Friday, April 23, 2010

Bodies Changed into New Forms





Metamorphoses Book I (A. S. Kline's Version)

Bk I:1-20 The Primal Chaos

I want to speak about bodies changed into new forms. You, gods, since you are the ones who alter these, and all other things, inspire my attempt, and spin out a continuous thread of words, from the world's first origins to my own time.

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Gabriel Harvey's satirical portrait of the Earl of Oxford:

Speculum Tuscanismi

Since Galatea came in, and Tuscanism gan usurp,
Vanity above all: villainy next her, stateliness Empress
No man but minion, stout, lout, plain, swain, quoth a Lording:
No words but valorous, no works but womanish only.
For life Magnificoes, not a beck but glorious in show,
In deed most frivolous, not a look but Tuscanish always.
His cringing side neck, eyes glancing, fisnamy smirking,
With forefinger kiss, and brave embrace to the footward.
Large bellied Cod-pieced doublet, uncod-pieced half hose,
Straight to the dock like a shirt, and close to the britch like a
diveling.
A little Apish flat couched fast to the pate like an oyster,
French camarick ruffs, deep with a whiteness starched to the purpose.
Every one A per se A, his terms and braveries in print,
Delicate in speech, quaint in array: conceited in all points,
In Courtly guiles a passing singular odd man,
For Gallants a brave Mirror, a Primrose of Honour,
A Diamond for nonce, a fellow peerless in England.
Not the like discourser for Tongue, and head to be found out,
Not the like resolute man for great and serious affairs,
Not the like Lynx to spy out secrets and privities of States,
Eyed like to Argus, eared like to Midas, nos'd like to Naso,
Wing'd like to Mercury, fittst of a thousand for to be employ'd,
This, nay more than this, doth practice of Italy in one year.
None do I name, but some do I know, that a piece of a twelve month
Hath so perfited outly and inly both body, both soul,
That none for sense and senses half matchable with them.
A vulture's smelling, Ape's tasting, sight of an eagle,
A spider's touching, Hart's hearing, might of a Lion.
Compounds of wisdom, wit, prowess, bounty, behavior,
All gallant virtues, all qualities of body and soul.
O thrice ten hundred thousand times blessed and happy,
Blessed and happy travail, Travailer most blessed and happy.
'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."



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Venus and Adonis

But if the first HEIR of my invention prove DEFORMED, I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather, and never after ear so barren a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest.

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O manners! that this AGE should BRING FORTH such creatures! that
Nature should bee at leisure to make 'hem
(Every Man In, IV.viii. 146-7)

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De mollibus & effoemenatis There is nothing valiant, or solid to be hoped for from such, as are always kempt and perfumed; and every day smell of the tailor: the exceedingly curious, that are wholly in mending such an imperfection in the face, in taking away the morphew in the neck; or bleaching their hands at midnight, gumming and bridling their beards; or making the waist small, binding it with hoops, while the mind runs at waste: too much pickedness is not manly. Nor from those that will jest at their own outward imperfections, but hide their ulcers within, their pride, lust, envy, ill nature, with all the art and authority they can. These persons are in danger; for whilst they think to justify their ignorance by impudence, and their persons and clothes and outward ornaments; they use but a comission to deceive themselves. Where, if we will look with our understanding, and not our senses, we may behold virtue and beauty (though covered with rags) in their brightness; and vice, and deformity so much the fouler, in having all the splendour of riches to gild them, or the false light of honour and power to help them. Yet this is that, wherewith the world is taken, and runs mad to gaze on: clothes and titles, the birdlime of fools. (Jonson, Discoveries 1751)


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Davies, Scourge of Folly
Of the staid furious Poet FUCUS.
Epig. 114

Fucus the furious Poet writes but Plaies;
So, playing, writes: that’s, idly writeth all:

Yet, idle Plaies, and Players are his Staies;
Which stay him that he can no lower fall:

For, he is fall’n into the deep’st decay,
Where Playes and Players keepe him at a stay.


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Ad Gulielmum Shakespeare

HONEY-TONGUED Shakespeare, when I saw THINE ISSUE,
I swore Apollo got them and none other;
Their rosy-tinted features clothed in tissue,
Some heaven-born goddess said to be their mother:
Rose-cheeked Adonis, with his amber tresses,
Fair fire-hot Venus, charming him to love her,
Chaste Lucretia, virgin-like her dresses,
Proud lust-stung Tarquin, seeking still to prove her:
Romeo, Richard; more whose names I know not,
Their sugared tongues, and power attractive beauty
Say they are saints, although that saints they show not,
For thousands vow to them subjective duty :
They burn in love, thy children, Shakespeare het them,
Go, woo thy Muse, more Nymphish brood beget them.


