Tuesday, October 27, 2009

An Unexemplary Figure

Deciphering the Droeshout Figure.

"Beware then thou render Mens
Figures truly, and teach them no less to hate their Deformities, than
to love their Forms: For, to Grace, there should come Reverence; and
no Man can call that Lovely, which is not also Venerable. (Ben Jonson, _Cynthia's Revels_)

Traditional explanations of the awkwardness and the incongruities of the Droeshout engraving attribute its errors to the relative inexperience of the engraver (Droeshout the Younger) or the possibility that the engraver had never laid eyes on his subject.

The mismatched front panels of the Droeshout engraving should be enough to dispel that argument. In 1911, Gentlemen's Tailor Magazine investigated the construction of the doublet and reported:

"The tunic, coat, or whatever the garment may have been called at the time, is so strangely illustrated that the right hand-side of the forepart is obviously the left-hand side of the backpart, and so give[s] a harlequin appearance to the figure, which it is not unnatural to assume was intentional and done with express object and purpose"

As Vladimir Nabokov noted in _Bend Sinister_ (1947)- the construction of Shakespeare’s garment suggests that the figure is ‘ambisinister’ or ‘awkward’- composed of two left arms.

A fluted glass with a blue-veined violet and a jug of hot punch
stand on Ember's bedtable. The buff wall directly above his bed (he
has a bad cold) bears a sequence of three engravings.
Number one represents a sixteenth-century gentleman in the act of
handing a book to a humble fellow who holds a spear and a bay-crowned
hat in his LEFT hand. Note the SINISTRAL detail (why? Ah, "that is the
question," as Monsieur Homais once remarked, quoting le journal d'hier
a question which is answered in a wooden voice by the Portrait on the
title page of the First Folio)
(snip)
His name is protean. He begets doubles at every comer. His
penmanship is unconsciously faked by lawyers who happen to write a
similar hand. On the wet morning of November 27, 1582, he is Shaxpere
and she is a Wately of Temple Grafton. A couple of days later he is
Shagsper and she is a Hathaway of Stratford-on-Avon. Who is he?
William X, cunningly composed of *two left arms* and a mask.?
Who else? The person who said (not for the first time) that the glory of God is to hide a
thing, and the glory of man is to find it. However, the fact that the
Warwickshire fellow wrote the plays is most satisfactorily proved on
the strength of an applejohn and a pale primrose.



ambisinister left-handed in both hands; awkward.

Awk \Awk\, adv.
Perversely; in the wrong way. --L'Estrange.
Awk \Awk\ ([add]k), a. [OE. auk, awk (properly) turned away;
(hence) contrary, wrong, from Icel. ["o]figr, ["o]fugr,
afigr, turning the wrong way, fr. af off, away; cf. OHG.
abuh, Skr. ap[=a]c turned away, fr. apa off, away + a root
ak, a[u^]k, to bend, from which come also E. angle, anchor.]
1. Odd; out of order; perverse. [Obs.]

2. Wrong, or not commonly used; clumsy; sinister; as, the awk
end of a rod (the but end). [Obs.] --Golding.

3. Clumsy in performance or manners; unhandy; not dexterous;
awkward. [Obs. or Prov. Eng.]


An author with two left hands? This is harsh criticism from Ben Jonson, who prided himself on his own‘right and natural’ language, and his ‘dexterous turns’.

Jonson's comments in the prologue to _Cynthia's Revels_, state that an artist should ensure that he 'renders' his figures truly, so that the audience will not be deceived about the relative merits or demerits of those figures. And since Jonson explicitly approves the Droeshout Figure as a representation of Shakespeare - what else does the unnatural form of the Droeshout tell us about Shakespeare?

In his _Discoveries_, Ben Jonson writes that 'a body without proportion cannot be goodly.' This is to be expected from Jonson, who approved the classical values of symmetry, proportion and order.

Peter Womack, in elaborates:

The Comical Scene: Perspective and Civility on the Renaissance
Stage – Peter Womack

.....For Jonson, the main point of the unities is not so much
verisimilitude as proportion. As he writes in Discoveries,
paraphrasing Heinsius:

In every action it behoves the poet to know which is his utmost bound,
how far with fitness, and a necessary proportion, he may produce, and
determine it…For, as a body without proportion cannot be goodly, no
more can the action, either the comedy, or tragedy, without his fit
bounds.

Boundedness is the condition of all proportion and fitness; nothing
can be good without its proper limits. It is a principle that goes
beyond poetics, informing for example these comedies’ preoccupation
with the idea of humor. Asper, the authorial mouthpiece of Every Man
Out, defines humor as “whatsoe’er hath flexure and humidity, / As
wanting power to contain itself,” and explains that the medical humors
(choler, melancholy, and so on) are so called “By reason that they
flow continually / In some one part, and are not continent” (“Grex,”
ll. 96-101). The follies we are about to see, then, are types of
incontinence, ugly and absurd because of their lack of any limiting
principle. A comedy that wandered whimsically from country to country
would be complicit with the humors it displayed. Rather, it should
emulate the wise men who rule their lives by knowledge, “and can
becalm / All sea of HUMOUR with the marble trident / Of their strong
spirits” (The Poetaster, 4.6.74-76). Although his plays were not
written for a Serlian stage, Jonson reproduces its boundedness at the
level of their construction through his self-imposed limitations of
place and time. The classical architecture of the dramatic form, with
its firm symmetries and commanding point of view, stands in for the
perspective scene.


