The History of Titana and Theseus

Bettie’s The History of Titana and Theseus was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 13 August 1608 and published in the following months by Thomas Creede for Thomas Pavier. We know absolutely nothing about the author (indeed, we do not even know for sure whether his name was William, as most scholars refer to him). In his prefatory epistle, he writes that he and his dedicatee, the scholar Humphrey Conisby (d. c. 1624), had been acquainted “ever since [his] childish years”. In his youth, Conisby resided in his manor in Neen Sollars, Shropshire, before going to Oxford in 1581, aged 15 (Edmondes 2015: 27) – this indication may give us an idea of Bettie’s geographical provenance. Other details that can be gathered about Bettie are only the books he shows to have read: he appears fully versed in the Euphuistic tradition, very familiar with Arthur Golding’s translation of the Metamorphoses, and Robert Greene’s popular Pandosto. There are several texts published in the 1600s featuring prefatory epistles signed by “W. B.”, but one should be wary of identifying all these W. B.’s with Bettie, given the paucity of information about him (consider, for instance, that William Barksted and William Burton were active in the same period).

  Since Pavier is known for his editions of Shakespeare’s plays and apocrypha, some scholars (see e.g. Honigmann 1982: 47-8 and Lyons 2012: 195-6) believe that The History of Titana and Theseus was published to capitalise on the popularity of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where there is mention of a love affair between Titania and Theseus (2.1.74-80). However, this allusion in Shakespeare’s play is slight, and Titana in Bettie’s text is not the queen of fairies. E. K. Chambers argues: “There is no sign in plot or language that the novel . . . was in any way inspired by A Midsummer-Night’s Dream. But it is just possible that if, as is likely enough, W. Bettie translated from an earlier Italian original, Shakespeare may have been struck by the conjunction of names” (1900: 166). Chambers conjectures that Bettie’s text was written before Shakespeare’s play and had an Italian source. However, John Weld (1947) convincingly shows that behind Bettie’s text lies no Italian source, but a curious mixture of Lyly’s and Greene’s romances (especially Pandosto, later used by Shakespeare for The Winter’s Tale) bound together with the account of the hunt of the Calydonian boar in the eighth book of Arthur Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

  The History of Titana and Theseus was published again in 1636, after Pavier’s rights passed to Robert Bird. This second edition altered the spellings and corrected some perceived inaccuracies. Since we only have one defective copy of the 1608 edition, we can use this later edition to integrate the lacunae. This work seems to have retained some interest in the Restoration period: Francis Kirkman’s The Honour of Chivalry (Don Bellianis of Greece), published in 1664, contains a list of books “printed for Andrew Kembe” (189) mentioning “Titana and Theseus” (either a no longer extant edition, or a made-up one) alongside other chivalric romances (see Turner 2012).

  According to Lori Humphrey Newcomb, Bettie “lifts its plot, much of its narration, and even its title-page motto directly from Pandosto” (2001: 82). Indeed, Bettie’s borrowings from Greene are numerous even by Elizabethan and Jacobean standards. On the other hand, his narrative wields together myth and romance. Theseus is the prince of Athens, the son of Aegeus, who takes part in the hunt of the Calydonian boar, as portrayed in Greek mythology. Meleager (Meleagar in Golding’s and Bettie’s spelling) encounters his fate when his mother Althea burns the piece of wood that was tied to his destiny, as related by classical sources, including Ovid, Hyginus, and pseudo-Apollodorus. Everything else is Bettie’s invention, who introduces Titana as Meleagar’s daughter and Theseus’ mistress, who, in the context of a civil war, avoids marrying Pirismus, the prince of Portugal, and elopes with Theseus, but is eventually kidnapped by pirates. After years of pilgrimage, Titana ends up impressing everyone as a tutor in Fuesen (Füssen, Bavaria?), while Theseus leaves the coast of Bohemia (as in Pandosto) to enter the service of the landgrave of Heston (Hesse?), but falls victim to Impio, a libidinous gentlewoman. In the end, thanks to the intervention of the Emperor of Germany, the couple is reunited and can return to Greece.

