Thomas Underdown
Thomas Underdown, also spelled Underdowne (fl. 1566 - 1577), was a translator. He translated the Æthiopian History of Heliodorus in 1569, and the Ibis of Ovid (1577). The Æthiopian History has been called "the ancestor in a direct line of the Novel of Adventure," and praised for anticipating every artifice of the historical novel.[1]
Underdown was an advocate for literature as a moral instrument, saying that the Æthiopian History was superior as an action story because people are punished for their misdeeds.[2] By contrast, chivalric romance permitted pointless murder and "unlawful lust."[3]
The first (1569) edition of Underdown's translation was dedicated to Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. The book went on to exercise a widespread influence on Elizabethan drama and prose romance. In 1587, the year of the 2nd or 3rd edition, anti-theatrical propagandist Stephen Gosson remarked that Underdown's book had "beene thoroughly ransackt, to furnish the Playehouses in London."[4] Among the early works markedly influenced by the translation is Robert Greene's Pandosto (1588), a major source for Shakespeare's Winter's Tale , and Philip Sidney's Arcadia (1581–86). So strong was the influence of Underdown's translation on Sidney that 16th century commentator Marechel referred to Sidney as the "Heliodore d'Angleterre."[5] According to Moses Hadas, in the introduction to his translation of the Aethiopica, "in construction and a hundred details Sidney patiently follows Heliodorus, and the Arcadia was the principle model for Sidney's successors."[6]
Although the book's influence on Shakespeare is more diffuse, elements of Underdown's translation can be traced in a number of plays, prominent among them Cymbeline .[citation needed ]
References
[edit ]- ^ Whibdley, cited in Jonni Lea Dunn, The Literary Patronage of Edward de Vere, The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, Masters Thesis, University of Texas at Arlington, 1999
- ^ Steve Mentz, Romance for Sale in Early Modern England: The Rise of Prose Fiction (Ashgate, 2006), p. 40 online.
- ^ Helen Moore, "Romance," in A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture (Blackwell, 2003), p. 317 online.
- ^ Cited in Jonni Lea Dunn, ibid, 10
- ^ Jonni Lea Dunn, 11
- ^ Cited in Jonni Lea Dunn, ibid, 11
Wikisource reference This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature . London: J. M. Dent & Sons – via Wikisource.
External links
[edit ]- "Underdown, Thomas" . Dictionary of National Biography . London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
- An 1895 edition of Underdowne's translation of the Æthiopian History (1587 version), with introduction by Charles Whibley, is available online.