Greville - a staunch Calvinist - implies that Oxford is all bluster and show: a creature made by fortune and chance, but 'no-thing' of worth. Like an idol, Oxford 'is coextensive with his exterior'. It is Sidney's 'inner worth' - his 'that within which passes show' that enables him to penetrate Oxford's gloriously deceptive exterior, and makes him impenetrable to the amazement and confusion that false magnificence stirs up in the minds of less fortified souls.
In other words, Sidney remains 'unastonished' by Oxford's false show.
Nicolette Zeeman, _The Idol of the Text_:
--> Idolaters foolishly worship idols despite the fact that they have made them: idols in turn, lure their worshippers in the direction of their own materiality, sometimes even rendering idolators themselves inanimate (Milton - reader turned to marble/astonement)
****************************
Behold, they are all vanity; their works are nothing: their molten
images are wind and confusion.
- Isaiah 41:29
images are wind and confusion.
- Isaiah 41:29
To review Greville's account of Sidney's Famous Act of Iconoclasm:
--> And in this freedome of heart being one day at Tennis, a Peer of this Realm, born great, greater by alliance, and superlative in the Princes favour, abruptly came into the
Sir Philip temperately answers; that if his Lordship had been pleased to express desire in milder Characters, perchance he might have led out those, that he should now find would not be driven out with any scourge of fury. This answer (like a bellows) blowing up the sparks of EXCESS already kindled, made my Lord scornfully call Sir Philip by the name of Puppy. In which progress of HEAT, as the TEMPEST grew more and more vehement within, so did their hearts breath out their perturbations in a more loud and shrill accent. The French Commissioners unfortunately had that day audience, in those private Galleries, whose windows looked into the Tennis-Court. They instantly drew all to this tumult: every sort of quarrels sorting well with their humors, especially this. Which Sir Philip perceiving, and rising with inward strength, by the prospect of a mighty faction against him; asked my Lord, with a loud voice, that which he heard clearly enough before. Who ( LIKE AN ECHO, that still multiplies by REFLEXIONS) repeated this Epithet of Puppy the second time. Sir Philip resolving in one answer to conclude both the attentive hearers, and PASSIONATE ACTOR, gave my Lord a Lie, impossible (as he averred) to be retorted; in respect all the world knows, Puppies are gotten by Dogs, and Children by men.
Source: Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary
IDOL
(1.) Heb. aven, "NOTHINGNESS;" "vanity" (Isa. 66:3; 41:29; Deut.
32:21; 1 Kings 16:13; Ps. 31:6; Jer. 8:19, etc.).
(2.) 'Elil, "a thing of naught" (Ps. 97:7; Isa. 19:3); a word
of contempt, used of the gods of Noph (Ezek. 30:13).
(3.) 'Emah, "TERROR," in allusion to the hideous form of idols
(Jer. 50:38).
(4.) Miphletzeth, "a fright;" "horror" (1 Kings 15:13; 2 Chr.
15:16).
(5.) Bosheth, "shame;" "shameful thing" (Jer. 11:13; Hos.
9:10); as characterizing the obscenity of the worship of Baal.
(6.) GILLULIM(!) , also a word of contempt, "dung;" "refuse"
(Ezek. 16:36; 20:8; Deut. 29:17, marg.).
(7.) Shikkuts, "filth;" "impurity" (Ezek. 37:23; Nah. 3:6).
(8.) Semel, "likeness;" "a carved image" (Deut. 4:16).
(9.) Tselem, "a shadow" (Dan. 3:1; 1 Sam. 6:5), as
distinguished from the "likeness," or the exact counterpart.
(10.) Temunah, "similitude" (Deut. 4:12-19). Here Moses
forbids the several forms of Gentile idolatry.
(11.) 'Atsab, "a figure;" from the root "to fashion," "to
labour;" denoting that idols are the result of man's labour
(Isa. 48:5; Ps. 139:24, "wicked way;" literally, as some
translate, "way of an IDOL").
(12.) Tsir, "a form;" "shape" (Isa. 45:16).
(13.) Matztzebah, a "statue" set up (Jer. 43:13); a memorial
stone like that erected by Jacob (Gen. 28:18; 31:45; 35:14, 20),
by Joshua (4:9), and by Samuel (1 Sam. 7:12). It is the name
given to the statues of Baal (2 Kings 3:2; 10:27).
(14.) Hammanim, "sun-images." Hamman is a synonym of Baal, the
sun-god of the Phoenicians (2 Chr. 34:4, 7; 14:3, 5; Isa. 17:8).