  Antiquity is joined to medieval chivalry, and myth seems to become little more than a canvas for the unfolding of this love story, were it not that Bettie generously borrows idiomatic expressions and collocations from Golding (for example, the Destinies are “unreeled”, and the boar is an “orped swine”). The intermingling of romance and myth (following a tradition including texts such as the Middle English Sir Orfeo and The Faerie Queene) is at times delectable, if not always successful. The reader’s knowledge of the Meleager myth is taken for granted at the beginning (for instance, the reader is given no information about who Oenie/Oeneus is), while myth is completely forgotten in the final part of the story in favour of chivalrous romance (except, perhaps, for Impio’s suicide, which might evoke Phaedra’s or Jocasta’s), and there is little logic linking certain passages – for instance, we are left uncertain how Titana, in the end, can regard Aegeus, who has spilt so much Calydonian blood, and one would expect her to play a more active role as the passionate lover of romance. Additionally, “[t]he transitional device often used by Greene, ‘where we leave them . . . and return to’, is used by Bettie ad nauseam” (Weld 1947: 41): the narrative proceeds by jumps, although this adheres to Greene’s pattern, which sees Fortune as the ultimate power dominating human life.  

Works Cited

Chambers. E. K. 1900. “Appendix I: On W. Bettie’s Titana and Theseus”. In William Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, edited by E.K. Chambers, 165-6. Boston: Heath and Co.

Edmondes, Jessica. 2015. An Edition of BL Harley MS 7392(2), vol. 1. PhD diss: University of Sheffield.

Honigmann, E. A. J. 1982. “Surreptitious Publications”. In Shakespeare’s Impact on His Contemporaries, 45-9. London and Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Lyons, Tara L. 2012. “Serials, Spinoffs, and Histories: Selling ‘Shakespeare’ in Collection Before the Folio”. Philological Quarterly 91: 185-220.

Newcomb, Lori Humphrey. 2002. “Social Things: Commodifying Pandosto, 1592-1640”. In Reading Popular Romance in Early Modern England, 77-130. New York: Columbia University Press.

Turner, James Grantham. 2012. “Romance and the Novel in Restoration England”. The Review of English Studies 63 (258): 58-85.

Weld, John S. 1947. “W. Bettie’s Titana and Theseus”. Philological Quarterly 26: 36-44.

Armstrong, Guyda. 2013. “Print, Paratext, and a Seventeenth Century Sammelband: Boccaccio’s Ninfale Fiesolano in English Translation”. In Renaissance Cultural Crossroads: Translation, Print and Culture in Britain, 1473-1640, edited by Sara K. Barker and Brenda H. Hosington, 79-102. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

Chambers. E. K. 1900. “Appendix I: On W. Bettie’s Titana and Theseus”. In William Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, edited by E.K. Chambers, 165-6. Boston: Heath and Co.

Honigmann, E. A. J. 1982. “Surreptitious Publications”. In Shakespeare’s Impact on His Contemporaries, 45-9. London and Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Lyons, Tara L. 2012. “Serials, Spinoffs, and Histories: Selling ‘Shakespeare’ in Collection Before the Folio”. Philological Quarterly 91: 185-220.

Newcomb, Lori Humphrey. 2002. “Social Things: Commodifying Pandosto, 1592-1640”. In Reading Popular Romance in Early Modern England, 77-130. New York: Columbia University Press.

Sandy, Gerald N. 1979. “Ancient Prose Fiction and Minor Early English Novels”. Antike und Abendland 25: 41-55.

Weld, John S. 1947. “W. Bettie’s Titana and Theseus”. Philological Quarterly 26: 36-44.

The only extant copy of the 1608 edition of W. Bettie’s The History of Titana and Theseus (EEBO STC 2nd ed.) 1980; UTSC 3003537) is preserved at the Huntington Library and has been digitised here: https://archive.org/details/bim_early-english-books-1475-1640_the-historie-of-titana-_bettie-w_1608. It is a quarto of 48 pages (signatures: A2 B-F4 G2). G1-2 are cropped, and thus the last four pages lack two bottom lines. G1 and G2 have been signalled in recent times by handwritten notes: since these are not early modern notes, they have been omitted in the diplomatic transcription. Instead, an earlier hand has written “4” on the title page to signal the format – this note has been retained. The title page displays Thomas Creede’s device, which contains, in a circle, the motto “VIRESSIT VVLNERE VERITAS” (approx. “Truth buds again through her wounding”) and his initials “TC” below the figure of a crowned woman (Truth), holding a book, scourged by a hand from a cloud  (see the title page here). The first word of the title is xylographic, while the text is mostly written in blackletter, except for the dedicatory epistle, while names and locations in the text are either in Roman or in italics. Verses (C2r, E3v, F1r and v, F2r) are in Roman typeface. There are a few ornaments and ornate initials. The cover features the bookplate of Sir Francis Freeling.