Those Who Forme, but Reforme Not

What is fascinating about Greville's characterization of the Earl of Oxford [Life of Sidney] is how he depicts Oxford's 'worthlessness' - his lack of substance. Oxford's 'shadows, echoes, passions, swellings, windiness' are contrasted with Sidney's substance - his 'worth' and his 'understanding heart.'

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)

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Behold, they are all vanity; their works are nothing: their molten
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 Tennis- Court; and speaking out of these three paramount authorities, he forgot to entreat that, which he could not legally command. When by the encounter of a steady object, finding unrespectiveness in himself (though a great Lord) not respected by this Princely spirit, he grew to expostulate more ROUGHLY. The returns of which stile comming still from an understanding heart, that knew what was due to it self, and what it ought to others, seemed (through the MISTS of my Lords PASSIONS, SWOLN with the WINDE of his FACTION then reigning) to provoke in yeelding. Whereby, the lesse AMAZEMENT, or CONFUSION of thoughts he stirred up in Sir Philip, the more SHADOWES this great Lords own mind was POSSESSED with: till at last with RAGE (which is ever ILL-DISCIPLINED) he commands them to depart the Court. To this

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."

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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 as an empty worthless blusterer. The idea of Oxford as an ill pattern and bad example had also been suggested by another friend of Sidney's, Gabriel Harvey. In _Speculum Tuscanismi_ Harvey satirizes not only Oxford's person, but his poetry:

'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 suggests that unlike the poetry of Sidney and Dyer, Oxford's poetry has the power to impress and shape his audience's 'fantasies and imaginations' with the example of his ill-favored and deformed images. Ernest B. Gilman describes 'idolatrous poetry' as a poetry that 'infects the fancy and pleases the eye'. Fulke Greville chastised those who 'form, but reform not.' And my whole argument is that it is this perceived 'power to DEform' that Oxford shares with fanciful and spectacular Shakespeare.

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(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 Sidney’s Apologie, where it is illustrated by analogy with the sister art of painting:

“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)

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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.

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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.

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"Weigh the meaning and look not at the words." -- Jonson

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looke/ Not on his Picture, but his Booke. -- Jonson

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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)

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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.

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Michael O'Connell, _The Idolatrous Eye - Iconoclasm & Theater in Early-Modern England pp.119-121_

For both Jonson and Shakespeare the issue of theatrical identity is crucial, and both enjoin the issue of eye and ear in the self-reflexive moments when their plays project an awareness of their own artificiality. Jonson is ever the more agonistic in his assertion of the nature and ends of theater - and at the same time paradoxically the more inclined to quarrel with the demands themselves of creating theatrical spectacle. Jonas Barish has described Jonson's always ambivalent, frequently hostile relationship to the stage for which he wrote, characterizing it, without exaggeration, as a "deeply rooted antitheatricalism." Something of Jonson's hostility came of his contentious temperament and the quarrels that were somehow necessary to the kind of artist he was and the kind of theater he wished to create. But that hostility was founded intellectually on his primary allegiance to humanist culture. Richard Helgerson has shown how large a part this
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..

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Sweet Swan of Avon ! what a SIGHT it were
To SEE thee in our waters yet appear,

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From a Poetics of Idolatry, Kenneth Gross_Spenserian Poetics_,

The idol may be the emphatic lie taken for truth, but it is also the truth that has collapsed into a lie, the urgent, mythopoeic cipher converted into a vacant myth. The idol may be the originally secular or profane image invested with an almost sacred trust. It can also be the sacred, hierophantic image reduced to mechanism, a mystery become a temporal institution subject to the rule of a selfish priesthood. "Idolatry" thus implies the blockage or betrayal of vision, and yet it may also be the name by which a troubled orthodoxy slanders the visionary work of the poet, magician, or prophet. Nor is that name the worst banner under which such laborers might enlist, not only because one person's idolatry is another's orthodoxy, but because it is as often the scholiasts of illusion as the purveyors of revelation who have the most to teach us about human religion and human imagination. WH. Auden advises: "recognizing idols for what they are does not break their enchantment." And yet to embrace, even in ambivalence, a conscious idolatry may help put off the blindness of a greater one. (pp. 27-28)

· 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.

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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.

By Shadowes, onely Shadowes Bringing Forth

Vain imaginings unauthorized by God. Oxford's 'crime'? Eikastike vs. phantastike representations - the argument initiated against Oxford by Sir Philip Sidney:

"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 unWOORTHie objects..." (Sidney, _Defence of Poesy_)

Pride. Superbia - Satan's sin. Self-love. Putting his own hollow, godless images before the people and snaring them with his enchantments. Selling dross - shadows, dreams and smoke - unwoorthie objects.

(Vain imaginings unauthorized by Stratford. How do I know that I'm not embracing a cloud? )

Caelica, if I obey not, but dispute,
Thinke it is darkenesse; which seeks out a light,
And to presumption do not it impute,
If I forsake this way of Infinite;
Books be of men, men but in clouds doe see,
Of whose embracements Centaures gotten be. (Greville)


Sweet Swan of Avon! (grappling with an evasive cygnified)



"No cloud of Fancie, no mysterious stroke,
No Verse like those which antient Sybils spoke;
No Oracle of Language, to *AMAZE*
The Reader with a dark, or Midnight Phrase," (Jasper Mayne)



No more amazement! In my tempest-tossed imagination I turn to a shadowy figure and point:

YOU! Fulke Greville! Come forth!