Epigrammes in the oldest Cut, and newest Fashion.
John Weever. 1599. Fourth Weeke, Epig. 22.

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George Herbert to his Mother:

 "However, I need not their help, to reprove the vanity of those many Lovepoems that are daily writ and consecrated to Venus; nor to bewail that so few are writ, that look towards God and Heaven."

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Jonson
Every Man Out, Jonson
Act IV. Scene VIII.
G R E X.
Mit. This Macilente, Signior, begins to be more so-
ciable on a sudden, methinks, than he was before: there's
some portent in't, I believe.
Cor. O, he's a Fellow of a strange nature. Now does
he (in this calm of his Humour) Plot, and store up a
World of malicious Thoughts in his Brain, till he is so
full with 'em, that you shall see the very Torrent of his
Envy break forth like a Land-flood: and, against the
course of all their Affections oppose it self so violently,
that you will almost have wonder to think, how 'tis
possible the Current of their Dispositions shall receive so
quick and strong an alteration.
Mit. I marry, Sir, this is that, on which my expecta-
tion has dwelt all this while: for I must tell you, Signior
(though I was loth to interrupt the Scene) yet I made it
a question in mine own private discourse, how he should
properly call it, Every man out of his Humour, when I
saw all his Actors so strongly pursue, and continue their
Humours?
Cor. Why, therein his Art appears most full of lustre,
and approacheth nearest the Life: *especially, when in
the flame and height of their Humours, they are laid
flat*, it fills the Eye better, and with more contentment.
How tedious a sight were it to behold a proud exalted
Tree lopt, and cut down by degrees, when it might be
feld in a Moment? and to set the Ax to it before it came
to that PRIDE and fulness, were, as not to have it grow.
Mit. Well, I shall long till I see this FALL, you talk of.

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 The Barren Tree - Sermon, Thomas Adams
October 26 1623

...But if God should at once cut down all the barren Trees among us, there never was such a cry in Egypt, as there would be about London. What innumerable swarmes of nothing does beleaguer this Citie? men and women, whose whole imployment is, to goe from their beds to the Tap-house, then to the Play-house, where they make a match for the Brothel-house, and from thence to bed again. To omit those ambulatory Christians, that weare out the Pavement of this great Temple [St. Paul's] with their feet, but scarce even touch stone of it with their knees, that are never further from God, then when they are neerest the Church. To omit that rabble of begging and pilfring, vagabonds, that like beasts, know no other end of their creation, but recreation; but to eate, and drinke, and sleepe. What an armie of these might bee mustred out of our Suburbs? But that Idlenesse hath disabled them to any service: they are neither fit for God not man. Did they but like wormes and insects, spend up the corruption of the Land, and leave us the lesse, it were somewhat. But they are worse, even diseases and unwholesome ayres, to breed infection amongst us. Let Authority looke to their castigation, or answer for their mischiefs: so farre as they deserve, let them not be spared: Cut them downe, Why cumber they the Ground?
The barren Tree doth no good you see; but that is not all: It doth much hurt, and that in two respects.
1. It occupies the room where a better Tree might grow...
(snip)
2. It drawes away nourishment from better Plants, that would beare us fruits...What should become of them, that wil neither do good, nor suffer good to be done, but cutting downe? A great Oake pines all the underwood neere it, yea spoiles the grasse that should feed the cattell. A greeat Oppressor engrosseth all round about him, till there be no place left for a fertile Tree. Meane while, himselfe hath onely some leaves, to shaddow his Sychophants: but no fruit, unlesse Bramble-berries, and such as the Hogs will scarce eate.
All covet to be great Trees, fewe to bee good.