The concept of 'proper limits' is bound up with the classical ideal of decorum (propriety in manners and conduct). Quintilian writes that ‘'A good man (vir bonus) will see that everything he says is consistent with his dignity and the respectability of his character (dignitate ac verecundia); for we pay too dear for the laugh we raise if it is at the cost of our own integrity
(probitatis)'

Jonson paraphrases this passage at the close of his epigram
"To My Book” (probitas – integrity,honesty, uprightness):

It will be looked for, book, when some but see
Thy title, Epigrams, and named of me,
Thou should'st be bold, licentious, full of gall,
Wormwood, and sulphur, sharp, and toothed withal;
Become a petulant thing, hurl ink, and wit,
As madmen stones: not caring whom they hit.
Deceive their malice, who could wish it so.
And by thy wiser temper, let men know
Thou are not covetous of least self-fame.
Made from the hazard of another's shame:
Much less with lewd, profane, and beastly phrase,
To catch the world's loose laughter, or vain gaze.
He that departs with his own honesty
For vulgar praise, doth it too dearly buy.

AW Johnson describes the development of a 'a moral decorum based on proportion' in the works of Ben Jonson.


AW Johnson: _Ben Jonson: Poetry and Architecture_

In the deep background Jonson shares the Aristotelian emphasis of
the Palladians. He writes in Discoveries that the poet's art is one of
'imitation, or faining; expressing the life of man in fit measure,
numbers and harmony, according to Aristotle' (Disc.,ll. 2348-50); and
that the study of it 'offers to mankinde a certaine rule, and Patterne
of living well, and happily (Disc., ll. 2386-7) Poetry - like
architecture - therefore has a didactic function which explits a
mimetic relationship between a well-shaped life and a well-shaped work
of art (and which can be metonymically embodied within the 'measure,
numbers, and harmony' of language as easily as it can be in stone). And
the determinant of the relationship is a moral one - a criterion of
'fitness' applied within the poem which emanates from the moral sense
of the poet himself:>> (p.27)



Jonson made it clear that Shakespeare had an 'open and free nature' and was unable to properly contain or 'rule' his wit:

wherein he FLOW'D with that FACILITY, that
sometime it was necessary he should be stopped: Sufflaminan-dus erat
[the brake needed to be applied]; as Augustus said of Haterius. His
WIT was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too.

Rule \Rule\, n. [OE. reule, riule, OF. riule, reule, F.
r['e]gle, fr. L. regula a ruler, rule, model, fr. regere,
rectum, to lead straight, to direct. See Right, a., and cf.
Regular.]


In the verse prologue to _Every Man in his Humour_, characterizes Shakespeare's plays as 'Monsters' - in other words that they are ill-formed (deformed).


SCENE,---LONDON

PROLOGUE.

Though need make many poets, and some such
As art and nature have not better'd much;
Yet ours for want hath not so loved the stage,
As he dare serve the *ill customs of the AGE*,
Or purchase your delight at such a rate,
As, for it, he himself must justly hate:
To make a child now swaddled, to proceed
Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed,
Past threescore years; or, with three rusty swords,
And help of some few foot and half-foot words,
Fight over York and Lancaster's king jars,
And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars.
He rather prays you will be pleas'd to see
One such to-day, as other plays should be;
Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas,
Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please;
Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard
The gentlewomen; nor roll'd bullet heard
To say, it thunders; nor tempestuous drum
Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come;
But deeds, and language, such as men do use,
And persons, such as comedy would choose,
When she would shew an image of the times,
And sport with human follies, not with crimes.
Except we make them such, by loving still
Our popular errors, when we know they're ill.
I mean such errors as you'll all confess,
By laughing at them, they deserve no less:
Which when you heartily do, there's hope left then,
*You, that have so grac'd MONSTERS, may like men*.

This critique is entirely in keeping with a reading of the Droeshout figure as suggesting under cover of a figure that Shakespeare is'monstrous' or deformed.

Jonson calls upon the judgement and authority of Horace to condemn artists who, like Shakespeare (and unlike Jonson) 'make monsters against nature'.


Jonson, _Timber_

De progres. picturæ. {93} Picture took her feigning from poetry; from
geometry her rule, compass, lines, proportion, and the whole
symmetry. Parrhasius was the first won reputation by adding symmetry
to picture; he added subtlety to the countenance, elegancy to the
hair, love-lines to the face, and by the public voice of all
artificers, deserved honour in the outer lines. Eupompus gave it
splendour by numbers and other elegancies. From the optics it drew
reasons, by which it considered how things placed at distance and afar
off should appear less; how above or beneath the head should deceive
the eye, &c. So from thence it took shadows, recessor, light, and
heightnings. From moral philosophy it took the soul, the expression
of senses, perturbations, manners, when they would paint an angry
person, a proud, an inconstant, an ambitious, a brave, a magnanimous,
a just, a merciful, a compassionate, an humble, a dejected, a base,
and the like; they made all heightnings bright, all shadows dark, all
swellings from a plane, all solids from breaking. See where he
complains of their painting CHIMAERAS {94} (by the vulgar unaptly
called grotesque) saying that men who were born truly to study and
emulate Nature did nothing but MAKE MONSTERS AGAINST NATURE, which
Horace so laughed at.


