The interchange of splendor : a contextual study of the allegory in John Lyly's Endimion

Abstract EN

The paper also demonstrates that the purpose of Lyly's court comedy was originally to compliment Queen Elizabeth I, and how he enriches that compliment by using Cynthia as an allegorical figure for the monarch.

He recruits different implications to Cynthia to the extent that she becomes a composite of classical associations and Lylian inovations.

There are traces of the myth of Cynthia and Endimion integrated into the play; Cynthia is shown as Diana, the goddess of chastity and fertility; and the dimension of Cynthia as the moon, thus a heavenly body that demarcates the earthly from the heavenly spheres, as was believed at the time.

Beside all these dimensions and implications, Lyly presents the allegorical figure in the role of a human queen presiding over her court and restoring order and stability to her society.

As a queen, Cynthia gathers the qualities of sanctity and primacy of the human society according to the concept of the Chain of Being.