(You, who never affected Fame, but instead chose where and how to bestow it.)


"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*.

"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." (Greville)



Form but reform not? Bringing forth shadows and deformity? Meer hypocrisie -

Hypocrisy \Hy*poc"ri*sy\ (h[i^]*p[o^]k"r[i^]*s[y^]), n.; pl.
  Hypocrisies (-s[i^]z). [OE. hypocrisie, ypocrisie, OF.
  hypocrisie, ypocrisie, F. hypocrisie, L. hypocrisis, fr. Gr.
  "ypo`krisis the playing a part on the stage, simulation,
  outward show, fr. "ypokr`nesqai to answer on the stage, to
  play a part; "ypo` under + kri`nein to decide; in the middle
  voice, to dispute, contend. See Hypo-, and Critic.]
  The act or practice of a hypocrite; a feigning to be what one
  is not, or to feel what one does not feel; a dissimulation,
  or a concealment of one's real character, disposition, or
  motives; especially, the assuming of false appearance of
  virtue or religion; a simulation of goodness.

Your godly Sidney enjoys True Fame - but what of his Adversary? In your 'Life of Sidney' you set Oxford upon a stage - lifting his mask of nobility you reveal him to be a tyrant. A tyrant encountering his David.

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.

(By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown)


Achates! Tell the story of the aBASEment of that Idol - that unwoorthie object, the Earl of Oxford. Fulke Greville! Servant of Queen Elizabeth, Councillor to King James, Friend to Sir Philip Sidney.

Recorder of Stratford. Master of Shakespeare.



1 John 2:16
For all that is in the WORLD, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the PRIDE of life, is not of the Father, but is of the WORLD.


"And in this freedome of heart [Sidney] 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 Tennis-Court; and speaking out of these three paramount authorities, he forgot to entreat that, which he could not legally command. When by the encounter of a steady object, finding unrespectiveness in himself (though a great Lord) not respected by this PRINCELY SPIRIT, he grew to expostulate more ROUGHLY. The returns of which stile comming still from an understanding heart, that knew what was due to it self, and what it ought to others, seemed (through the MISTS of my Lords PASSIONS, SWOLN with the WINDE of his FACTION then reigning) to provoke in yeelding. Whereby, the LESSE AMAZEMENT, or CONFUSION of thoughts he STIRRED up in Sir Philip, the more SHADOWES this great Lords own MIND was POSSESSED with: till at last with RAGE (which is ever ILL-DISCIPLINED) he commands them to depart the Court...

Hereupon those GLORIOUS INEQUALITIES of FORTUNE in his Lordship were put to a kinde of pause, by a PRECIOUS INEQUALITY of NATURE in this Gentleman." (Greville, Life of Sidney)


"...if the MATTER be in NATURE VILE, /How can it be made PRECIOUS
by a stile" – Greville

****************************


Exploring the vocabulary of Oxford’s enemies:


Vile \Vile\, a. [Comp. Viler; superl. Vilest.] [OE. vil, F.
vil, from L. vilis cheap, WORTHLESS, vile, BASE.]
1. Low; base; worthless; mean; despicable.

A poor man in vile raiment. --James ii. 2.

The craft either of fishing, which was Peter's, or
of making tents, which was Paul's, were [was] more
vile than the science of physic. --Ridley.

The inhabitants account gold but as a vile thing.
--Abp. Abbot.

2. Morally base or impure; depraved by sin; hateful; in the
sight of God and men; sinful; wicked; bad. ``Such vile
base practices.'' --Shak.

Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee ? --Job
xl. 4.


Ignoble \Ig*no"ble\, a. [L. ignobilis; pref. in- not + nobilis
noble: cf. F. ignoble. See In- not, and Noble, a.]
1. Of low birth or family; not noble; not illustrious;
plebeian; common; humble.

I was not ignoble of descent. --Shak.

Her royal stock graft with ignoble plants. --Shak.

2. Not honorable, elevated, or generous; base.

'T but a base, ignoble mind, That mounts no higher
than a bird can soar. --Shak.

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife. --Gray.

3. (Zo["o]l.) Not a true or noble falcon; -- said of certain
hawks, as the goshawk.

Syn: Degenerate; degraded; mean; base; dishonorable;
reproachful; disgraceful; shameful; scandalous;
infamous.


Infamous \In"fa*mous\, a. [Pref. in- not + famous: cf. L.
infamis. See Infamy.]
1. Of very bad report; having a reputation of the worst kind;
held in abhorrence; guilty of something that exposes to
infamy; base; notoriously vile; detestable; as, an
infamous traitor; an infamous perjurer.

False errant knight, infamous, and forsworn.
--Spenser.

2. Causing or producing infamy; deserving detestation;
scandalous to the last degree; as, an infamous act;
infamous vices; infamous corruption. --Macaulay.

3. (Law) Branded with infamy by conviction of a crime; as, at
common law, an infamous person can not be a witness.

4. Having a bad name as being the place where an odious crime
was committed, or as being associated with something
detestable; hence, unlucky; perilous; dangerous.
``Infamous woods.'' --P. Fletcher.

Infamous hills, and sandy perilous wilds. --Milton.

The piny shade More infamous by cursed Lycaon made.
--Dryden.

Syn: Detestable; odious; scandalous; disgraceful; base; vile;
shameful; ignominious.



