An Early Seventeenth-Century Reader of Samuel Daniel’s <i>Philotas</i>

Samuel Daniel’s tragedy Philotas, first published in late 1605, came very close to never reaching readers. The play was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 29 November 1604, but after it was publicly performed (probably by the Children of the Queen’s Revels at Blackfriars), Daniel was obliged to defend himself before the Privy Council to answer charges that the story of King Alexander’s favourite put on trial for treason was intended as an allegorical depiction of the Earl of Essex. Adamantly insisting that any resemblance was purely due to ‘the vniuersall notions of the affayres of men, which in all ages beare the same resemblances’, Daniel nevertheless offered to withdraw the play from publication ‘yf it shall seeme skandulous to any by misconceiuing it’.1 The Privy Council was apparently satisfied with Daniel’s explanation, and Philotas soon appeared as a section of Daniel’s Certaine Small Poems Lately Printed (1605) with subsequent editions appearing in 1607, 1611 and 1623. One kind of evidence that testifies to the early reception of Philotas is a number of seventeenth-century manuscripts in which readers have copied lines from the play. Peter Beal’s Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts records two such examples: an early seventeenth-century octavo miscellany of English and Latin verse and prose, in which two lines are copied under the heading ‘Confidence’, and a later miscellany compiled c. 1662 by Marmaduke Rawdon (1610–1669) that reproduces four lines ‘Out of Daniels Phylotas’.2 Laura Estill and Beatrice Montedoro’s DEx: A Database of Dramatic Extracts adds a quarto miscellany, compiled partly by Christopher Wase (1627–1690), in which seven couplets from the play appear.3 A fourth manuscript may now be added to these: the autobiography of Sir John Lowther (1582–1637).4 After studying at the Inner Temple, Lowther pursued a legal career, eventually becoming a justice of the peace for Westmorland, which he first represented in parliament in 1624, and serving on the Council of the North from 1627 until his death. In 1612, Lowther began compiling a record of his life on some blank pages in a bound volume first used as an estate and memoranda book by his grandfather.5 Lowther’s composition of the autobiography proceeded sporadically over many years: ‘whatsoever I write now’, he explained, ‘is at houres of leysure whitch will make it a disjointed woorke’ (fol. 337r; p. 202). Addressed to his three sons, Lowther’s autobiography aims to provide not only ‘evidences of my heart and minde whitch is the best purtreiture’ but more importantly a record of his own experiences for his sons to learn from, whether by emulating their father’s successes or avoiding his mistakes (fol. 338v; p. 204). Promising that he ‘will not comand aniething but perswade since comaundment is vayne where their is noe constreint to inforce it’, Lowther’s autobiography teems with cautionary principles, stressing the importance of financial prudence and political savvy (fol. 339r; p. 204). Lowther also takes care to highlight his own erudition and the opening pages of his autobiography repeatedly cite learned authors (such as Jean Bodin, Theodore Beza, John Calvin, Francis Bacon, Richard Verstegan, William Camden, and Robert Cotton) with ample quotations from Latin classics, including Horace, Ovid, Cicero, Juvenal, and Terence (fols. 335v–39r; pp. 201–4).6 The issue of quotation is itself the subject of an anecdote about Sir Edward Coke, who in delivering an opinion that contradicted his own writings responded ‘dominum cognoscite vestrum’ (‘recognize your own master’), alluding to Ovid’s Metamorphoses; however, Coke embarrassingly neglected to recall that the speaker of those words was the transformed Actaeon, calling in vain to his attacking hounds (fol. 339v; p. 205).7 Lowther’s only conspicuous quotation from an English literary source occurs in a section of the text that he wrote in March 1617, detailing his long-running acrimonious relationship with Lord William Howard of Naworth (1563–1640).8 In Lowther’s account, Howard’s relentless and malicious lawsuits almost always succeeded in court thanks to his powerful family connections (his brother, Thomas Howard, earl of Suffolk, was the Lord Treasurer), exemplifying Lowther’s lesson to his sons not to be naïve in the pursuit of justice: these few perticulers of manie I repeat that thow may be advised in thy course and consider with whome thow dealest, and that thow be not allwayes to confident to Justefie a good cause unlesse thow stand upon equall termes; and knowe thy adversarie and thy Judge well, wherein it is not fitte with all men to be soe easie nyther for though the poyets say In court men best doe live and kepe their Rankes that can take Injuries and (interlined: yet) give men thanks Yet in the (interlined: court and) cuntrie it is not allwayes soe, though some time it be soe, for nulla regula quin fallit, though generally they be good directions, but be thou wise and use thy Rules according unto times and occasions, otherwise they will befoole