**********************************
Caliban's Masque
Kevin Pask
Ben Jonson, presumably like many viewers and readers of The Tempest throughout the seventeenth century, found Caliban disturbing. The source of the disturbance was not, as criticism from the Romantics onwards would suggest, Caliban's colonial or racial otherness; Caliban's fault, rather, lay in his lack of verisimilitude:
If there be never 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, Tempests, 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 Puppets will please any body, they shall be entreated to come in.
"[S]ervant-monster" is the term applied to Caliban by Stephano: "servant-monster, drink to me." Caliban's unnaturalness is here in the "Induction" to Bartholomew Fair (1614) the central example of Jonson's own distinction from William Shakespeare, who represents a generalized monstrosity of improbable and crowd-pleasing theatrical practices without the warrant of verisimilitude or classical myth. As a character, Caliban seems to embody the entire domain of improbable "drolleries" Jonson associates with late Shakespearean entertainments. More than fifty years later, John Dryden remained apprehensive about the relation of Caliban to nature:
To return once more to Shakespeare; no man ever drew so many characters, or generally distinguished 'em better from one another, excepting only Johnson. I will instance but in one, to show the copiousness of his intention; it is that of Caliban, or the monster, in the Tempest. He seems there to have created a person which was not in Nature, a boldness which, at first sight, would appear intolerable; for he makes his a species of himself, begotten by an incubus on a witch; but this, as I have elsewhere proved, is not wholly beyond the bounds of credibility, at least the vulgar still believe it.
Shakespeare, moreover, has naturalized Caliban's monstrosity. He "has most judiciously furnished him with a person, a language, and a character, which will suit him, both by father's and mother's side; he has all the discontents and malice of a witch, and of a devil, besides a convenient proportion of the deadly sins." Jonson's accusation of pandering concupiscence becomes fertile copiousness, but not without some critical anxiety: Dryden's application of the verb "create" for the first time to artistic production measures what is for him a Shakespearean audacity.
If Dryden remains ambivalent about this aspect of Shakespeare's artistry, we can recognize it retrospectively as a key conceptual turning point in the transformation of Shakespeare into the central example of IMAGINATIVE GENIUS in the English language. For Joseph Addison, then, "It shews a greater Genius in Shakespear to have drawn his Calyban, than his Hotspur or Julius Caesar: The one was to be supplied out of his own Imagination, whereas the other might have been formed upon Tradition, History and Observation. Despite the very different value they assign to the creation of Caliban, Jonson and Addison share a sense of the close associations between Caliban and the distinctiveness of Shakespeare's art, whether that art is mere drollery or a work of imaginative genius. For Addison artistic creation implies imaginative control, in terms that we largely retain: the more fully fictive the character the greater the originality. Prospero's control of Caliban in the play can thus easily come to represent the controlling GENIUS of Shakespeare outside the play.
*************************************
http://www.everreader.com/Nabokov.htm
Amid grandees of times Elizabethan
you shimmered too, you followed sumptuous custom;
the circle of ruff, the silv'ry satin that
encased your thigh, the wedgelike beard - in all of this
you were like other men... Thus was enfolded
your godlike THUNDER in a succinct cape.
Haughty, aloof from theatre's alarums,
you easily, regretlessly relinquished
the laurels twinning into a dry wreath,
concealing for all time your. MONSTROUS GENIUS
beneath a mask; and yet, your phantasm's echoes
still vibrate for us; your Venetian Moor,
his anguish; Falstaff's visage, like an udder
with pasted-on mustache; the raging Lear..
You are among us, you're alive; your name, though,
your image, too - deceiving, thus, the world
you have submerged in your beloved Lethe.
(snip)
************************************
Jonson, _Timber_
See where he complains of their painting CHIMAERAS (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.
*************************************
"Thalia" from "The Teares of the Muses"
by Edmund Spenser, 1591
And he the man, whom Nature selfe had made
To MOCK her selfe, and Truth to imitate,
With kindly counter vnder Mimick shade,
Our pleasant Willy, ah is dead of late:
With whom all ioy and iolly meriment
Is also deaded, and in dolour drent.
***************************************
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.006...