CXI

1. O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
2. The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
3. That did not better for my life provide
4. Than public means which public manners breeds.
5. Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
6. And almost thence my nature is subdued
7. To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:
8. Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed;
9. Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
10. Potions of eisel 'gainst my strong infection;
11. No bitterness that I will bitter think,
12. Nor double penance, to correct correction.
13. Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye,
14. Even that your pity is enough to cure me.


CXII

1. Your love and pity doth the impression fill,
2. Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow;
3. For what care I who calls me well or ill,
4. So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?
5. You are my all-the-world, and I must strive
6. To know my shames and praises from your tongue;
7. None else to me, nor I to none alive,
8. That my steeled sense or changes right or wrong.
9. In so profound abysm I throw all care
10. Of others' voices, that my adder's sense
11. To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
12. Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
13. You are so strongly in my purpose bred,
14. That all the world besides methinks y'are dead.

CXXI

1. 'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,
2. When not to be receives reproach of being;
3. And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed
4. Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing:
5. For why should others' false adulterate eyes
6. Give salutation to my sportive blood?
7. Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
8. Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
9. No, I am that I am, and they that level
10. At my abuses reckon up their own:
11. I may be straight though they themselves be bevel;
12. By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown;
13. Unless this general evil they maintain,
14. All men are bad and in their badness reign.

Oxford's Image and Eikonoklastes

Before he attacked the image of the king, Milton participated in the defacement of the Earl of Oxford.


***************************


I sing the starry axis and the singing hosts in the sky, *and of the
gods suddenly destroyed in their own SHRINES*. -- Milton, 1629

**************************
Shrine \Shrine\, v. t.
To enshrine; to place reverently, as in a shrine. ``Shrined
in his sanctuary.'' --Milton.

Shrine \Shrine\ (shr[imac]n), n. [OE. schrin, AS. scr[=i]n, from
L. scrinium a case, chest, box.]
1. A case, box, or receptacle, especially one in which are
deposited sacred relics, as the bones of a saint.

2. Any sacred place, as an altar, tomb, or the like.

Too weak the sacred shrine guard. --Byron.

3. A place or object hallowed from its history or
associations; as, a shrine of art.

****************************************

Milton
On Shakespeare. 1630

WHat needs my Shakespear for his HONOUR'D BONES,
The labour of an age in piled Stones,
Or that his HALLOW'D RELIQUES should be hid
Under a Star-ypointing PYRAMID?
Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame, [ 5 ]
What need'st thou such weak witnes of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thy self a live-long Monument.
For whilst to th' shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart [ 10 ]
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu'd Book,
Those DELPHICK lines with deep impression took,
Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving,
Dost make us MARBLE with too much conceaving;
And so Sepulcher'd in such POMP dost lie, [ 15 ]
That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die.

**************************************
APOLLO from his SHRINE/ Can no more divine,/
With hollow shreik the steep of DELPHOS leaving. - Milton

********************************

King's Book/King's Shrine

Shakespeare's Book/Oxford's Shrine

********************************

Milton, Eikonoklastes

...And here may be well observed the loose and negligent
curiosity of those, who took upon them to adorn the setting out of
this book; for though the picture set in front would martyr him and
saint him to befool the people, yet the Latin motto in the end, which
they understand not, leaves him, as it were, a politic contriver to
bring about that interest, by fair and plausible words, which the
force of arms denied him. But quaint emblems and devices, begged from
the old pageantry of some twelfthnight's entertainment at Whitehall,
will do but ill to make a saint or martyr: and if the people resolve
to take him sainted at the canonizing, I shall suspect their calendar
more than the Gregorian. In one thing I must commend the openness, who
gave the title to the is book, Eikon Basilike, that is to say, the
King's Image; and by the SHRINE he dresses out for him, certainly
would have the people come and worship him. For which reason this
answer is entitled, Eikonoklastes, the famous surname of many Greek
emperors, who, in their zeal to the command of God, after long
tradition of idolatry in the church, took courage and broke all
superstitious images to pieces.

********************************

Performing early modern trauma from Shakespeare to Milton
By Thomas Page Anderson

In the "Preface" to Eikonoklastes, Milton establishes his strategy to
disarm the book in a disingenuous offer of praise. He "commends" the
King's "op'ness" in giving the title of The King's Image to the book.
And he complements as well the appearance of the project: "by the
SHRINE he dresses out for him, certainly would have the people come
and worship him" (EK, p.68). Milton's reference to the shrine echoes
Protestant writings that worked to debunk notions of the sacred altar
central to the Catholic sacraments. By acknowledging the altar-like
status of the text, Milton associates the book's appeal to its
putative efficacy. However, he qualifies the king's SHRINE by
suggesting that its altar-like status is the product of effective
staging or "dress[ing] out."

******************************
DisMantle/DiVest

Lye there my Art.

*****************************

For whilst to th' shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart [ 10 ]
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu'd Book,
Those DELPHICK lines with DEEP IMPRESSION took, --Milton

Engrave \En*grave"\, v. t. [Pref. en- + grave a tomb. Cf.
Engrave to carve.]
To deposit in the grave; to bury. [Obs.] ``Their corses to
engrave.'' --Spenser.

Engrave \En*grave"\, v. t. [imp. Engraved; p. p. Engraved or
Engraven; p. pr. & vb. n. Engraving.] [Pref. en- + grave
to carve: cf. OF. engraver.]
1. To cut in; to make by incision. [Obs.]

Full many wounds in his corrupted flesh He did
engrave. --Spenser.

2. To cut with a graving instrument in order to form an
inscription or pictorial representation; to carve figures;
to mark with incisions.

