Greene in Conceit: New Raised from His Grave to Write the Tragic History of Fair Valeria of London (1598) (review)

Described in David Margolies’s lucid-yet-detailed introduction as an example of late-Elizabethan ‘popular tragedy’, Greene in Conceit (1598) is a work typical of the period but largely neglected. It illustrates, in an engaging narrative, major features of English fiction in the age of Lyly and Greene. It is to the latter – ‘the most popular writer of the day’ – that John Dickenson (c. 1570–1636) referred in the title. The swift, 60-page narrative proper, ‘a sexual scandal with moral lessons for the reader’, also being preceded by a prefatory dream–vision of the narrator’s encounter with Greene’s ghost, moral exemplar, and drawcard (p. 14).

Dickenson, Margolies explains, avoided the excesses of Lyly’s poorer imitators and adopted ‘the superficial characteristics of euphuism’ while ‘writing with energy and (usually) with commendable restraint’ (p. 22). Moreover, Dickenson struck a balance ‘between conventional rendering of the tale and the move toward realist individuation of characters’ (p. 38). In one instance of Dickenson’s innovative approach to narrative fiction, he ‘paradoxically … creat[ed] the appearance of truth’ by ‘mov[ing] from dubbio’ (‘the form of internal dialogue’) ‘to third-person narration’, thereby presenting ‘a more naturalistic reporting of moral reflection as internalized thought’ (pp. 36–37).

The storyline exemplifies the period’s patriarchally nuanced moralism, illustrated in a characteristically descriptive long title, the latter part of which advertises ‘the Rare and Lamentable issue of a Husband’s Dotage, a Wife’s Lewdness, and Children’s Disobedience’ (p. 62). Yet, despite the narrator’s conventional pronouncements regarding female perfidy – and a notable emphasis on the supposed dangers of providing females with a liberal education – Margolies rightly highlights the significant responsibility attached to the patriarchal figures who arrange the ill-fated marriage – the father ‘unnaturally’ matching young Valeria with the doting, much older Giraldo, so that Valeria’s ‘subsequent failings, while not at all condoned … arise from circumstances not of her own making’ (pp. 45, 47).

Although some flaws are apparent at the proofreading stage – namely, inconsistencies in spelling, with the heroine’s husband, Giraldo, rendered ‘Geraldo’ (e.g. pp. 75, 76, 77, 78), and the author dubbed ‘Dickinson’ (Introduction and pp. 28, 29, 43) – this edition is highly recommended as distinctly suitable undergraduate course material, all the more so for Donald Beecher’s modernized spelling and punctuation, helpful and comprehensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and painstaking annotation of archaic terms and of the Latin proverbs and other expressions so dear to early modern writers.