In Bartholomew Fair, Jonson takes yet another shot at Shakespeare's tendency to 'make nature afraid' with the unnatural forms of his plays. Jonson sticks with his policy of attacking the vice and sparing the man - the name of the author of the Tales and Tempests is not mentioned.

Bartholomew Fair: Jonson

T H E
I N D u C T I O N
O N T H E
S T A G E.


It is further covenanted, concluded and agreed, That
how great soever the expectation be, no Person here is
to expect more than he knows, or better Ware than a
Fair will afford: neither to look back to the Sword and
Buckler-age of Smithfield, but content himself with the
present. Instead of a little Davy, to take Toll o' the
Bawds, the Author doth promise a strutting Horse-courser,
with a leer-Drunkard, two or three to attend him, in as
good Equipage as you would wish. And then for Kind-
heart, the Tooth-drawer, a fine Oily Pig-woman with her
Tapster, to bid you welcome, and a Consort of Roarers
for Musick. A wise Justice of Peace meditant, instead
of a Jugler, with an Ape. A civil Cutpurse searchant. A
sweet Singer of new Ballads allurant: and as fresh an
Hypocrite, as ever was broach'd, rampant. If there be ne-
ver a Servant-monster i' the Fair, who can help it, he
says, nor a Nest of Antiques? He is loth to MAKE NA-
TURE AFRAID in his Plays, like those that beget Tales, Tem-
pests, and such like Drolleries, to mix his Head with other
Mens Heels; let the concupiscence of Jigs and Dances,
reign as strong as it will amongst you: yet if the Pup-
pets will please any body, they shall be entreated to
come in.


In his _Discoveries_, in a discussion of the 'difference in wits' (remember Shakespeare's inability to 'rule' his wit) Jonson speaks against artificers who 'make nature afraid'.

(In the difference of wits, note 10)

Not. 10.--It cannot but come to pass that these men who commonly
seek to do more than enough may sometimes happen on something that
is good and great; but very seldom: and when it comes it doth not
recompense the rest of their ill. For their jests, and their
sentences (which they only and ambitiously seek for) stick out, and
are more eminent, because all is sordid and vile about them; as
lights are more discerned in a thick darkness than a faint shadow.
Now, because they speak all they can (however unfitly), they are
thought to have the greater copy; where the learned use ever
election and a mean, they look back to what they intended at first,
and <>

http://home.att.net/~tleary/GIFS/DROUS.JPG

The true artificer will
not run away from NATURE as he were AFRAID of her, or depart from
life and the likeness of truth, but speak to the capacity of his
hearers. And though his language differ from the vulgar somewhat,
it shall not fly from all humanity, with the Tamerlanes and Tamer-
chains of the late age, which had nothing in them but the scenical
strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant
gapers. He knows it is his only art so to carry it, as none but
artificers perceive it. In the meantime, perhaps, he is called
barren, dull, lean, a poor writer, or by what contumelious word can
come in their cheeks, by these men who, without labour, judgment,
knowledge, or almost sense, are received or preferred before him.
He gratulates them and their fortune. Another age, or juster men,
will acknowledge the virtues of his studies, his wisdom in dividing,
his subtlety in arguing, with what strength he doth inspire his
readers, with what sweetness he strokes them; in inveighing, what
sharpness; in jest, what urbanity he uses; how he doth reign in
men's affections; how invade and break in upon them, and makes their
minds like the thing he writes. Then in his elocution to behold
what word is proper, which hath ornaments, which height, what is
beautifully translated, where figures are fit, which gentle, which
strong, to show the composition manly; and how he hath avoided
faint, obscure, obscene, sordid, humble, improper, or effeminate
phrase; which is not only praised of the most, but commended (which
is worse), especially for that it is naught.


When Jonson writes of making monsters against nature he draws from Horace’s _Art of Poetry_:

HOR., Ars Poet. 1.
Suppose a painter wished to couple a horse’s neck with a man’s head,
and to lay feathers of every hue on limbs gathered here and there, so
that a woman, lovely above, foully ended in an ugly fish below; would
you restrain your laughter, my friends, if admitted to a private view?
Believe me…a BOOK will appear uncommonly like that PICTURE, if
impossible figures are wrought into it – like a sick man’s dreams –
with the result that neither head nor foot is ascribed to a single
shape, and unity is lost*.

Ouch.

Is the Droeshout picture a ridiculous and incoherent mixture of forms?

Yesterday I wondered about an Oxford/Shakespeare being forced to play the role of irrational anti-poet to Jonson’s neoclassical poet. The Poet-Ape.

“Fool, as if half eyes will not know a fleece
From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece?” Jonson, On Poet Ape

In _Cynthia’s Revels_, Jonson described the extravagant poet-courtier Amorphous as ‘made out of the mixture and shreds of forms'. Contrast Amorphus with the true and learned artificer of the _Discoveries who repeatedly revises until he 'makes all an even and proportioned body.’

"He that is with him is Amorphus
a Traveller, one so made out of the mixture and shreds
of forms, that himself is truly deform'd."