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Papers Complaint, compil'd in ruthfull Rimes Against the Paper-spoylers of these Times. John Davies

...Another (ah Lord helpe) mee vilifies
With Art of Loue, and how to subtilize,
Making lewd Venus, with eternall Lines,
To tye Adonis to her loues designes :
Fine wit is shew'n therein : but finer twere
If not attired in such bawdy Geare.
But be it as it will : the coyest Dames,
In priuate read it for their Closset-games :
For, sooth to say, the Lines so draw them on,
To the venerian speculation,
That will they, nill they (if of flesh they bee)
They will thinke of it, sith loose Thought is free.
And thou (O Poet) that dost pen my Plaint,
Thou art not scot-free from my iust complaint
For, thou hast plaid thy part, with thy rude Pen,
To make vs both ridiculous to men.
(ll.47-62, Complete Works, vol. II, p. 75)

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Digges commendatory poem to the First Folio (1623):

To the Memorie of the deceased Authour Maister W. Shakespeare

Shake-speare, at length thy pious fellowes give
The world thy Workes : thy Workes, by which, out-live
Thy Tombe, thy name must when that stone is rent,
And Time dissolves thy Stratford Moniment,
Here we alive shall view thee still. This Booke,
When Brasse and Marble fade, shall make thee looke
Fresh to all Ages : when Posteritie
Shall loath what's new, thinke all is PRODEGIE
That is not Shake-speares; ev'ry Line, each Verse
Here shall revive, redeeme thee from thy Herse.
Nor Fire, nor cankring Age, as Naso said,
Of his, thy wit-fraught Booke shall once invade.
Nor shall I e're beleeve, or thinke thee dead.
(Though mist) untill our bankrout Stage be sped
(Imposible) with some new straine t'OUT-DO
Passions of Juliet, and her Romeo ;
Or till I heare a Scene more nobly take,
Then when thy half-Sword parlying Romans spake.
Till these, till any of thy Volumes rest
Shall with more fire, more feeling be exprest,
Be sure, our Shake-speare, thou canst never dye,
But crown'd with Lawrell, live eternally.

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Bartholomew Fair
Act I. Scene V.

Quar. Come, John, this ambitious WIT of yours (I am
afraid) will do you no good i' the end.
Joh. No? why Sir?
Quar. You grow so INSOLENT with it, and OVER-DOING,
John; that if you look not to it, and TIE IT UP, it will
bring you to some obscure place in time, and there 'twill
leave you.
VVin-w. Do not trust it too much, John, be more spa-
ring, and use it but now and then; a WIT is a dangerous
thing in this AGE; do not over-buy it.
Joh. Think you so, Gentlemen? I'll take heed on't
hereafter.
VVin. Yes, do John.

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Humor - Wanting power to contain itself:

He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free
nature, had an excellent phantasy, brave notions, and gentle
expressions, wherein he FLOWED with that facility that sometimes it
was necessary he should be *stopped*. "Sufflaminandus erat," as
Augustus said of Haterius. His WIT was in his own power; would the
*rule* of it had been so, too.

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Dedication in Latin to Bartholomew Clerke's Translation of The Courtier(1571/1572). Edward de Vere
[translated by B. M. Ward]

For what more difficult, more noble, or more magnificent task has anyone ever undertaken than our author Castiglione, who has drawn for us the figureand 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 [i.e., naturam superauit], 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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Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Ambisinister




Engraving with two left arms -- cutting a ridiculous figure.

ambisinister
n. left-handed in both hands; awkward.

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Awk

Awk \Awk\, adv.
Perversely; in the WRONG WAY. --L'Estrange.

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

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

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

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ambisinister - wrong in both hands

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Horace, Art of Poetry - Ben Jonson transl.

...Most writers, noble sire and either son,
Are, with the likeness of the truth, undone.
Myself for shortness labour, and I grow
Obscure. This, striving to run smooth,
and flow,
Hath neither soul nor sinews. Lofty he
Professing greatness, swells; that, low by lee,
Creeps on the ground; too safe, afraid of storm.
This seeking, in a various kind, to form
One thing PRODIGIOUSLY, paints in the woods
A dolphin, and a boar amid the floods.
So shunning faults to greater fault doth lead,
When in a WRONG AND ARTLESS WAY WE TREAD.

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Jonson's 'prodigious' encomium -- pointedly writing the 'wrong way':

To draw no envy, SHAKSPEARE, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame ;
While I confess thy writings to be such,
As neither Man nor Muse can praise too much.
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these WAYS
Were not the PATHS I meant unto thy praise ;
For seeliest ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, BUT ECHOES RIGHT ;
Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance ;
Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin where it seemed to raise.
These are, as some infamous bawd or whore
Should praise a matron ; what could hurt her more ?
But thou art proof against them, and, indeed,
Above the ill fortune of them, or the need.
I therefore will begin: Soul of the age!
The applause ! delight ! the wonder of our stage!
My SHAKSPEARE rise !