(15.) Maskith, "device" (Lev. 26:1; Num. 33:52). In Lev. 26:1,
the words "image of stone" (A.V.) denote "a stone or cippus with
the image of an idol, as Baal, Astarte, etc." In Ezek. 8:12,
"chambers of imagery" (maskith), are "chambers of which the
walls are painted with the figures of idols;" comp. ver. 10, 11.
(16.) Pesel, "a graven" or "carved image" (Isa. 44:10-20). It
denotes also a figure cast in metal (Deut. 7:25; 27:15; Isa.
40:19; 44:10).
(17.) Massekah, "a molten image" (Deut. 9:12; Judg. 17:3, 4).
(18.) Teraphim, pl., "images," family gods (penates)
worshipped by Abram's kindred (Josh. 24:14). Put by Michal in
David's bed (Judg. 17:5; 18:14, 17, 18, 20; 1 Sam. 19:13).
"Nothing can be more instructive and significant than this
multiplicity and variety of words designating the instruments
and inventions of idolatry."
*********************************************
--> --> Carlos M.N Eire, in _War Against the Idols_ writes:
What makes the Calvinist theories "distinctly Calvinist" is not the arguments themselves, but the reasons for the arguments, and beyond that, the reason for the theories and for the cause itself. This is the struggle against idolatry - and not just idolatry in the church, but as a social phenomenon, as something that needs to be wiped out from the body politic. If there is one concept or word that stands out as some sort of red blinking light in all the Calvinist theories from Calvin to Buchanan, it is precisely this issue of idolatry. If one accepts the religious issue as a real motivating force, as the ideological foundation of dissent, and not just some sort of tool insincerely used in a grand social and political plot, it is possible to say that the word "idolatry" and the concepts it signified became the Calvinist shibboleth in the sixteenth century. It became an inescapable password. (p.308)
In part, this is why I choose to portray Sidney's tennis-court challenge of Oxford as an act of iconoclasm. By virtue (or accident) of his birth Oxford was an influential figure, set up high on a stage in the eyes of his age. Arthur Golding, in a dedication to the Earl, reminded him of his responsibilities to the commonwealth:
-->
..I beseeche your Lordship consider how God hath placed you vpon a high stage in the eyes of all men, as a guide, patterne, insample, and leader vnto others if your vertues be vncounterfayted, if your religion be sound and pure, if your doings be according to true godliness you shalbe a stay to your cuntrie, a comforte too good men, a bridle too euil men, a ioy too your freends, a corzie too your enemies, and an increace of honor to your owne house. But if you should become eyther a counterfayt Protestant, or a peruerse Papist, or a colde and carelesse newter, (which God forbid,) the harme could not be expressed which you should do to your natiue Cuntrie. For (as Cicero, no lesse truely than wisely affirmeth, and as the sorrowfull dooings of our Present dayes do too certeinly auouch) *greate men hurt not the common weale so much by beeing euil in respect of themselues, as by drawing others vnto euil by their euil example*. (Golding, THE EPISTLE DEDICATORYCalvin's Commentaries, Vol. 8: Psalms)
Given his love of Sir Philip Sidney, it is not surprising that Greville portrays his enemy Oxford Oxford Oxford
'Tell me in good sooth, doth it not too evidently appeare, that this English Poet [Oxford] 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."
Here Harvey Oxford Oxford
****************************
PROBLEMES OF BEAVTIE and all humane affections.
Written in Italian by Tho: Buoni, cittizen of Lucca.
With a discourse of Beauty, by the same Author.
Translated into English, by S. L. Gent.
AT LONDON Printed by G. Eld, for
![[H]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tVZ1gV7TLn52EwymHD8wo4elduhyJmuFE2H73e7z0be2tcgQFabc9GB2AGpntawiRPWng-2CCpm2K4qdtZ9KEiZ_q8_HSJ-OpzGicqVy5i5pKIdYuvUwk4e48X4xa-8MeK=s0-d)
Edward Blount, and William
Aspley. 1606.VVhy is it the custome to hange Beauti|full pictures in the chambers of those women that are with childe? Probleme. 35.
PErhaps because those strang occur|rents that in former times haue fallen out, are an instruction to men in these dayes to preuent the like euents: For great women by contemplating, and gazing on serpents, and Moores in their chambers in the act of generation, haue brought forth monstrous birthes,
n some
figure, and proportion like vnto
them:
By which strange euents
men seeing
terrified,
to the ende
they may preuent
the like dangerous issues,
they hange
their Chambers
with Beautifull
images,
and pictures.