Like . . . . a signet thou engrave the two stones
with the names of the children of Israel. --Ex.
xxviii. 11.

3. To form or represent by means of incisions upon wood,
stone, metal, or the like; as, to engrave an inscription.

4. To impress deeply; to infix, as if with a graver.

Engrave principles in men's minds. --Locke.

*******************************

Grave \Grave\, v. t. [imp. Graved (gr[=a]vd); p. p. Graven
(gr[=a]v"'n) or Graved; p. pr. & vb. n. Graving.] [AS.
grafan to dig, grave, engrave; akin to OFries. greva, D.
graven, G. graben, OHG. & Goth. graban, Dan. grabe, Sw.
gr[aum]fva, Icel. grafa, but prob. not to Gr. gra`fein to
write, E. graphic. Cf. Grave, n., Grove, n.]
1. To dig. [Obs.] Chaucer.

He hath graven and digged up a pit. --Ps. vii. 16
(Book of
Common
Prayer).

2. To carve or cut, as letters or figures, on some hard
substance; to engrave.

Thou shalt take two onyx stones, and grave on them
the names of the children of Israel. --Ex. xxviii.
9.

3. To carve out or give shape to, by cutting with a chisel;
to sculpture; as, to grave an image.

With gold men may the hearte grave. --Chaucer.

4. To impress deeply (on the mind); to fix indelibly.

O! may they graven in thy heart remain. --Prior.

5. To entomb; to bury. [Obs.] --Chaucer.

Lie full low, graved in the hollow ground. --Shak.

Graven \Grav"en\, p. p. of Grave, v. t.
Carved.

Graven image, an idol; an object of worship carved from
wood, stone, etc. ``Thou shalt not make unto thee any
graven image.'' --Ex. xx. 4.

***************************
Look not on his Image, but his Book/
This side idolatry:

Graven Figure/Brazen Idol:

To the Reader.
This FIGURE, that thou here seest put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare CUT,
Wherein the GRAVER had a strife
with Nature, to out-doo the life :
O, could he but have drawne his wit
As well in brasse, as he hath hit
His face ; the Print would then surpasse
All, that was ever writ in BRASSE.
But, since he cannot, Reader, looke
Not on his PICTURE, but his BOOKE.

**************************

Him thus intent Ithuriel with his spear Touch'd lightly; for no *falsehood* can endure Touch of celestial temper.--Milton, P.L.

Pride, Pomp and Sorcery

Before Milton smashed the King's Image in his 'Eikonoklastes' - he played an important part in the defacement of the Earl of Oxford. In his 1630 poem 'on Shakespeare', Milton attacks Shakespeare's 'idolatrous' representational practices under cover of praise.

(Later Milton would accuse 'William Shakespeare' of being the King's closet companion during the period of his incarceration - in essence, the King's advisor as he composed his 'idolatrous' book - the Eikon Basilike.)

Godlike shapes and forms
376: Excelling human, Princely Dignities,
377: And Powers that earst in Heaven sat on Thrones;
378: *Though of their Names in heav'nly Records now
379: Be no memorial, blotted out and ras'd
380: By thir Rebellion, from the Books of Life.*

Oxford was deliberately 'blotted and rased' from the rolls of fame/Book of life by a 'conspiracy of Virtue'.

Milton -- I sing the starry axis and the singing hosts in the sky, *and of the gods suddenly destroyed in their own shrines*.

Oxford ‘destroyed’ in his own shrine:

Milton
On Shakespeare. 1630

WHat needs my Shakespear for his honour'd Bones,
The labour of an age in piled Stones,
Or that his HALLOW'D RELIQUES should be hid
Under a Star-ypointing PYRAMID?
Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame,
What need'st thou such weak witnes of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thy self a live-long Monument.
For whilst to th' shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu'd Book,
Those DELPHICK lines with deep impression took,
Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving,
Dost make us MARBLE with too much conceaving;
And so Sepulcher'd in such POMP dost lie,
THAT KINGS for such a Tomb WOULD WISH TO DIE.

****************************

APOLLO from his SHRINE/ Can no more divine,/
With hollow shreik the steep of DELPHOS leaving. - Milton

**************************************


John Milton's "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" (1629)

...The Babe lies yet in smiling Infancy,
That on the bitter cross
Must redeem our loss;
So both himself and us to glorifie:
Yet first to those ychain'd in sleep, [ 155 ]
The wakefull trump of doom must thunder through the deep,

XVII

With such a horrid clang
As on mount Sinai rang
While the red fire, and smouldring clouds out brake:
The aged Earth agast [ 160 ]
With terrour of that blast,
Shall from the surface to the center shake,
When at the worlds last session,
The dreadfull Judge in middle Air shall spread his throne.

XVIII

And then at last our bliss [ 165 ]
Full and perfect is,
But now begins; for from this happy day
Th' old Dragon under ground,
In *straiter limits bound*,
Not half so far casts his usurped sway, [ 170 ]
And wrath to see his Kingdom fail,
Swindges the scaly Horrour of his foulded tail.

