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Full-Text Articles in Literature in English, British Isles

Phantastes Chapter 22: The Revenger's Tragedy, Cyril Tourneur Dec 1606

Phantastes Chapter 22: The Revenger's Tragedy, Cyril Tourneur

German Romantic and Other Influences

Cyril Tourneur (1575-1626) was an English dramatist, a contemporary of Shakespeare; Tourneur was also a soldier and politician. The Revenger’s Tragedy (1607), as its name implies, is a revenge tragedy, and comments on the battle to avenge the destruction by the giants that lead to the brothers’ deaths. Literary critics now believe that the play was written by Thomas Middleton (1580-1627).

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Phantastes Chapter 24: The Honest Whore, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton Dec 1604

Phantastes Chapter 24: The Honest Whore, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton

German Romantic and Other Influences

Thomas Dekker (1572-1632) was a dramatist and writer of popular pamphlets describing London life. This line comes from the play The Honest Whore, Part II (1605 or 1606). The Honest Whore, Part I, a collaboration between Dekker and Thomas Middleton, was performed in 1604.

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Phantastes Chapter 13: The Water Is Wide, Unknown Jan 1600

Phantastes Chapter 13: The Water Is Wide, Unknown

German Romantic and Other Influences

Lines are from an old Scottish ballad, “The Water is Wide,” dating from the seventeenth century. We note, for interest’s sake, that Bob Dylan and Joan Baez sing a version of this song in the 1975 film Renaldo and Clara.

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Phantastes Chapter 23: Astrophel: An Elegy, Or Friend’S Passion, For His Astrophill, Matthew Roydon Dec 1592

Phantastes Chapter 23: Astrophel: An Elegy, Or Friend’S Passion, For His Astrophill, Matthew Roydon

German Romantic and Other Influences

Matthew Roydon (1580-1622), Elizabethan poet and friend of Sidney’s. In 1593, Roydon published his elegy for Sidney: “Astrophel: An Elegy, or Friend’s Passion, for His Astrophill.” MacDonald quotes lines 103-106. “The lineaments of Gospell bookes,” suggests that Sidney’s face exhibited a spirituality of a kind found in the four gospels of the New Testament

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Phantastes Chapter 23: The Countess Of Pembroke’S Arcadia, Philip Sidney Dec 1589

Phantastes Chapter 23: The Countess Of Pembroke’S Arcadia, Philip Sidney

German Romantic and Other Influences

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1583) was an Elizabethan courtier, soldier, and poet. The quotation derives from The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (1590), and sets out Sidney’s definition of a gentleman. Late in his writing career, MacDonald published a collection of excerpts from Sidney: A Cabinet of Gems, Cut and Polished by Sir Philip Sidney (1892). MacDonald lectured on Sidney as early as 1854.

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Phantastes Chapter 20: The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser Dec 1589

Phantastes Chapter 20: The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser

German Romantic and Other Influences

Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), most famous for The Faerie Queene (1590; 1596), is a key influence on MacDonald generally and on Phantastes in particular. John Docherty writes that “MacDonald bases his upon the figure Phantastes living the forebrain of the ‘House of Alma' (the human body) in book 2 of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene” (“Sources of Phantastes,” North Wind: A Journal of George MacDonald Studies, vol. 25, 2005, pages 16-28).

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Phantastes Chapter 15: Campaspe, John Lyly Dec 1583

Phantastes Chapter 15: Campaspe, John Lyly

German Romantic and Other Influences

Campaspe, an Elizabethan play by John Lyly (1584). The lines quoted are from Act 3, Scene 4, and they indicate the notion of a Platonic beauty, an ideal beauty that the artist can never capture perfectly

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