thee[.] (fol. 351v; p. 219)9 Although Lowther does not cite Daniel by name, the quoted couplet comes from the opening scene of Philotas, when Chalisthenes cautions his friend Philotas not to retaliate openly against those who abuse him: ‘In Courtes men longest liue and keepe their rankes,/By taking iniuries, and giuing thankes’.10 As with the excerpts from Philotas copied in the three manuscript miscellanies, Lowther’s quotation reveals his interest in Daniel’s pithy political aphorisms, even as he qualifies it with the legal maxim that there are always exceptions to rules. The fact that Lowther’s quotation varies from every early printed edition might suggest that he did not transcribe the lines directly from a copy of the play, and it may be that this couplet circulated separately from its source. However, it may also be the case that Lowther imperfectly reproduced lines that he had once committed to memory during an earlier reading of Philotas, a possibility supported by the relevance of the play to Lowther’s career. In this Lowther may be compared with another early reader of the play, the lawyer and judge Anthony Benn (1569/70–1618), whose annotated copy of Certaine Small Poems (1605) survives at the Folger Shakespeare Library.11 While Benn read poems throughout Daniel’s collection, his interest in Philotas specifically is evident in the fact that fifty-seven of his sixty-three marginal annotations, underlined passages, and textual alterations appear in that text. As John Pitcher has discussed, Benn’s attention to Philotas is understandable given the subject of the play, which can be characterized as ‘a courtroom drama’, ‘an imitation of juridical or forensic analysis, rather than as a high tragedy of psychological or moral revelation’. In Pitcher’s reading, Philotas ‘is in essence a lawyer’s or a barrister’s play, or at least a play in which the reader is encouraged to weigh what is said strictly as evidence’.12 If Benn’s annotations demonstrate one seventeenth-century lawyer engaging with Daniel’s play on these terms, arguably Lowther, a practicing lawyer recently made a justice of the peace, may have been attracted to it for similar reasons. That Lowther was reminded of Philotas when writing this passage of his autobiography also suggests his familiarity with the play as a whole. Daniel’s tragedy is concerned not only with the practical problem of discerning truth about accused suspects from external signs, but also about the fallibility of a justice system shaped by favouritism, factionalism, and thinly concealed ulterior motives—the very theme Lowther was discussing in his description of William Howard of Naworth. In Daniel’s play, it is the shrewd and self-interested councillor Craterus who, envying the growing influence of Alexander’s favourite, leads the prosecution against Philotas, who in turn calls into question the validity of his trial in which a guilty verdict seems predetermined, a dynamic that resonates with Lowther’s account of William Howard: it ‘was the Lord William’s pollicie ever to be plaintif and to sew and eyther out of the substance of the cause or by some trick in law for some forme in proceding he ever gotte advantage’ (fol. 351r; p. 219). For Lowther, Howard’s constant manipulation of the legal system for his own advantage—‘the law whitch showlde be the buckler and the defence of the innocent he made his swoord to oppresse theim’ (fol. 351r; p. 219)—exemplified the ways that principles of justice could collapse in the face of social and political power.13 While this broad thematic parallel with Philotas suggests that Lowther recognized that it was an appropriate source to draw on at this moment, his specific use of the couplet may evince a more detailed familiarity with the play. The lines occur in the opening scene, which begins as Philotas reads a letter of caution sent to him from his father Parmenio: ‘Make thy selfe lesse Philotas then thou art?/What meanes my father thus to write to me?’14 Chalisthenes’ advice to Philotas (the lines quoted by Lowther) serves then to supplement the warning of his father, just as Lowther draws on Daniel’s play as a voice to supplement his own fatherly advice to his sons. It may be worth noting that Lowther also had an indirect connection to Daniel himself through his third cousin Lady Anne Clifford (1590–1676), who had been tutored by Daniel as a child (a fact lovingly recalled in Clifford’s Great Picture) and whose mother Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland, was the dedicatee of the first edition of Certaine Small Poems, in which Philotas was first published. Perhaps Lowther became aware of Daniel’s works through his connection to Clifford, with whom Lowther was corresponding in 1616.15 But regardless of how he became familiar with the play, Lowther’s quotation from Philotas evocatively illustrates Daniel’s legal drama being read carefully by an early seventeenth-century lawyer, one who saw in the playwright’s pithy political observations a resource for articulating the influence of social and political power on the administration of justice.

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