The Biographical Environment of Christus Triumphans
INTRODUCTION
group of beings for help in his difficult task: beginning simply enough with the names of some gods, he moves through practitioners of mythological magic to end with references to Plato, Aristotle, and Pythagoras. Far more effective, I think, is the humor resulting from Chremes' and Crito's rage at being outwitted by Gesippus, for this is germane to the play and comes from the naturalistic conversation of two silly old men.
When we consider the nature of the material with which Foxe burdened himself and the status of the comic art when he was writing, we must conclude that Foxe wrote a more than creditable play. If it has flaws, it also has positive virtues. It is clearly a better play than Christus Triumphans. Perhaps, if we had Foxe's final revision, we would find some of the flaws eliminated, for we must remember that we are dealing with a draft play. On the other hand, the completely revised state of Christus Triumphans does not indicate that Foxe's revisions necessarily removed all faults, and it is perhaps best not to speculate on the quality of a revision which we cannot now see.
The Biographical Environment of Christus Triumphans When Foxe fled from England in 1554, he went to Antwerp,
Rotterdam (where he visited the house in which Erasmus was born), Frankfurt (where he met the Basel printer, Froben), and Strassburg, the earliest haven for exiles from Mary's England. His stay in Strassburg was brief, but was long enough to see the publication in September, 1554, of a work which he had written in England,
Commentarii rerum in ecclesia gestarum, maximarumque per totam Europam persecutionum a Wiclevi temporibus ad hanc usque aetatem descriptio. Vhis is the first version of the work which would later make Foxe famous, the Book of Martyrs, but it 1s only a fraction of the later work in size and scope: it is concerned mostly with the Lollards, for the Marian persecutions which inspired the continuation had not yet reached major proportions: burnings did not begin until February, 1555.
By the autumn, Foxe had moved to Frankfurt, apparently as a preacher. Throughout his exile Foxe was very poor: he had dedicated his Commentarii to a German nobleman whom he did not know in the hope of financial return and, getting no response, had followed