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Jonson, Timber

...BUT WHY DO men depart at all from the RIGHT and NATURAL *WAYS* of speaking? sometimes for necessity, when we are driven, or think it fitter, *to speak that in obscure words, or by circumstance, which uttered plainly would offend the hearers*. Or to avoid obsceneness, or sometimes for pleasure, and variety, as travellers turn out of the highway, drawn either by the commodity of a footpath, or the delicacy or freshness of the fields. And all this is called åó÷çìáôéóìåíç (eschematismene) or FIGURED LANGUAGE.

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Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida
[I, 3]

Ulysses:


The great Achilles, whom opinion crowns
The sinew and the forehand of our host,
Having his ear full of his airy fame,
Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent
Lies mocking our designs: with him Patroclus
Upon a lazy bed the livelong day
Breaks scurril jests;
And with ridiculous and AWKWARD action,
Which, slanderer, he imitation calls,
He pageants us...

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...Many times he fell into those things, could not escape laughter: as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him; "Caesar, thou dost me wrong'. He replied: 'Caesar did never wrong, but with just cause': and such like; which were ridiculous.

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Sidney, Defence of Poetry

...But besides these GROSSE ABSURDITIES, howe all their Playes bee neither RIGHT Tragedies, nor RIGHT Comedies, mingling Kinges and Clownes, not because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in the Clowne by head and shoulders to play a part in majesticall matters, with neither DECENCIE NOR DISCRETION: so as neither the admiration and Commiseration, nor the the RIGHT sportfulnesse is by their mongrell Tragicomedie obtained. I know Apuleius did somewhat so, but that is a thing recounted with space of time, not represented in one moment: and I knowe the Auncients have one or two examples of Tragicomedies, as Plautus hath Amphitrio. But if we marke them well, wee shall finde that they never or veriedaintily *matche horne Pipes and Funeralls*. So falleth it out, that having indeed no RIGHT Comedie in that Comicall part of our Tragidie, wee have nothing but SCURRILITIE unwoorthie of anie chaste eares, or some extreame shewe of doltishnesse, indeede fit to lift up a loude laughter and nothing else: where the whole tract of a Comedie should bee full of delight, as the Tragidie should bee still maintained in a well raised admiration. But our Comedients thinke there is no delight without laughter, which is verie WRONG, for though laughter may come with delight, yet commeth it not of delight, as though delight should be the cause of laughter.
(snip)
But I have lavished out too many words of this Play- matter; I do it, because as they are excelling parts of Poesie, so is there none so much used in England, and none can be more pitifully abused: which like an unmannerly daughter, shewing a bad education, causeth her mother Poesies HONESTIE to be called in question.

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TO THE
SPECIAL FOUNTAIN of MANNERS,

The Court.

THou art a Bountiful and Brave Spring, and waterest all the Noble Plants of this Island. In thee the whole Kingdom dresseth it self, and is ambitious to use thee as her Glass. Beware then thou RENDER MENS FIGURES TRULY, and teach them no less to hate their Deformities, than to love their Forms: For, to Grace, there should come Reverence; and no Man can call that Lovely, which is not also Venerable. It is not Powd'ring, Perfuming, and every day smelling of the Taylor, that converteth to a Beautiful Object: but a Mind shining through any Sute, which needs no False Light, either of Riches or Honours, to help it. Such shalt thou find some here, even in the Reign of CYNTHIA, (a C R I T E S and an A R E T E.) Now, under thy P H œ B U S, it will be thy Province to make more: Except thou desirest to have thy Source mix with the Spring of Self-love, and so wilt draw upon thee as welcom a Discovery of thy Days, as was then made of her Nights. Thy Servant, but not Slave,
BEN. JOHNSON.

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P R O L O G U E. Cynthia's Revels

IF gracious silence, sweet attention,
Quick sight, and quicker apprehension,
(The lights of Judgments throne) shine any where;
Our doubtful Author hopes this is their Sphere.
And therefore opens he himself to those;
To other weaker Beams his labours close:
As loth to prostitute their Virgin strain,
To ev'ry vulgar and adult'rate Brain,
In this alone, his Muse her sweetness hath,
She shuns the print of any beaten Path;
And proves NEW WAYS to come to learned Ears:
Pied ignorance she neither loves nor, fears.
Nor hunts she after popular Applause,
Or fomy praise, that drops from COMMON Jaws:
The Garland that she wears, their bands must twine,
Who can both censure, understand, define
What merit is: Then cast those piercing Rays,
Round as a Crown, instead of honour'd Bays,
About his Poesie; which (he knows) affords
Words, above action: MATTER, ABOVE WORDS.