XIX,

The Oracles are dumm,
No voice or hideous humm
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. [ 175 ]
APOLLO from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shreik the steep of DELPHOS leaving.
No nightly trance, or breathed spell,
Inspire's the pale-ey'd Priest from the prophetic cell. [ 180 ]

**************************************
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/nativity/notes.shtml#intro

Introduction. John Milton's "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" is significant for its merit alone, though this remarkable poem is also important in the context of the artist's career. His first major work in English, the nativity ode reflects "his desire to attempt the highest subjects and to take on the role of bardic Poet-Priest" (Barbara Lewalski, Life of John Milton 38). Milton himself declares such ambition in a letter to his friend Charles Diodati: "I sing to the peace-bringing God descended from heaven, and the blessed generations covenanted in the sacred books,… I sing the starry axis and the singing hosts in the sky, *and of the gods suddenly destroyed in their own shrines*." ("Elegia sexta"). Milton's lofty tone suits he elevation of his artistry, as the nativity ode is the "first realization" of Milton's high poetic aspirations (Lewalski 37).

Stella Revard writes that the poem "marks Milton's coming of age as a Christian English writer" (Milton and the Tangles of Neaera's Hair: The Making of the 1645 Poems 64). Milton's header, "Compos'd 1629,"dates the poem as written in Milton's twenty-first year, leading A.S.P. Woodhouse to call the Ode a coming-of-age poem (Variorum Commentary 41). This is perhaps what Milton intended: the poem appears first in his 1645 Poems, after a frontispiece engraving of himself supposedly at twenty-one. Moreover, as Barbara Lewalski explains, the poem "displays elements that remain constants in Milton's poetry: allusiveness, revisionism, mixture of genres, stunning originality, cosmic scope, prophetic voice" (Lewalski 46). According to Stanley Fish, Milton's works all voice the same concerns (Fish 3). It makes sense, then, that Milton's first major work speaks to his life-long preoccupations.
*************************************
Milton
On Shakespeare. 1630

WHat needs my Shakespear for his honour'd Bones,
The labour of an age in piled Stones,
Or that his HALLOW'D RELIQUES should be hid
Under a Star-ypointing PYRAMID?
Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame, [ 5 ]
What need'st thou such weak witnes of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thy self a live-long Monument.
For whilst to th' shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart [ 10 ]
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu'd Book,
Those DELPHICK lines with deep impression took,
Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving,
Dost make us MARBLE with too much conceaving;
And so Sepulcher'd in such POMP dost lie, [ 15 ]
That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die

**************************************
Salvation History, Poetic Form, and the Logic of Time in Milton's
Nativity Ode

M.J. Doherty

...It helps that Milton's Muse, like the prophet of Isaiah, chaptervi, joins and "Angel Choir,/ From out his secret Altar toucht with hallow'd fire" (27-28). The same kind of poetic parallelism to the liturgical readings of Epiphany shows up in the themes of the coming of the Incarnate Son as the Light and the singing of the New Song who casts out idols. The Lord is everlasting light (Luke iii), the light to the Gentiles (Isa. xlix) that comes at the acceptable time on the day of salvation, the light which, by leading of the star, subordinates all kings and all nations to itself...

...Milton demonstrates the coming of the light by describing the evacuation of darkness, the emptying out of the places of the gods in the earth, from the inmost places of material substance - "And the chill Marble seems to sweat,/ While each peculiar power forgoes his wonted seat" (195-196) - to the outermost boundary of the "mooned Ashtaroth" (220) From the arches roof of the heavens and the shrine of Apollo at Delphos to the humblest evacuated urn, Christ's light penetrates space, completely expunging darkness. As Milton describes the pagan places of EGYPT, the power of hell is contracted into one spot, Memphis, in Osiris's complete perversion of religion: but in his "sacred chest" Osiris can no longer be at rest because the holy infant reigns.