In the Prologue to _The Alchemist_, Jonson wrote:


Fortune, that favours Fools, these two short Hours
We wish away, both for your sakes, and ours,
Judging Spectators; and desire in place,
To th' Author Justice, to our selves but Grace.
Our Scene is London, 'cause we would make known,
No Countries Mirth is better than our own:
No Clime breeds better Matter for your Whore,
Bawd, Squire, Impostor, many Persons more,
Whose manners, now call'd humours, feed the Stage;
And which have still been Subject for the Rage
Or Spleen of Comick Writers. Though this Pen
Did never aim to grieve, but better Men;
Howe'er the AGE he lives in doth endure
The VICES that she breeds, above their Cure. (Jonson)



I am very interested in how expectation shapes perception. Everything in out experience leads us to arrive at the ambiguous front matter of the First Folio expecting to hear Shakespeare lauded to the skies.

Our perception of the Droeshout Engraving? I used to see a duck, now I see a rabbit.

Duck or Rabbit, Praise or Blame?

The Theory-Ladeness of Perception
Vision scientists call the way we are primed to see things in a particular context our perceptual set, and set plays a significant role in top-down processing. Some aspects of a person's set are transitory and context-sensitive, as when I prime you to see a duck in the figure above by first showing you a series of unambiguous pictures of ducks. But other aspects, which are more directly relevant to relativism, depend on longer-term features of one's language and culture, as the figure with the alphanumeric characters shows. Writing in the late fifties the philosopher of science Norwood Russell Hanson (1958, esp. Ch. 1) summed these ideas up in the slogan that perception is theory-laden. Our background “theory,” i.e., our concepts, beliefs, and expectations influence what we see--or at least how we them.


Soul of the Age!!!

Monday, October 26, 2009

Shakespeare's Bad Form

Deciphering the Droeshout Engraving.

For years I kept this image of Shakespeare as my screensaver. Every time the image appeared on the screen, my mind would instantly supply the name 'Shakespeare'. Even after I began to suspect that the deformities of the Droeshout engraving had more to do with Shakespeare's 'Form' than his physical 'Face', I still could not unhitch that famous name from that iconic image.

After hundreds of years, the number one obstacle to understanding the authorship problem (in my opinion) is the idolization of the author of the Shakespeare canon. Even among Oxfordian peers I have encountered almost unanimous resistance to the idea that Jonson may have been offering a serious and sustained criticism of Shakespearean style in the front matter of the First Folio. I understand this. The perceived nobility and genius of the mind of the author demands a noble and inspirational backstory. Yet it is my concern that modern prejudices and misconceptions regarding aristocratic values and behaviours require the historical Edward de Vere to be tested against certain postures that are thought to be reliable indicators of an honourable and virtuous mind, and that when these conditions are not met the Oxfordian case has a tendency to self-destruct.

Alan H. Nelson, in his biography of Edward de Vere, sought to prove once and for all that the vicious character of the Earl of Oxford excluded the Earl from serious consideration as the author of the Works. Much of the content and bias of the book is reflected in its sinister title - _Monstrous Adversary_. While I agree with Professor Nelson that many contemporaries viewed Oxford critically, I was left wondering whether or not standards of aristocratic virtue and vice can be judged from a twentieth-century perspective, and whether or not Prof. Nelson gave serious enough consideration to the political bias of some of these criticisms. Studies of factional politics in the Elizabethan court should render certain judgements as completely inadmissible as testimonies to the Earl's character. For example, the most famous conflict of Oxford's life, the Tennis court quarrel with Philip Sidney - the figure and model of the 'virtuous' courtier - is here again moralized in Sidney's favour. (Fulke Greville, friend and biographer to Sir Philip and, importantly, Recorder of Stratford-upon-Avon, certainly played a role in developing our modern understanding of Oxford's 'evil fame'.) Opposed to Sidney's 'naturally' superior courtier, Oxford is forced to play the part of Monstrous Anti-courtier.

If a writer belonged to the Sidney circle, or was an Essexian (both known enemies of the Earl of Oxford) – shouldn’t that make their opinion of Oxford’s worth suspect? Doesn’t Jonson’s avowed admiration for Sir Philip Sidney make his relationship to an Oxford/Shakespeare figure more interesting, and more problematic? Just as on the historical stage Oxford was made to play the part of the Vice opposite Sidney’s portrayal of Virtue - is Oxford/Shakespeare also‘forced’ to play the part of erring, unclassical and popular Anti-Poet opposite Sidney and Jonson’s virtuous,learned and correct Poets?

Upon Ben Jonson, and his Zany, Tom Randolph.

"Quoth Ben to Tom, the Lover's stole,
"'Tis Shakspeare's every word;
"Indeed, says Tom, upon the whole,
"'Tis much too good for Ford.

"Thus Ben and Tom, the dead still praise,
"The living to decry;
"For none must dare to wear the bays,
"Till Ben and Tom both die.

"Even Avon's swan could not escape
"These letter-tyrant elves;
"They on his FAME contriv'd a RAPE,
"To raise their PEDANT selves.
(snip)
Endymion Porter


Differences between Oxford and Sidney, 'Shakespeare' and Sidney, and 'Shakespeare' and Jonson and even Oxford and 'Shakespeare' can be studied at the level of style. However, it must be remembered that for many educated Elizabethans, style or 'manner' was the 'Mark of the Mind'.