Horace, Art of Poetry:
If a painter1 should wish to unite a horse's neck to a human head, and spread a variety of plumage over limbs [of different animals] taken from every part [of nature],2 so that what is a beautiful woman in the upper part terminates unsightly in an ugly fish below; could you, my friends, refrain from laughter, were you admitted to such a sight Believe, ye Pisos, the book will be perfectly like such a picture, the ideas of which, like a sick man's dreams, are all vain and fictitious: so that neither head nor foot can correspond to any one form. "Poets and painters [you will say] have ever had equal authority for attempting any thing." We are conscious of this, and this privilege we demand and allow in turn: but not to such a degree, that the tame should associate with the savage; nor that serpents should be coupled with birds, lambs with tigers.
In pompous introductions,3 and such as promise a great deal, it generally happens that one or two verses of purple patch-work, that may make a great show, are tagged on; as when the grove and the altar of Diana and the meandering of a current hastening through pleasant fields, or the river Rhine, or the rainbow is described. But here there was no room for these [fine things]: perhaps, too, you know how to draw a cypress:4 but what is that to the purpose, if he, who is painted for the given price, is [to be represented as] swimming hopeless out of a shipwreck? A large vase at first was designed: why, as the wheel revolves, turns out a little pitcher? In a word, be your subject what it will, let it be merely simple and uniform.
The great majority of us poets, father, and youths worthy such a father, are misled by the appearance of right. I labor to be concise, I become obscure: nerves and spirit fail him, that aims at the easy: one, that pretends to be sublime, proves bombastical: he who is too cautious and fearful of the storm, crawls along the ground: he who wants to vary his subject in a marvelous manner, 5 paints the dolphin in the woods, the boar in the sea. The avoiding of an error leads to a fault, if it lack skill.
A statuary about the Aemilian school shall of himself, with singular skill,6 both express the nails, and imitate in brass the flexible hair; unhappy yet in the main, because he knows not how to finish a complete piece. I would no more choose to be such a one as this, had I a mind to compose any thing, than to live with a distorted nose, [though] remarkable for black eyes and jetty hair.
Ye who write, make choice of a subject suitable to your abilities; and revolve in your thoughts a considerable time what your strength7 declines, and what it is able to support. Neither elegance of style, nor a perspicuous disposition, shall desert the man, by whom the subject matter is chosen judiciously.
This, or I am mistaken, will constitute the merit and beauty of arrangement, that the poet just now say what ought just now to be said, put off most of his thoughts, and waive them for the present.
Notes:
1 All that our poet says here may be referred, in general, to three heads, the fable, the manners, and the diction. We should take notice that this piece particularly regards epic and dramatic poetry, and that our author only occasionally mentions any other kind. The most important precept for the composition of a poem is unity and simplicity of design. There should be only one action, to which all the incidents ought to refer; and this point of perfection, every regular work requires. To show the necessity of this rule, Horace compares an irregular poem to pictures formed by a wild assortment of many parts entirely unlike each other. Every part, considered in itself, may have its proper, natural perfection, while their union produces nothing but what is monstrous and ridiculous. FRAN. The critic's rules must be taken either, 1. from the general standing laws of composition; or, 2. from the peculiar ones, appropriated to the kind. Now the direction to be fetched from the former of these sources will of course precede, as well on account of its superior dignity, as that the mind itself delights to descend from universals to the
consideration of particulars. Agreeably to this rule of nature, the poet, having to correct, in the Roman drama, these three points, 1. a misconduct in the disposition; 2. an abuse of language; and, 3. a disregard of the peculiar characters and colorings of its different species, hath chosen to do this on principles of universal nature; which, while they include the case of the drama, at the same time extend to poetic composition at large. These prefatory, universal observations being delivered, he then proceeds, with advantage, to the second source of this art, viz., the consideration of the laws and rules peculiar to the kind.
2 But Orelli more rightly treats “collatis membris” as the ablative absolute.
3 These preparatory observations, concerning the laws of poetic composition at large, have been thought to glance more particularly at the epic poetry which was not improper: for, 1. the drama which he was about to criticise, had its rise and origin from the epos. Thus we are told by the great critic, that Homer was the first who invented dramatic imitations “μόνος — ὅτι μιμήσεις δραματικὰς ἐποίησε”. 2. The several censures, here pointed at the epic, would bear still more directly against the tragic poem; it being more glaringly inconsistent with the genius of the drama to admit of foreign and digressive ornaments, than of the extended, episodical epopaeia. For both these reasons, it was altogether pertinent to the poet's purpose, in a criticism on the drama, to expose the vicious practice of the epic models. Though, to preserve the unity of his piece, and for a further reason (see note on v. 1), he hath artfully done this under the cover of general criticism.