***********************************
thence on the Snowy top
535: Thir highest Heav'n; or on the DELPHIAN Cliff,

John Milton, Paradise Lost

373: Forthwith from every Squadron and each Band
374: The Heads and Leaders thither hast where stood
375: Their great Commander; Godlike shapes and forms
376: Excelling human, Princely Dignities,
377: And Powers that earst in Heaven sat on Thrones;
378: *Though of their Names in heav'nly Records now
379: Be no memorial, blotted out and ras'd
380: By thir Rebellion, from the Books of Life.* [Oxford's
'idolatrous' representational practices]
381: Nor had they yet among the Sons of EVE
382: Got them new Names, till wandring ore the Earth,
383: Through Gods high sufferance for the tryal of man,
384: By falsities and lyes the greatest part
385: Of Mankind they corrupted to forsake
386: God their Creator, and th' invisible
387: Glory of him, that made them, to transform
388: Oft to the Image of a Brute, adorn'd
389: With gay Religions full of POMP and Gold,
390: And Devils to adore for Deities:
391: Then were they known to men by various Names,
392: And various Idols through the Heathen World.
393: Say, Muse, their Names then known, who first, who
394: last,
395: Rous'd from the slumber, on that fiery Couch,
396: At thir great Emperors call, as next in worth
397: Came singly where he stood on the bare strand,
398: While the promiscuous croud stood yet aloof?
399: The chief were those who from the Pit of Hell
400: Roaming to seek their prey on earth, durst fix
401: Their Seats long after next the Seat of God,
402: Their Altars by his Altar, Gods ador'd
403: Among the Nations round, and durst abide
404: JEHOVAH thundring out of SION, thron'd
405: Between the Cherubim; yea, often plac'd
406: Within his Sanctuary it self their Shrines,
407: Abominations; and with cursed things
408: His holy Rites, and solemn Feasts profan'd,
409: And with their darkness durst affront his light.
410: First MOLOCH, horrid King besmear'd with blood
411: Of human sacrifice, and parents tears,
412: Though for the noyse of Drums and Timbrels loud
413: Their childrens cries unheard, that past through fire
414: To his grim Idol.
(snip)
450: For those the Race of ISRAEL oft forsook
451: Their living strength, and unfrequented left
452: His righteous Altar, bowing lowly down
453: To bestial Gods; for which their heads as low
454: Bow'd down in Battel, sunk before the Spear
455: Of despicable foes. With these in troop
456: Came ASTORETH, whom the PHOENICIANS call'd
457: ASTARTE, Queen of Heav'n, with crescent Horns;
458: To whose bright Image nightly by the Moon
459: SIDONIAN Virgins paid their Vows and Songs,
460: In SION also not unsung, where stood
461: Her Temple on th' offensive Mountain, built
462: By that uxorious King, whose heart though large,
463: Beguil'd by fair Idolatresses, fell
464: To Idols foul. THAMMUZ came next behind,
465: Whose annual wound in LEBANON allur'd
466: The SYRIAN Damsels to lament his fate
467: In amorous dittyes all a Summers day,
468: While smooth ADONIS from his native Rock
469: Ran purple to the Sea, suppos'd with blood
470: Of THAMMUZ yearly wounded: the Love-tale
471: Infected SIONS daughters with like heat,
472: Whose wanton passions in the sacred Porch
473: EZEKIEL saw, when by the Vision led
474: His eye survay'd the dark Idolatries
475: Of alienated JUDAH. Next came one
476: Who mourn'd in earnest, when the Captive Ark
477: Maim'd his brute Image, head and hands lopt off
478: In his own Temple, on the grunsel edge,
479: Where he fell flat, and sham'd his Worshipers:
480: DAGON his Name, Sea Monster, upward Man
481: And downward Fish: yet had his Temple high
482: Rear'd in AZOTUS, dreaded through the Coast
483: Of PALESTINE, in GATH and ASCALON,
484: And ACCARON and GAZA's frontier bounds.
485: Him follow'd RIMMON, whose delightful Seat
486: Was fair DAMASCUS, on the fertil Banks
487: Of ABBANA and PHARPHAR, lucid streams.
488: He also against the house of God was bold:
489: A Leper once he lost and gain'd a King,
490: AHAZ his sottish Conquerour, whom he drew
491: Gods Altar to disparage and displace
492: For one of SYRIAN mode, whereon to burn
493: His odious offrings, and adore the Gods
494: Whom he had vanquisht. After these appear'd
495: A CREW who under Names of old Renown,
496: OSIRIS, ISIS, ORUS and their Train
497: *With monstrous shapes and sorceries abus'd*
498: FANATIC EGYPT and her Priests, to seek
499: Thir wandring Gods disguis'd in brutish forms
500: Rather then human. Nor did ISRAEL scape
501: Th' infection when their borrow'd Gold compos'd
502: The Calf in OREB: and the Rebel King
503: Doubl'd that sin in BETHEL and in DAN,
504: Lik'ning his Maker to the Grazed Ox,
505: JEHOVAH, who in one Night when he pass'd
506: From EGYPT marching, equal'd with one stroke
507: Both her first born and all her bleating Gods.
508: BELIAL came last, then whom a Spirit more lewd
509: Fell not from Heaven, or more gross to love
510: Vice for it self: To him no Temple stood
511: Or Altar smoak'd; yet who more oft then hee
512: In Temples and at Altars, when the Priest
513: Turns Atheist, as did ELY'S Sons, who fill'd
514: With lust and violence the house of God.
515: In Courts and Palaces he also Reigns
516: And in luxurious Cities, where the noyse
517: Of riot ascends above thir loftiest Towrs,
518: And injury and outrage: And when Night
519: Darkens the Streets, then wander forth the Sons
520: Of BELIAL, flown with insolence and wine.
521: Witness the Streets of SODOM, and that night
522: In GIBEAH, when hospitable Dores
523: Yielded thir Matrons to prevent worse rape.
524: These were the prime in order and in might;
525: The rest were long to tell, though far renown'd,
526: Th' IONIAN Gods, of JAVANS Issue held
527: Gods, yet confest later then Heav'n and Earth
528: Thir boasted Parents; TITAN Heav'ns first born
529: With his enormous brood, and birthright seis'd
530: By younger SATURN, he from mightier JOVE
531: His own and RHEA'S Son like measure found;
532: So JOVE usurping reign'd: these first in CREET
533: And IDA known, thence on the Snowy top
535: Thir highest Heav'n; or on the DELPHIAN Cliff,
536: Or in DODONA, and through all the bounds
537: Of DORIC Land; or who with SATURN old
538: Fled over ADRIA to th' HESPERIAN Fields,
539: And ore the CELTIC roam'd the utmost Isles.
540: All these and more came flocking; but with looks
541: Down cast and damp, yet such wherein appear'd
542: Obscure som glimps of joy, to have found thir chief
543: Not in despair, to have found themselves not lost
544: In loss it self; which on his count'nance cast
545: Like doubtful hue: but he his wonted pride
546: Soon recollecting, with high words, that bore
547: Semblance of worth not substance, gently rais'd
548: Their fainted courage, and dispel'd their fears.