George Puttenham, in the _Arte of English Poesie_, writes:

And because this
continuall course and manner of writing or speech sheweth
the matter and disposition of the writers MINDE, more than one
or few words or sentences can shew, therefore there be that
haue called STILE, the image of Man (MENTIS CHARACTER)
for man is but his mind, and as his minde is tempered
and qualified, so are his speeches and language at large,
and his inward conceits be the mettall of his MINDE, and his
manner of vtterance the very warp |&| woofe of his conceits,
more plaine, or busie and intricate, or otherwise affected
after the rate.

Jonson, _Discoveries_
Oratio imago animi. - Language most shows a man: Speak, that I may see
thee. It springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and
is the image of the parent of it, the MIND. No glass renders a man’s
form or likeness so true as his speech. Nay, it is likened to a man;
and as we consider feature and composition in a man, so words in
language; in the greatness, aptness, sound structure, and harmony of
it.


Ben Jonson gave a lot of thought to the uses and abuses of language. As the above passage demonstrates, for Jonson a man’s style or manner of writing was a reliable indicator of the qualities of his mind. Expressions such as ‘language is the dress of thought’ and ‘manners maketh man’ are variants on this belief. The movements of the body (manners) are being directed by the activities and motions of the mind. It is also important to remember that stylistic choices became associated with moral and political positions – just as men might wear a certain colour ribbon to indicate the faction they belonged to at court, literary styles could signal political leanings, and vicious speech patterns could bring a man’s moral reputation into question. Vicious habits were regarded with suspicion, especially in the powerful, because they can be communicated to others and can corrupt an entire commonwealth:

Jonson,
For it is VIRTUE that
gives glory; that will endenizen a man everywhere. It is only that
can naturalise him. A native, if he be VICIOUS, deserves to be a
stranger, and cast out of the commonwealth as an Alien.



Deformities of style (vices) were reflections of deformities of the mind. That is why the irregularities of form that appear in the Droeshout cannot simply be passed over. The Droeshout is the image, or figure of Shakespeare's MIND and MANNERS.





Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue, even so the race
Of Shakspeare's MIND and MANNERS brightly shines
In his well torned and true filed lines;
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandisht at the eyes of ignorance. (Jonson)



XI. -- ON THE PORTRAIT OF SHAKESPEARE.

TO THE READER.

This Figure that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle SHAKSPEARE cut,
Wherein the graver had a strife
With Nature, to out-doo the life :
O could he but have drawn his wit
As well in BRASS, as he has hit
His face (note-form) ; the print would then surpass
All that was ever writ in BRASS :
But since he cannot, reader, look
Not on his picture, but his book.



Men's evil manners live in BRASS; their virtues
We write in water. (Shakespeare)



Folly, and brain-sick HUMOURS of the time,
Distemper'd passion, and audacious crime,
Thy pen so on the stage doth personate,
That ere men scarce begin to know, they hate
The vice presented, and there lessons learn,
Virtue, from vicious habits to discern.
Oft have I seen thee in a sprightly strain,
To lash a vice, and yet no one complain ;
Thou threw'st the ink of malice from thy pen,
Whose aim was EVIL MANNERS, not ill men.
(Hawkins, Jonsonus Virbius)

Friday, October 23, 2009

Soul of an Ignorant Age

"Ben Jonson must be answered, first."

In this simple line Emerson sets the challenge for anyone who wishes to prove that Edward de Vere (or any other writer) wrote the works that are traditionally assigned to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. The works are published under the sign of William Shakespeare - his name is on the plays!- is offered as a statement of bald fact.
Yet texts are composed of signs, and, as representations of reality they are subject to manipulation. My task as an Oxfordian is to prove, or at least demonstrate the possibility that Jonson 'does not mean what he seems to say' in the front matter of Shakespeare's First Folio. And perhaps more importantly, to suggest a reason why Jonson may have created such a monstrous deception in the first place.

Was Jonson a liar?

Absolutely not.

I believe the answer lies in the age old problem of 'speaking truth to power'. Classical rhetoricians had developed techniques to censure the powerful, and to speak of persons and events that had been deemed unmentionable. Jonson's writings demonstrate that he is familiar with such teachings. As in Lucan's catasterisation of Nero, censure of a tyrant or a vicious person could be accomplished under cover of praise.

Jonson, whose plain style has been described as possessing the virtues of 'weight, clarity and exactness' [Parfitt], chooses to completely abandon these carefully cultivated qualities in his Folio poem. Why?

In his _Discoveries_, Ben Jonson paraphrases Quintilian in a description of the conditions under which 'figured language' may be used 'correctly':

"But why do men depart at all from the right and natural ways of speaking? sometimes for necessity, when we are driven, or think it fitter, to speak that in obscure words, or by circumstance, which uttered plainly would offend the hearers*. Or to avoid obsceneness, or sometimes for pleasure, and variety, as travellers turn out of the highway, drawn either by the commodity of a footpath, or the delicacy or freshness of the fields. And all this is called εσχηματισμενη (eschematismene) or FIGURED LANGUAGE."


