"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!!!