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Milton, Paradise Regained

451: The other service was thy chosen task,
452: To be a liar in four hundred mouths;
453: For lying is thy sustenance, thy food.
454: Yet thou pretend'st to truth! all oracles
455: By thee are given, and what confessed more true
456: Among the nations? That hath been thy craft,
457: By mixing somewhat true to vent more lies.
458: But what have been thy answers? what but dark,
459: Ambiguous, and with double sense deluding,
460: Which they who asked have seldom understood,
461: And, not well understood, as good not known?
462: Who ever, by consulting at thy shrine,
463: Returned the wiser, or the more instruct
464: To fly or follow what concerned him most,
465: And run not sooner to his fatal snare?
466: For God hath justly given the nations up
467: To thy delusions; justly, since they fell
468: Idolatrous. But, when his purpose is
469: Among them to declare his providence,
470: To thee not known, whence hast thou then thy truth,
471: But from him, or his Angels president
472: In every province, who, themselves disdaining
473: To approach thy temples, give thee in command
474: What, to the smallest tittle, thou shalt say
475: To thy adorers? Thou, with trembling fear,
476: Or like a fawning parasite, obey'st;
477: Then to thyself ascrib'st the truth foretold.
478: But this thy glory shall be soon retrenched;
479: No more shalt thou by oracling abuse
481: And thou no more with POMP and sacrifice
482: Shalt be enquired at DELPHOS or elsewhere--
483: At least in vain, for they shall find thee mute.
484: God hath now sent his living Oracle
485: Into the world to teach his final will,
486: And sends his Spirit of Truth henceforth to dwell
487: In pious hearts, an inward oracle
488: To all truth requisite for men to know."
489:
490: So spake our Saviour;

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Milton

After these appear'd
495: A CREW who under Names of old Renown,
496: OSIRIS, ISIS, ORUS and their Train
497: *With monstrous shapes and sorceries abus'd*
498: FANATIC EGYPT and her Priests, to seek
499: Thir wandring Gods disguis'd in brutish forms
500: Rather then human.

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Oxford/Shakespeare/Comus (demonic eloquence)

Milton, John: Comus

118: COMUS enters, with a charming-rod in one hand, his glass in the
119: other: with him a rout of monsters, headed like sundry sorts of
120: wild
121: beasts, but otherwise like men and women, their apparel
122: glistering.
123: They come in making a riotous and unruly noise, with torches in
124: their hands.
125:
126:
127: COMUS. The star that bids the shepherd fold
128: Now the top of heaven doth hold;
129: And the gilded car of day
130: His glowing axle doth allay
131: In the steep Atlantic stream;
132: And the slope sun his upward beam
133: Shoots against the dusky pole,
134: Pacing toward the other goal
135: Of his chamber in the east.
136: Meanwhile, welcome joy and feast,
137: Midnight shout and revelry,
138: Tipsy dance and jollity.
139: Braid your locks with rosy twine,
140: Dropping odours, dropping wine.
141: Rigour now is gone to bed;
142: And Advice with scrupulous head,
143: Strict Age, and sour Severity,
144: With their grave saws, in slumber lie.
145: We, that are of purer fire,
146: Imitate the starry quire,
147: Who, in their nightly watchful spheres,
148: Lead in swift round the months and years.
149: The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove,
150: Now to the moon in wavering morrice move;
151: And on the tawny sands and shelves
152: Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves.
153: By dimpled brook and fountain-brim,
154: The wood-nymphs, decked with daisies trim,
155: Their merry wakes and pastimes keep:
156: What hath night to do with sleep?
157: Night hath better sweets to prove;
158: Venus now wakes, and wakens Love.
159: Come, let us our rights begin;
160: 'T is only daylight that makes sin,
161: Which these dun shades will ne'er report.
162: Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport,
163: Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret flame
164: Of midnight torches burns! mysterious dame,
165: That ne'er art called but when the dragon womb
166: Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom,
167: And makes one blot of all the air!
168: Stay thy cloudy ebon chair,
169: Wherein thou ridest with Hecat', and befriend
170: Us thy vowed priests, till utmost end
171: Of all thy dues be done, and none left out,
172: Ere the blabbing eastern scout,
173: The nice Morn on the Indian steep,
174: From her cabined loop-hole peep,
175: And to the tell-tale Sun descry
176: Our concealed solemnity.
178: In a LIGHT FANTASTIC round.
179:
180: The Measure.
181:
182: Break off, break off! I feel the different pace
183: Of some chaste footing near about this ground.
184: Run to your shrouds within these brakes and trees;
185: Our number may affright. Some virgin sure
186: (For so I can distinguish by mine art)
187: Benighted in these woods! Now to my charms,
188: And to my wily trains: I shall ere long
189: Be well stocked with as fair a herd as grazed
190: About my mother Circe. Thus I hurl
191: My dazzling spells into the spongy air,
192: Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion,
193: And give it false presentments, lest the place
194: And my quaint habits breed astonishment,
195: And put the damsel to suspicious flight;
196: Which must not be, for that's against my course.
197: I, under fair pretence of friendly ends,
198: And well-placed words of glozing courtesy,
199: Baited with reasons not unplausible,
200: Wind me into the easy-hearted man,
201: And hug him into snares. When once her eye
202: Hath met the virtue of this magic dust,
203: I shall appear some harmless villager
204: Whom thrift keeps up about his country gear.
205: But here she comes; I fairly step aside,
206: And hearken, if I may her business hear.
207:
208: The LADY enters.
209:
210: LADY. This way the noise was, if mine ear be true,
211: My best guide now. Methought it was the sound
212: Of riot and ill-managed merriment,
213: Such as the jocund flute or gamesome pipe
214: Stirs up among the loose unlettered hinds,
215: When, for their teeming flocks and granges full,
216: In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan,
217: And thank the gods amiss. I should be loth
218: To meet the rudeness and swilled insolence
219: Of such late wassailers; yet, oh! where else
220: Shall I inform my unacquainted feet
221: In the blind mazes of this tangled wood?