Quintilian
Institutio Oratoria Book IX
65 Similar, if not identical with this figure is another, which is much in vogue at the present time. For I must now proceed to the discussion of a class of figure which is of the common est occurrence and on which I think I shall be expected to make some comment. It is one whereby we excite some suspicion to indicate that our meaning is other than our words would seem to imply; but our meaning is not in this case contrary to that which we express, as is the case in irony, but rather a hidden meaning which is left to the hearer to discover. As I have already pointed out, modern rhetoricians practically restrict the name of figure to this device, from the use of which figured controversial themes derive their name. This class of figure may be employed under three conditions first, if it is unsafe to speak openly; secondly, if it is unseemly to speak openly; and thirdly, when it is employed solely with a view to the elegance of what we say, and gives greater pleasure by reason of the novelty and variety thus introduced than if our meaning had been expressed in straightforward language. 67 The first of the three is of common occurrence in the schools, where we imagine conditions laid down by tyrants on abdication and decrees passed by the senate after a civil war, and it is a capital offence to accuse a person with what is past, what is not expedient in the courts being actually prohibited in the schools. But the conditions governing the employment of figures differ in the two cases. For we may speak against the tyrants in question as openly as we please without loss of effect, provided always that what we say is susceptible of a different interpretation, since it is only danger to ourselves, and not offence to them, that we have to avoid. And if the danger can be avoided by any ambiguity of expression, the speaker's cunning will meet with universal approbation. On the other hand, the actual business of the courts has never yet involved such necessity for silence, though at times they require something not unlike it, which is much more embarrassing for the speaker, as, for example, when he is hampered by the existence of powerful personages, whom he must censure if he is to prove his case. Consequently he must proceed with greater wariness and circumspection; since the actual manner in which offence is given is a matter of indifference, and if a figure is perfectly obvious, it ceases to be a figure. Therefore such devices are absolutely repudiated by some authorities, whether the meaning of the figure be intelligible or not. But it is possible to employ such figures in moderation, the primary consideration being that they should not be too obvious.

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In the dedication of his play _Catiline_ (1611) to William Herbert, one of the 'Incomparable Brethren' of the First Folio, Jonson writes of his despair over the 'ignorance' of the age:

To the Great Example of H O N O U R and V E R T U E, the most Noble
W I L L I A M
E A R L of P E M B R O K E , L O R D C H A M B E R L A I N, &c.
M Y L O R D,

IN so thick and dark an IGNORANCE, as now almost covers the AGE, I crave leave to stand near your Light, and by that to be read. Posterity may pay your Benefit the Honour and Thanks, when it shall know, that you dare, in these Jig-given times, to countenance a Legitimate Poem. I must call it so, against all noise of Opinion: from whose crude and airy Reports, I appeal to that great and singular Faculty of Judgment in your Lordship, able to vindicate Truth from Error.

I'd like to explore further Jonson's frustration with the ignorance of his age, the age that preferred 'jigs' to his 'Legitimate Poems'. An age of preposterous judgements; an age that applauded Shakespeare and hissed his own plays from the stage. An age of fools that he knew would swallow the First Folio bombast whole, without properly digesting it.

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Jonson - Timber
Censura de poetis. - Nothing in our age, I have observed, is more PREPOSTEROUS than the running judgments upon poetry and poets; when we shall hear those things commended and cried hup for the best writings which a man would scarce vouchsafe to wrap any wholesome drug in; he would never light his tobacco with them. And those men almost named for miracles, who yet are so vile that if a man should go about to examine and correct them, he must make all they have done but one BLOT. Their good is so entangled with their bad as forcibly one must draw on the other' s death with it. A sponge dipped in ink will do all:-
" - Comitetur Punica librum Spongia. - " {44a}
Et paulò post,
" Non possunt . . . multæ . . . lituræ . . . una litura potest."
Cestius - Cicero - Heath - Taylor - Spenser. - Yet their vices have not hurt them; nay, a great many they have profited, for they have been loved for nothing else. And this false opinion grows strong against the best men, if once it take root with the ignorant. Cestius, in his time, was preferred to Cicero, so far as the ignorant durst. They learned him without book, and had him often in their mouths; but a man cannot imagine that thing so foolish or rude but will find and enjoy an admirer; at least a reader or spectator. The puppets are seen now in despite of the players; Heath' s epigrams and the Sculler' s poems have their applause. There are never wanting that dare prefer the worst preachers, the worst pleaders, the worst poets; not that the better have left to write or speak better, but that they that hear them judge worse; Non illi pejus dicunt, sed hi corruptius judicant. Nay, if it were put to the question of the water-rhymer' s works, against Spenser' s, I doubt not but they would find more suffrages; because the most favour common vices, out of a prerogative the vulgar have to lose their judgments and like that which is naught.
Poetry, in this latter age, hath proved but a mean mistress to such as have wholly addicted themselves to her, or given their names up to her family. They who have but saluted her on the by, and now and then tendered their visits, she hath done much for, and advanced in the way of their own professions (both the law and the gospel) beyond all they could have hoped or done for themselves without her favour. Wherein she doth emulate the judicious but PREPOSTEROUS bounty of the time' s grandees, who accumulate all they can upon the parasite or fresh-man in their friendship; but think an old client or honest servant bound by his place to write and starve.
Indeed, the multitude commend writers as they do fencers or wrestlers, who if they come in robustiously and put for it with a deal of violence are received for the braver fellows; when many times their own rudeness is a cause of their disgrace, and a slight touch of their adversary gives all that boisterous force the foil. But in these things the unskilful are naturally deceived, and judging wholly by the bulk, think rude things greater than polished, and scattered more numerous than composed; nor think this only to be true in the sordid multitude, but the neater sort of our gallants; for all are the multitude, only they differ in clothes, not in judgment or understanding.

