), and, for some sample texts, D. Lindley, Court Masques: Jacobean and Caroline Entertainments, 1605– 1640 (Oxford 1995).

¹⁰ See Shady, Thomas Heywood, Love’s Mistress (n. 6, above) xxxiv–xl.

¹¹ For other work on the play’s classical sources, see Shady, Thomas Heywood, Love’s Mistress (n. 6, above) xli–lxiv, and, for its Apuleian adaptation, see briefly R. H. F. Carver, The Protean Ass: The ‘Metamorphoses’ of Apuleius from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Oxford 2007) 349–54. Rowland, Thomas Heywood’s Theatre (n. 3, above) 233–97, the most recent and fullest study, concentrates on the play’s cultural and political context, although it includes interesting observations on the figure and contemporary value of Apuleius.

¹² Cf. e.g. C. Moreschini, Il mito di Amore e Psiche in Apuleio (Naples 1994) 12–26; J. H. Gaisser, The Fortunes of Apuleius and the ‘Golden Ass’ (Princeton-Oxford 2008) 193–95.

¹³ The page totals for particular scenes here should be set against the total of 38 pages for the whole tale in the English translation of P. G. Walsh, Apuleius: The Golden Ass (Oxford 1994).

¹⁴ See Carver, Protean Ass (n. 11, above) 327–64; Rowland, Thomas Heywood’s Theatre (n. 3, above) 287–88.

¹⁵ See Carver, Protean Ass (n. 11, above) 174–82; Gaisser, Fortunes of Apuleius (n. 12, above) 197–242.

¹⁶ On this scene, see Rowland, Thomas Heywood’s Theatre (n. 3, above) 236.

¹⁷ See S. J. Harrison, ‘Interpreting the anteludia (Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11.8)’, Trends in Classics 4 (2012) 377–87.

¹⁸ See e.g. S. Keilen, ‘Shakespeare and Ovid’, H. James, ‘Ben Jonson’s Light Reading’, P. Hardie, ‘Spenser and Ovid’, and D. Hooley, ‘Ovid translated: early modern versions of the Metamorphoses’, all in A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid, eds J. F. Miller and C. E. Newlands (Chichester 2014) 232–45, 246-61, 291–305, and 339–354.

¹⁹ For this debt, see S. J. Harrison, ‘Ovid in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses’, in A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid, eds J. F. Miller and C. E. Newlands (Chichester 2014) 86–99.

²⁰ In G. Chapman, The Crowne of All Homers Works (London 1624).

²¹ See e.g. Cupid and Psyche: Aspects of Apuleius’ ‘Golden Ass’ II, eds M. Zimmerman, T. D. McCreight, D. van Mal-Maeder, S. Panayotakis, V. Schmidt, and B. Wesseling (Groningen 1998), and S. J. Harrison, Framing the Ass: Literary Texture in Apuleius’ ‘Metamorphoses’ (Oxford 2013). Literary allusions in ‘Cupid and Psyche’ may be fully traced via M. Zimmerman, S. Panayotakis, V. Hunink, W. H. Keulen, S. J. Harrison, T. D. McCreight, B. Wesseling, and D. van Mal-Maeder, A Commentary on Apuleius ‘Metamorphoses’ IV.28–VI.24 (Groningen 2004).

²² More particular suggestions on masque-style staging in Love’s Mistress are made by K. Britland, Drama at the Court of Queen Henrietta Maria (Cambridge 2006) 140–41.

²³ B. Jonson, Hymenaei or The Solemnities of Masque, and Barriers (London 1606) A3–4.

²⁴ Trans. Walsh, The Golden Ass (n. 13, above).

²⁵ On this link, see further Carver, Protean Ass (n. 11, above) 352.

²⁶ See Carver, Protean Ass (n. 11, above) 429–445.