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Thou in our wonder and ASTONISHMENT
Hast built thy self a live-long Monument.

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Pondering Satan's Shield in Milton's Paradise Lost
English Literary renaissance (0013-8312) dobranski yr.2005 vol:35 iss:
3
pg:490

In this essay I would like to address how Satan's "ponderous shield"(I, 284) from this same passage also advances Milton's Christian epic. Commentators have traditionally glossed the lunar metaphor that Milton uses for Satan's shield as either an allusion to Achilles'"massive shield flashing far and wide / like a full round moon," or an echo of Radigund's lunar armament as she challenges Artegall in The Faerie Queene.5 I want to offer a new reading of Milton's epic simile by turning to contemporary discoveries in the natural world. When examined in the context of Renaissance warfare and, perhaps surprisingly, seventeenth-century animal histories, Satan's shield symbolizes, updates, and subverts his heroic aspirations, and simultaneously it exposes his amphibious nature, creeping from lake to land, and transgressing from heaven to hell.

To understand fully the implications of the devil's armament, we first need to recall that Milton had come to accept a monistic concept of the body and soul by the time he wrote Paradise Lost. His mature works reflect the belief that the body and soul are different degrees of the same substance. As Raphael succinctly puts it, "one first matter all, /
Indued with various forms, various degrees / Of substance, and in things that live, of life" (V, 472-74). When, accordingly, Satan falls from heaven, his fall is not only moral but also material (and spatial and temporal); that is, Satan's spirit becomes less rarefied, and he literally hardens (I, 572).6 If, as Raphael goes on to explain, God's creations are "more refined, more spirituous, and pure, / As nearer to him placed or nearer tending" (V, 475-76), then, conversely, when Satan turns away from God, he must become less refined, less spirituous, less pure. Satan's dependence on material weapons suggests this corporeal decline while pointing up his destructive narcissism: the devil is attracted to things like himself that are more matter than spirit. Instead of returning to God and seeking forgiveness, he again and again puts his faith in things, whether a sword, shield, or apple.

Within this philosophical context Satan's armament in particular illustrates the folly of his rebellion. Unlike the spiritual armor that St. Paul described in his letter to the Ephesians (Eph. 6.11-17), Satan's shield actually exists but it fails to protect him, first from Abdiel (VI, 192-93), then from Michael (VI, 323-28), until finally the rebels drop their shields while fleeing the Son:

they ASTONISHED all resistance lost,
All courage; down their idle weapons dropped;
O'er shields and helms, and helmèd heads he rode
Of thrones and mighty seraphim prostráte. (VI, 838-41)

That the Son rides roughshod over the rebels' weapons symbolizes both his imminent victory over Satan and the ascendance of a new type of heroism that will obviate traditional emblems of war. While this image of discarded armament is hardly original to Milton, the specific term"astonished" punningly suggests the link between the rebels' material arms and their own material debasement: the rebels may drop their weapons, but their forms, like their hearts, are already becoming "stony."7 Later, Milton will repeat this image when Satan, returning to Hell, expects to hear his cohorts'"high applause" but is instead confronted with "A dismal universal hiss" as God changes the rebels into serpents (X, 505, 508). Once again, the devils' moral and material fall is figured in their hardening forms and falling weapons: "down their arms / Down fell both spear and shield, down they as fast" (X,541-42).8 Milton invokes, too, Dante's concept of contrapasso as Satan and the rebels are "punished in the shape he sinned" (X, 516). They not only take the shape of snakes, but also, having taken up material arms in a war against God, they fittingly come to resemble their own lost shields, fallen and hardened.

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_Comus_, Milton

Comus: Nay Lady sit; if I but wave this wand
Your nerves are all chain'd up in Alablaster,
And you a statue; or as Daphne was
Root-bound, that fled Apollo

Lady: Fool do not boast,
Thou canst not touch the freedom of my minde
With all thy charms, although this corporal rinde
Thou hast immanacl'd, while Heav'n sees good

******************************

Then thou our FANCY of it self bereaving,
Doth make us MARBLE with too much conceaving;

_Imagination and the Presence of Shakespeare in Paradise Lost_. By Paul Stevens. Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.
Review by Nigel Smith

Imagination and the Presence of Shakespeare in 'Paradise Lost' is probably a mistitled book. Professor Stevens is certainly concerned with theories of imagination and the way in which these theories helped to determine the language of Milton's epic. There is also a consideration of Shakespeare's presence, confined mostly to instances in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ and _The Tempest_. The significance of echoes from other plays are discussed, though a central consideration of echoes from the tragedies would have produced a very different work.
As the book stands, we are shown how Milton takes the Shakespearean incarnation of FANCY and modifies it, so that it becomes associated,via COMUS, with evil in Paradise Lost, unless it is governed by Reason, so reflecting the divine.

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Monstrous Style

Oxford and Shakespeare are both characterized by their monstrous/ unnatural manner.

**********************************


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.

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http://www.everreader.com/Nabokov.htm
Shakespeare
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.

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"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.

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prodigialiter
ADV
amazingly| wonderfully

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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.

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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*.

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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, 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.

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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.

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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.

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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)
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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.

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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.

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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.

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