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Jonson's admirers were at times outraged at the behaviour of the 'ignorant' audiences at the Globe. Following is written by 'Ev. B' and appears at the front of Jonson's 'Sejanus':

To the most understanding Poet.

When in the Globe's fair ring, our world's best stage,
I saw Sejanus, set with that rich foil,
I looked the author should have born the spoil
Of conquest from the WRITERS OF THE AGE;
But when I viewed the people's beastly rage,
Bent to confound thy grave and learned toil,
That cost thee so much sweat, and so much oil,
My indignation I could hardly'assuage.
And many there (in passion) scarce could tell
Whether thy fault or theirs deserved most blame -
Thine, for so showing, theirs, to wrong the same;
But both they left within that doubtful hell.
From whence, this publication sets thee free;
They, for their IGNORANCE, still damned be.

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Bartholomew Fair: Jonson

T H E I N D u C T I O N O N T H E S T A G E.

It is further covenanted, concluded and agreed, That how great soever the expectation be, no Person here is to expect more than he knows, or better Ware than a Fair will afford: neither to look back to the Sword and Buckler-age of Smithfield, but content himself with the present. Instead of a little Davy, to take Toll o' the Bawds, the Author doth promise a strutting Horse-courser, with a leer-Drunkard, two or three to attend him, in as good Equipage as you would wish. And then for Kind- heart, the Tooth-drawer, a fine Oily Pig-woman with her Tapster, to bid you welcome, and a Consort of Roarers for Musick. A wise Justice of Peace meditant, instead of a Jugler, with an Ape. A civil Cutpurse searchant. A sweet Singer of new Ballads allurant: and as fresh an Hypocrite, as ever was broach'd, rampant. If there be ne- ver a Servant-monster i' the Fair, who can help it, he says, nor a Nest of Antiques? He is loth to make NATURE AFRAID in his Plays, like those that beget Tales, Tem- pests, and such like Drolleries, to mix his Head with other Mens Heels; let the concupiscence of Jigs and Dances, reign as strong as it will amongst you: yet if the Pup- pets will please any body, they shall be entreated to come in.

Jonson. Verse Prologue, _Every Man in His Humor _
SCENE,---LONDON
PROLOGUE.
Though need make many poets, and some such As art and nature have not better'd much; Yet ours for want hath not so loved the stage, As he dare serve the ill customs of the AGE, Or purchase your delight at such a rate, As, for it, he himself must justly hate: To make a child now swaddled, to proceed Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed, Past threescore years; or, with three *rusty swords*, And help of some few foot and half-foot words, Fight over York and Lancaster's king jars, And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars. He rather prays you will be pleas'd to see One such to-day, as other plays should be; Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas, Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please; Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard The gentlewomen; nor roll'd bullet heard To say, it thunders; nor tempestuous drum Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come; But deeds, and language, such as men do use, And persons, such as comedy would choose, When she would shew an image of the times, And sport with human follies, not with crimes. Except we make them such, by loving still Our popular errors, when we know they're ill. I mean such errors as you'll all confess, By laughing at them, they deserve no less: Which when you heartily do, there's hope left then, *You, that have so grac'd MONSTERS, may like men*.

Plain-spoken Jonson never changed his mind about Shakespeare's 'monstrous', (unnatural) plays, he just became more subtle.

(If the deformities of the Droeshout engraving - mismatched front panels of the doublet, two left arms - are subtle. The Unexemplary Figure. A ridiculous figure, to accompany a ridiculous encomium.)

In future posts I'll attempt to demonstrate that 'Shakespeare' figures the noble Edward de Vere's 'preposterous fame'.

It may take more than one try.

Jonson _Discoveries_ (In the difference of wits, note 10)
Not. 10.--It cannot but come to pass that these men who commonly seek to do more than enough may sometimes happen on something that is good and great; but very seldom: and when it comes it doth not recompense the rest of their ill. For their jests, and their sentences (which they only and ambitiously seek for) stick out, and are more eminent, because all is sordid and vile about them; as lights are more discerned in a thick darkness than a faint shadow. Now, because they speak all they can (however unfitly), they are thought to have the greater copy; where the learned use ever election and a mean, they look back to what they intended at first, and make all an even and proportioned body.

http://home.att.net/~tleary/GIFS/DROUS.JPG

The true artificer will not run away from NATURE as he were AFRAID of her, or depart from life and the likeness of truth, but speak to the capacity of his hearers. And though his language differ from the vulgar somewhat, it shall not fly from all humanity, with the Tamerlanes and Tamer- chains of the late age, which had nothing in them but the scenical strutting and furious vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant gapers. He knows it is his only art so to carry it, as none but artificers perceive it. In the meantime, perhaps, he is called barren, dull, lean, a poor writer, or by what contumelious word can come in their cheeks, by these men who, without labour, judgment, knowledge, or almost sense, are received or preferred before him. He gratulates them and their fortune. Another age, or juster men, will acknowledge the virtues of his studies, his wisdom in dividing, his subtlety in arguing, with what strength he doth inspire his readers, with what sweetness he strokes them; in inveighing, what sharpness; in jest, what urbanity he uses; how he doth reign in men's affections; how invade and break in upon them, and makes their minds like the thing he writes. Then in his elocution to behold what word is proper, which hath ornaments, which height, what is beautifully translated, where figures are fit, which gentle, which strong, to show the composition manly; and how he hath avoided faint, obscure, obscene, sordid, humble, improper, or effeminate phrase; which is not only praised of the most, but commended (which is worse), especially for that it is naught.