Or Perhaps because
the desire of parents
to haue
Beautifull
children
is
so great (for Beau|ty
being
powerfull
to incline the hearts
of men)
promiseth
(as it were)
a future felicitie,
that knowing
the great force of imagination and
con|ceipt
in the act of generation they are
carefull to furnish their Chambers with fayre, and Beautifull pictures: to the end that their children may come into the light in some sorte answerable to their desires. Or Perhaps because men not being content with the nobilitie of their owne bloud, and Beauty, they desire likewise the outward helpes of those princely Beauties of the most fa|mous women in all Countries, to the ende their children may likewise proue admirable in that qualitie, and they winne vnto themselues greater honor. Or Perhaps because as they vse with a thousand restoritiues to comfort the fearefull hearts of their afflicted wiues being neare their la|bour, so they are no way backeward by these present figures adorned with diuers coulours, and strang Beauties to make them comfortable.
******************************
A Disproportionate Figure:
(Unfortunately, Satan also shared the power to deform and misrepresent)
-->
The opposition of Christ and Satan in Paradise Lost is in the same was, as John Steadman has argued, the difference between image and idol, the “eikon and the eidolon of HEROIC VIRTUE.” The Son is the image of the Father’s glory; Satan, in his “Sun-bright chariot,” is the false appearance or phantasm of that image, the 'Idol of Majesty Divine”. His fallen legions, left free to wander the earth after the Fall, will inaugurate the history of idolatry in the shape of “various Idols through the Heathen World”, and their polluted rites will become the type of Catholic mis-devotion and of the political idolatry of the Stuart court. This distinction between idol and icon, which Steadman traces back through Bacon’s critique of the “idols” to Plato’s Theatetus and The Sophist, also set the terms of the debate in Italian criticism between Mazzoni and Tasso – the one maintaining that poetry is “phantastic,” a sophistical art of fallacious appearances only, the other that poetry is “eikastic,” an art of likeness and probability related to dialectic and more directly reflecting the truth it images. The topic is epitomized in
“For I will not denie, but that mans wit may make Poesie (which should be Eikastike, which some learned have defined, figuring foorth good things) to be Phantastike: which doth, contrariwise, infect the fancie with unworthy objects. As the Painter, that shoulde give to the eye eyther some excellent perspective, or some fine picture, fit for building or fortification, or containing in it some notable example as Abraham sacrificing his Sonne Isaack, Judith killing Holofernes, David fighting with Goliath, may leave those, and please an ill-pleased eye with wanton shewes of better hidden matters.
An idolatrous poetry infects the fancy and pleases the eye. An eikastic poetry illuminates the desire for “good things.” It too can appeal to the eye, but as Sidney’ notable examples suggest – all of them Old Testament histories, often represented in Protestant art, against which no charge of idolatry could be levered – its highest aim is to move the soul to virtuous action, to the sacrificing, killing, and fighting performed by the faithful in response to God’s word. (Ernest B. Gilman, (pp.162-163)
*********************************
-->
--> Greville, _Life of Sidney_
Neither am I (for my part) so much in love with this life, nor believe so little in a better to come, as to complain of God for taking him [Sidney], and such like exorbitant worthyness from us: fit (as it were by an Ostracisme) to be divided, and not incorporated with our corruptions: yet for the sincere affection I bear to my Prince, and Country, my prayer to God is, that this Worth, and Way may not fatally be buried with him; in respect, that both before his time, and since, experience hath published the usuall discipline of greatnes to have been tender of it self onely; making HONOUR a triumph, or rather TROPHY OF DESIRE, set up in the eyes of Mankind, either to be worshiped as IDOLS, or else as Rebels to perish under her glorious oppressions. *Notwithstanding, when the pride of flesh, and power of favour shall cease in these by death, or disgrace; what then hath time to register, or fame to publish in these great mens names, that will not be offensive, or infectious to others? What Pen without blotting can write the story of their deeds? Or what Herald blaze their Arms without a blemish? And as for their counsels and projects, when they come once to light, shall they not live as noysome, and loathsomely above ground, as their Authors carkasses lie in the grave? So as the return of such greatnes to the world, and themselves, can be but private reproach, publique ill example, and a fatall scorn to the Government they live in. Sir Philip Sidney is none of this number; for the greatness which he affected was built upon true Worth; esteeming Fame more than Riches, and Noble actions far above Nobility it self.
********************************
From Michael O'Connell, _The Idolatrous Eye - Iconoclasm and Theatre in Early-Modern England_,pp.116-117.