4 Boughs of cypress were carried in funeral processions, and placed before the houses of the great, upon particular occasions of sorrow, “Et non plebeios luctus testata cupressus.” Lucan. From hence, perhaps, this tree was usually drawn in votive tablets; in pictures carried by beggars, to excite charity; and in those used by lawyers in courts of justice, to raise the compassion of the judges, by representing the distresses of their clients. A painter might, by frequent practice, excel in drawing a tree for which there was such demand; and he therefore absurdly determines to show his skill upon all occasions, even by painting it in the middle of the ocean, and making it overshadow the storm. The commentators understand this passage in a different manner.
5 The word PRODIGIALITER apparently refers to that fictitious monster, under which the poet allusively shadows out the idea of absurd and inconsistent composition. The application, however, differs in this, that, whereas the monster, there painted, was intended to expose the extravagance of putting together incongruous parts, without any reference to a whole, this prodigy is designed to characterize a whole, but deformed by the ill-judged position of its parts. The former is like a monster, whose several members as of right belonging to different animals, could by no disposition be made to constitute one consistent animal. The other, like a landscape which hath no objects absolutely irrelative, or irreducible to a whole, but which a wrong position of the parts only renders prodigious. Send the boar to the woods, and the dolphin to the waves; and the painter might show them both on the same canvas.
Each is a violation of the law of unity, and a real monster: the one, because it contains an assemblage of natural incoherent parts; the other, because its parts, though in themselves coherent, are misplaced and disjointed.
**************************************
prodigialiter
ADV
amazingly| wonderfully
**************************************
Monsters are for chumps:
Soul of the age!
The applause ! delight ! the WONDER of our stage! My SHAKSPEARE rise !
Jonson praises Shakespeare as the applause and wonder of the stage, and yet he placed at the very front of his Works (1616) a 'defiant' motto of Horace:
"Neque, me ut miretur turba, laboro: / Contentus paucis
lectoribus" - " I do not expend my efforts so that the multitude may
wonder at me: I am contented with a few readers"
*****************************
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.
**************************************
Jonson, _Timber_
(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*.
**************************************
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, Tempests, 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 Puppets will please any body, they shall be entreated to come in.
***************************************
Jonson, _The Alchemist_
TO THE READER.
If thou beest more, thou art an understander, and then I trust thee. If thou art one that takest up, and but a pretender, beware of what hands thou receivest thy commodity; for thou wert never more fair in the way to be cozened, than in this Age, in poetry, especially in plays: wherein, *now the CONCUPISCENCE of DANCES and of antics so reigneth, as to RUN AWAY from NATURE, and be afraid of her, is the only point of art that tickles the spectators*. But how out of purpose, and place, do I name art? When the professors are grown so obstinate contemners of it, and presumers on their own naturals, as they are deriders of all diligence that way, and, by simple mocking at the terms, when they understand not the things, think to get off wittily with their IGNORANCE. Nay, they are esteemed the more learned, and sufficient for this, by the many, through their excellent vice of judgment. For they commend writers, as they do fencers or wrestlers; who if they come in robustuously, and put for it with a great deal of violence, are received for the braver fellows: when many times their own rudeness is the cause of their disgrace, and a little touch of their adversary gives all that boisterous force the foil. I deny not, but that these men, who always seek to do more than enough, may some time happen on some thing that is good, and great; but very seldom; and when it comes it doth not recompense the rest of their ill. It sticks out, perhaps, and is more eminent, because all is sordid and VILE about it: as lights are more discerned in a thick darkness, than a faint shadow. I speak not this, out of a hope to do good to any man against his will; for I know, if it were put to the question of theirs and mine, *the worse would find more suffrages: because the most favour COMMON ERRORS*. But I give thee this warning, that there is a great difference between those, that, to gain the opinion of copy, utter all they can, however unfitly; and those that use election and a mean. For it is only the disease of the unskilful, to think rude things greater than polished; or scattered more numerous than composed.