John Beaumont ,_Jonsonus Virbius_
…Twas he that found (plac'd) in the seat of wit,
Dull grinning IGNORANCE, and banish'd it;
He on the prostituted stage appears
To make men hear, not by their eyes, but ears;
Who painted virtues, that each one might know,
And point the man, that did such treasure owe :
So that who could in JONSON'S lines be high
Needed not honours, or a riband buy ;
But vice he only shewed us in a glass,
Which by reflection of those rays that pass,
Retains the figure lively, set before,
And that withdrawn, reflects at us no more;
So, he observ'd the like decorum, when
*He whipt the vices, and yet spar'd the men* :
When heretofore, the Vice's only note,
And sign from virtue was his party-coat;
When devils were the last men on the stage,
And pray'd for plenty, and the present age.


FALKLAND, _Jonsonus Virbius_
...How in an IGNORANT, and learn'd AGE he swaid,
(Of which the first he found, the second made)
How He, when he could know it, reapt his Fame,
And long out-liv'd the envy of his Name:

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Jonson's 'First Folio' encomium to Shakespeare mocks Shakespeare and his audience. 'Understanders' would judge correctly what the praise 'Soul of the Age' meant, knowing that Jonson had repeatedly insulted the Age as incapable of judging his quality. Ignorant admirers of Shakespeare's popular works - the jig-lover's - would foolishly accept the empty bombastic sound of Jonson's First Folio praise while proving themselves incapable of  judging its ironic sense. As their own commendations condemned their own judgement, Jonson's artful 'test' vindicated his own reputation and aesthetic choices.
The First Folio's process of selecting discerning, learned 'extraordinary' Readers still stands today as a test of judgement. Modern audiences accustomed to be flattered and unused to being themselves regarded and  judged by an inert page and a long-dead author do not perceive the intellectual aggression and challenge latent in the FF front matter (including the disproportionate, ambisinister and decidedly counter-classical Droeshout 'Figure'.) The front matter to the Folio is a strange monument to Jonson's genius, with the seemingly passive page concealing an immediate challenge that has an almost 'living' or active quality - for myself it is as if the author has switched from the object of my gaze to observer, and that suddenly it is I that am being judged. Perhaps this is the 'immortality' the poets wrote of. In this moment of understanding, Jonson ACTS on my mind as strongly as if he were in the room.

Jonson, Catiline, 1611

TO THE READER IN ORDINARIE.


THE Muses forbid, that I shold restrayne you medling, whom I see alreade busie with the Title, o
uer the leaues: It is your owne. I departed with my right, when I let it first abroad. And, now, so secure an Interpreter I am of my chance, that neither praise, nor dispraise from you can affect mee. Though you commend the two first Actes, with the people, because they are the worst; and dislike the Oration of Cicero, in regard you read some pieces of it, at School, and vnderstand them not yet; I shall finde the way to forgiue you. Be any thing you will be, at your owne charge. Would I had deseru'd but halfe so well of it in translation, as that ought to deserue of you in iudgment, if you haue any. I know you will pretend (whosoeuer you are) to haue that, and more. But all pretences are not iust claymes. The commendation of good things may fall within a many, their approbation but in a few· for the most commend out of affection, selfe tickling, an easinesse, or imitation: but men iudge only out of knowledge. That is the trying faculty. And, to those workes that will beare a Iudge, nothing is more dangerous then a foolish prayse. You will say I shall not haue yours, therfore; but rather the contrary, all vexation of Censure. If I were not aboue such molestations now, I had great cause to thinke vnworthily of my studies, or they had so of mee. But I leaue you to your exercise. Beginne.



To the Reader extraordinary.

YOu I would vnderstand to be the better Man, though Paces in Court go otherwise: to you I submit my selfe, and worke. Farewell.

BEN: IONSON.

********************************Title: Catiline his conspiracy. VVritten by Ben: Ionson. And now acted by his Maiesties Servants with great applause   Date: 1635 


To his worthy beloved Friend Master Ben. Jonson.

Had the great thoughts of Catiline beene good
The memory of his name, streame of his blood
His plots past into acts, (which would have turn'd
His infamy to Fame, though Rome had burn'd)
Had not begot him equall grace with men,
As this, that he is Writ by such a Pen:
Whos inspirations, if great Rome had had,
Her good things had bin better'd, and her bad
Undone; the first for joy, the last for feare,
That such a Muse should spread them, to our eare.
But woe to us then: for thy Laureat brow
If Rom enjoy'd had, we had wanted now.
But, in thie AGE, where JIGS and DANCES move,
How few there are, that this pure worke approve!
Yet, better then I rayle at, thou canst scorne
Censures, that dye, ere thy be throughly borne.
Each Subject thou, still thee each Subject raises.
And whosoever thy Booke, HIMSELF DISPRAISES.

NAT. FIELD. (note - Nathan Field?)