Any reader of Elizabethan texts is well aware how this anxiety about the visual is enacted in suspicion of linguistic ornament: phrases like "painted shows" or "painted eloquence," "colours of rhetoric," "fine polished words" and "filed phrases" convey an at best ambivalent, and frequently pejorative sense of the appeal to the eye. The underlying tropological sense of these phrases reflects an unease about visual art itself, suggesting an identity with the forgery of cosmetics. Distrust of the visual, while by no means universal, is a persistent strain in Humanist poetics. Ernest Gilman has described the ways in which the paragone between the "sister arts" was crossed by the Reformation rejection of images:
(Gilman) It is important to realize that "iconoclasm" is something that can happen to texts and within texts written during this period, and that the most compelling texts often betray a consciousness of the image-debate that reflects the process of their own composition. The scene of such writing is set at the crossroads where a lively tradition of image making confronts a militantly logocentric theology armed not only with an overt hostility to "images" in worship but with a deep suspicion of the idolatrous potential of the fallen mind and its fallen language.
(snip)
In comparison with the word, the image may have come to seem coercive in the response it provokes; its affective power appears to leave no gap for critical reflection, especially in the mass audience at which the electronic image is aimed. By contrast the word is frequently claimed as evocative rather than coercive, as calling forth reflection and allowing the participation of the listener's (or reader's) own subjectivities.
***************************
"Weigh the meaning and look not at the words." -- Jonson
***************************
looke/ Not on his Picture, but his Booke. -- Jonson
**************************
Nicolette Zeeman, _The Idol of the Text_
--> Despite the literalists best efforts, they could not escape the capacity for language to create verbal 'images', or speaking pictures. In the 'Idol of the Text', Nicolette Zeeman concentrates on 'a particular figure seen in the imaginative text' , believing that, 'the idol is the underside of the notion that the imaginative text is like an image.'
"For a number of later medieval writers, including Chaucer, the figure of the idol is a means of focusing on problematic aspects of imaginative textuality and its contents. The idol articulates some of the difficulties of dealing with textual inheritance, the archive, and the 'authority'. '
(snip)
What is the idol in the Middle Ages? Contrasting idols with Christian signs in the semiotics of Augustine, John Freccero describes idols as 'reified signs devoid of significance', gods 'coextensive with their representations.'. The idol refuses to be read as part of a larger sign system, drawing attention only to itself and to its own malleable materiality. In this sense, although it is highly material, it is 'NOTHING' (I Corinthians 8:4). It exists in the mutable world only for itself and to be worshipped for itself. Idolaters foolishly worship idols despite the fact that they have made them: idols in turn, lure their worshippers in the direction of their own materiality, sometimes even rendering idolators themselves inanimate (Milton - reader turned to marble/astonement) -NLD)
***************************
Greville, An Inquisition vpon Fame and Honour.
Then make the summe of our Idea's this,
Who loue the world, giue latitude to Fame,
And this Man-pleasing, Gods displeasing is,
Who loue their God, haue glory by his name:
But fixe on Truth, who can, that know it not?
*Who fixe on error, doe but write to blot*.
86.
"Who worship Fame, commit Idolatry,
"Make Men their God, Fortune and Time their worth,
"Forme, but reforme not, meer hypocrisie,
"By shadowes, onely shadowes bringing forth,
"Which must, as blossomes, fade ere true fruit springs,
"(Like voice, and eccho) ioyn'd; yet diuers things.