************************************
Liking Men:
Ben Jonson's Closet Opened
Lorna Hutson
University of St. Andrews
In the prologue to the revised text of Every Man In, Jonson distinguishes the play that he presents as the "first fruits" of his dramatic career from the offerings of the more popular Shakespearean tradition, in which playwrights disregarded neoclassical poetics, happily ignoring the principle of unity of time. He declares that he has not "so loved the stage" as to follow the example of his contemporaries, who
. . . 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 long jars,
And in the tiring-house bring wounds to scars.4
The often-heard complaint of earlier humanist authors against the chronicle drama's violations of temporal probability is here given a peculiarly Jonsonian inflection in the reference to "three rusty swords" and the quick-changes of "wounds to scars" backstage. Jonson, unlike Shakespeare, persistently draws attention to the "inert materiality" and "creaking contrivances" of theater. Here, of course, the demystification of these contrivances works to invalidate any techniques of illusion except for those of linguistic currency and contemporaneity. Jonson's play, unlike those chronicle histories of Shakespeare, will seem real because it offers images of "deeds, and language, such as men do use" in contemporary life, enlivened by examples of the unmanly commission of "POPULAR ERRORS":
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.
("Prologue," 26-30)
The ERRORS to be staged in Jonson's play for the delectation of the audience, then, are aspects of those plays they have elsewhere applauded or "grac'd." These will be on display as "monsters," foils against which what is likeable about "men" will appear. The category not just of men, but of "likeable men," is thus elided with the persuasive power of a verisimilar, unified dramatic action: "You that have so grac'd monsters"-that have clapped at ill-formed plays- may now direct a more discriminating and appreciative gaze at the "natural," "manly" form of this play.
**************************************
Oxford's Monstrous Imagination:
(Harvey prints his poem Speculum Tuscanismi disclaiming it as 'a bolde Satyricall Libell lately devised at the Instauce of an old friend.' It mocks Sidney's ENEMY the Earl of Oxford (See Katherine Duncan-Jones, Sir Philip Sidney: Courtier Poet, London, 1991, pp.166-7)
'Tell me in good sooth, doth it not too evidently appeare, that this English Poet wanted but a good PATTERNE before his eyes, as it might be some delicate, and choyce elegant Poesie of good M. Sidneys, or M. Dyers (ouer very Castor, & Pollux for such and many greater matters) when this trimme geere was in hatching: Much like some Gentlewooman, I coulde name in England, who by all Phisick and Physiognomie too, might as well have brought forth all goodly faire children, as they have now some YLFAVOURED and DEFORMED, had they at the tyme of their Conception, had in sight, the amiable and gallant beautifull Pictures of ADONIS, Cupido, Ganymedes, or the like, which no doubt would have wrought such deepe impression in their fantasies, and imaginations, as their children, and perhappes their Childrens children to, myght have thanked them for, as long as they shall have Tongues in their heades."
Sidney: The
Critical Heritage
By Martin Garrett (pp.92-93)
*************************************
Jonson, Discoveries
DE VERE argutis. - I do hear them say often some men are not witty, because they are not everywhere witty; than which nothing is more foolish. If an eye or a nose be an excellent part in the face, therefore be all eye or nose! I think the eyebrow, the forehead, the cheek, chin, lip, or any part else are as necessary and natural in the place. But now nothing is good that is natural; RIGHT and NATURAL LANGUAGE seems to have least of the wit in it; that which is writhed and tortured is counted the more exquisite. Cloth of bodkin or tissue must be embroidered; as if no face were fair that were not POWDERED or PAINTED! no beauty to be had but in wresting and writhing our own tongue! Nothing is fashionable till it be DEFORMED; and this is to write like a gentleman. All must be affected and preposterous as our gallants' clothes, sweet-bags, and night-dressings, in which you would think our men lay in, like ladies, it is so curious.
*************************************
De Vere:
For what more difficult, more noble, or more magnificent task has anyone ever undertaken than our author Castiglione, who has drawn for us the FIGURE and MODEL of a courtier, a work to which nothing can be added, in which there is no redundant word, a portrait which we shall recognize as that of a highest and most perfect type of man. And so, although nature herself has made nothing perfect in every detail, yet the MANNERS OF MEN EXCEED in dignity that with which NATURE has endowed them; and he who surpasses others has here surpassed himself and has even OUT-DONE NATURE, which by no one has ever been surpassed*. Nay more: however elaborate the ceremonial, whatever the magnificence of the court, the splendor of the courtiers, and the multitude of spectators, he has been able to lay down principles for the guidance of the very Monarch himself.
**************************************
This FIGURE that thou here seest put
It was for gentle Shakespere cut,
Wherein the graver had a strife
With nature to OUT-DOO the life.
O, could he have drawn his wit
As well in brass as he hath hit
His face, 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.
*************************************