******************************
--> Michael O'Connell, _The Idolatrous Eye - Iconoclasm & Theater in Early-Modern England pp.119-121_
allegiance played in Jonson's creation for himself of a laureate identity against his identity as a man of the theater. Even when promoting or defending his stage works, as he does almost constantly in his prologues dedications, inductions, and epilogues, Jonson seldom appears able to allow a play simply to be a play. Most frequently he insists on them as poems, as for example in his dedication of Volpone to the two universities, or when he dedicates the failed Catiline to the Earl of Pembroke, assuring him that posterity will honor him for countenancing "a legitimate Poem" in these "jig-given times". Mockery of the physical requirements of staging, predominantly the movement and visual effects required by the audience for whom a play was not a poem but a show, also pepper the prefatory explaining he found essential to his identity, not as a playwright, but as a "dramatic poet" Jonson's insistent hope that readers would find in his plays what mere spectators had missed reached its logical end when, in mid-career, he printed them in his Works of 1616, a gesture of self-presentation as characteristic of Jonson as it was innovative for the stage. After the theatrical failure of The New Inn, he bitterly dedicated the printing of the text of the play "To the reader." If his reader-patron can but construe the sense of the words, Jonson insists, he is better off that the "hundred fastidious impertinents" who saw the play but never made it out. Erasmus' insistence of the higher truth of the verbal, printed edition of Christ finds a significant counterpart in Jonson's valuation of the printed texts of his plays against their theatrical incarnations. (snip)
Jonson's quarrel with Inigo Jones can be understood at one level as centering on the losing battle that the word waged with the multiplicity of arts appealing to the eye in the court masque. Intensified by this quarrel, Jonson's cross-grained dislike of the theatrical seems to have increased rather than decreased in the latter part of his writing for the stage. If the Puritans would have worshippers avoid the idolatry of the visual to attend wholly to the word of Scripture, Jonson wished them to evade the seduction of spectacle to attend to his words. The prologue to The Staple of News not only distinguishes between the poet nad those who perform his words on stage, but seems indeed to yearn for a blind audience:
For your own sakes, not his, he bade me say
Would you were come to hear, not see a play.
Though we his actors must provide for those
Who are our guests here in the way of shows,
The maker hath not so. He'd have you wise
Much rather by your ears than by your EYES.
This comes but as an extreme version of what Jonson in one way or another seems always to have wanted: near exclusive attention to the verbal element of the mixed art that theater is . In the play this is tied to the falsity that the display of costume represents..
********************************************
Sweet Swan of
To SEE thee in our waters yet appear,
*******************************************
From a Poetics of Idolatry, Kenneth Gross_Spenserian Poetics_,
· The description of the idol as "no-thing" depends on the Hebrew use of the word 'elil, "nonentity," "worthlessness," to refer to idolatrous images. The word appears among other places in Leviticus 19.4, Psalms 96.5, Isaiah 2.8, 18, 20 and Ezekiel 30.13. Its perjorative sense is often reinforced in these texts by its ironic proximity to the words 'el or 'elohim, generic titles for the Hebrew god. On the variety of Hebrew epithets for "idol" or "GRAVEN image," see George Buttrick et al., Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, 2:673-74.
**********************
Greville, A Letter to an Honourable Lady
For the evill is malitious, and yet subiect, changing, because imperfection cannot stand alone; amorous, for that euery thing seemes louely, compared with the deformitie of euill it selfe. But it may please you to remember, that Inconstancy hath so strong a wall of craft about it, as it is hard by sophistication of WIT; to master the experience of euill: it being old borne with vs, and acquainted with euery corner, accesse and recesse of our mindes. Besides, it comes not into the nature of man with cleare, and open euidence, as true theirs doe; but as Vsurpers, whose vnderminings are hardly to bee seene, while they may be preuented; and when they are seene, beyond care, or contention.
For the being of e uill being nothing, but onely a depriuing of the good, and the captiuing of our free-will-lights to the workes of darknesse; it must needs come to passe, that when her conquering venimes are once distilled through all our powers, and wee won with our selues, that there can bee no thought within vs to heare, or entreat; and without vs, *though Authority may cut off the infection of ill Example from others*, yet can it no more take away the Diuels part in vs, than call vp the dead. Out of which I conclude: whatsoeuer cannot be mended (without Authority) cannot be RULED.
*************************************
| Author: Adams, Thomas, fl. 1612-1653. |
| Title: The temple Date: 1624 |
...To conclude, if it were as easie to convince Idolaters, as it is to confound and tread downe their Idols, this labour of Confutation had bin well spared, or were soone ended. But if nothing can reclaime them from this superstitious practice, let them reade their fearefull sentence. Their place shall be without, among the dogs, and those desperate sinners uncapable of forgiveness. The strong, the Idol which they made their strength, shall bee as TOWE, and the maker or wroshipper thereof as a sparke, and they shall both burne together in everlasting fire, and none shal quench them. Now the Lord open their eyes to see and sanctifie their hearts to yeeld, that there is no agreement betwixt the Temple of God and Idols: which is the next point, whereof I shall speake with what brevitie I can, and with what fidelitie I ought.
(snip)
Thus we have looked abroad, but now have we no Idols at home? O how happy was it, if they were as farre from the Temple, as they are from agreement with the Temple? I will not abound in this discovery: there be three maine Idols among us: Vaine Pleasure, vaine Honor, and Riches: and it is more to be feared, that these three vanities have more clients then the Trinit that made us. The first is an Idol of the water, the next an Idol of the ayre, the last an Idol of the earth.
1. Vaine Pleasure; and oh what a world of foolish worshippers flocke to this merry Goddesse! She hath a Temple in every corner: Ebrietie fits in Tavernes, burning smoky Incense, and sacrificing drink-offrings to her. So that if a man should prophesie of wine and strong drinke, he were a Prophet fit for THIS AGE: but to preach sobrietie, is held but a dry doctrine. ~We commend wine for the excellency of it: but if it could speak as it can take away speech, it would complaine, that by our abuse, both the excellencies are lost: for the excellent man doth spoile the excellent wine, untill the excellent wine hath spoined the excellent man. O that a man should take pleasure in that which makes him no man: that he should let a thiefe in at his mouth, to steale away his wit: that for a little throat-indulgence, he should kill in himself both the first ~Adam, his reason; but even the second "Adam his regeneration, and so commit two murders at once! In every Brothell this Idol hath her temple: where the bed of uncleanness is the Altar, the Priest a strumpet, and the sacrifice, a burning flesh offered to Moloch. It is no rare thing for a man to make an Idol of his Mistres, and to spend more time in her courtings, then he doth at his prayers; more cost on her body, then upon his own soule. Images were but dead Idols, but painted Popinjayes be living Idols Pleasure hath a larger extent, then I can now stand to survey: this may be callled an Idol of the Water, fluid and unsatisfying.
2. Vaine Honour is the Idol of fooles: no wise man ever sought felicity in shadows. His Temple is Pride, his Altar Ambition, his Service Flattery, his Sacrifice Petulancy. ~Silly Sennacherib, to make an Idol of a Chariot: and no wiser Prince of Tyre, to make an Idol of his own brain! Men mistake the way to bee great, while they neglect the way to be good. All the while a man hunts after his shadow, he miss-spends his time and paines: for the Sun is upon his back, behind him, and his shadow is still un-overtaken before him: but let him turne his face to the Sun, and follow that, his shadow shall follow him. IN vaine doth that man pursue honor, his shadow, while he turnes his face from vertue and goodnes; he shall misse what hee so labors to catch: but let him set his face toward Christ, the Sun of righteousnes, and run to the high prize of eternitie, this shadow shall wayt upon him; for those that honour me, I will honour, saith the Lord.
***********************************
TO THE MOST NOBLE AND INCOMPARABLE PAIRE OF BRETHREN
WILLIAM Earle of Pembroke, &c;. Lord Chamberlaine to the Kings most Excellent Majesty.
AND
PHILIP Earle of Montgomery,&c;. Gentleman of his Majesties
...For, so much were your L.L. likings of the severall parts, when they were acted, as before they were published, the Volume ask'd to be yours. We have but collected them, and done an office to the dead, to procure his Orphanes, Guardians; without ambition either of selfe-profit, or fame: onely to keepe the memory of so worthy a Friend, & Fellow alive, as was our S H A K E S P E A R E , by humble offer of his playes, to your most noble patronage. Wherein, as we have justly observed, no man to come neere your L.L. but with a kind of religious addresse; it hath bin the height of our care, who are the Presenters, to make the present worthy of your H.H. by the perfection.
But, there we must also crave our abilities to be considerd, my Lords. We cannot go beyond our owne powers. Country hands reach foorth milke, creame, fruites, or what they have : and many Nations (we have heard) that had not gummes & incense, obtained their requests with a leavened Cake. It was no fault to approach their Gods, by what meanes they could: And the most, though meanest, of things are made more precious, when they are dedicated to Temples. In that name therefore, we most humbly consecrate to your H.H. these remaines of your servant Shakespeare; that what delight is in them, may be ever your L.L. the reputation his, & the faults ours, if any be committed, by a payre so carefull to shew their gratitude both to the living, and the dead, as is.
Your Lordshippes most bounden,
JOHN HEMINGE.
HENRY CONDELL.
***********************************
George Herbert - Author of The Temple:
Religion Westward Bent
Religion stands on tip-toe in our land,
Readie to passe to the American strand.
When height of malice, and prodigious lusts,
Impudent sinning, witchcrafts, and distrusts
(The marks of future bane) shall fill our cup
Unto the brimme, and make our measure up;
When Sein shall swallow Tiber, and the Thames
By letting in them both pollutes her streams:
When Italie of us shall have her will,
And all her calender of sinnes fulfill;
Whereby one may foretell, what sinnes next yeare
Shall both in France and England domineer:
Then shall Religion to America flee:
They have their times of Gospel, ev'n as we...