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Quintilian
'A good man (vir bonus) will see that everything he
says is consistent with his dignity and the respectability of his
CHARACTER (dignitate ac verecundia); for we pay too dear for the laugh
we raise if it is at the cost of our own INTEGRITY.
(probitatis)' (6.3.35)
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Probitas
Latin probitas HONESTY, probity, uprightness.
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"To My Book" by Ben Jonson
It will be looked for, book, when some but see
Thy title, Epigrams, and named of me,
Thou should'st be bold, licentious, full of gall,
Wormwood, and sulphur, sharp, and toothed withal;
Become a petulant thing, hurl ink, and wit,
As madmen stones: not caring whom they hit.
Deceive their malice, who could wish it so.
And by thy wiser temper, let men know
Thou are not covetous of least self-fame.
Made from the hazard of another's shame:
Much less with lewd, profane, and beastly phrase,
To catch the world's loose laughter, or VAIN gaze.
*He that DEPARTS with his own HONESTY
For VULGAR PRAISE, doth it too dearly buy.*

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E P I G R A M S . JONSON

XLIX. -- TO PLAYWRIGHT.

PLAYWRIGHT me reads, and still my verses damns,
He says I want the tongue of epigrams ;
I have no salt, no bawdry he doth mean ;
For witty, in his language, is obscene.
Playwright, I loath to have thy MANNERS known
In my chaste book ; profess them in thine own.

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Jonson, Discoveries

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

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

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Mentis Character - The Mark of the MIND

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

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To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;

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Upon Ben Jonson, and his Zany, Tom Randolph.

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

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

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

"But after times with full consent
"This truth will all acknowledge,-
"Shakspeare and Ford from HEAVEN were sent,
"But Ben and Tom from college."

Endymion Porter.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Prodigialiter





A Prodigious Figure


Horace Of the Art of Poetry - transl. Ben Jonson

...Most writers, noble sire and either son,
Are, with the likeness of the truth, undone.
Myself for shortness labour, and I grow
Obscure. This, striving to run smooth,
and flow,
Hath neither soul nor sinews. Lofty he
Professing greatness, swells; that, low by lee,
Creeps on the ground; too safe, afraid of storm.
This seeking, in a various kind, to form
One thing PRODIGIOUSLY, paints in the woods
A dolphin, and a boar amid the floods.
So shunning faults to greater fault doth lead,
When in a WRONG AND ARTLESS WAY WE TREAD.

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Jonson's 'prodigious' encomium -- pointedly writing the 'wrong way':

To draw no envy, SHAKSPEARE, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame ;
While I confess thy writings to be such,
As neither Man nor Muse can praise too much.
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these WAYS
Were not the PATHS I meant unto thy praise ;
For seeliest ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, BUT ECHOES RIGHT ;
Or blind affection, which doth ne'er advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance ;
Or crafty malice might pretend this praise,
And think to ruin where it seemed to raise.
These are, as some infamous bawd or whore
Should praise a matron ; what could hurt her more ?
But thou art proof against them, and, indeed,
Above the ill fortune of them, or the need.
I therefore will begin: Soul of the age!
The applause ! delight ! the wonder of our stage!
My SHAKSPEARE rise !

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Jonson, Timber

...BUT WHY DO men depart at all from the RIGHT and NATURAL *WAYS* of speaking? sometimes for necessity, when we are driven, or think it fitter, *to speak that in obscure words, or by circumstance, which uttered plainly would offend the hearers*. Or to avoid obsceneness, or sometimes for pleasure, and variety, as travellers turn out of the highway, drawn either by the commodity of a footpath, or the delicacy or freshness of the fields. And all this is called åó÷çìáôéóìåíç (eschematismene) or FIGURED LANGUAGE.

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Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur

"The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived."

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The word MONSTER derives from Latin monstrum, meaning "omen", from the
root of monere ("to warn") and also meaning "prodigy" or "MIRACLE".

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prodigialiter

Horace

25 decipimur specie recti : brevis esse laboro,
obscurus fio ; sectantem levia nervi
deficiunt animique ; professus grandia target ;
serpit humi tutus nimium timidusque procellae;
qui variare cupit rem prodigialiter unam,

30 delphinum silvis appingit, fluctibus aprum.
In vitium ducit culpae fuga, si caret arte.
Aemilium circa ludum f aber imus et ungues
exprimet et molles imitabitur acre capillos,

the result of a desire for variety,
as other faults are the result of the
desire to attain to some particular
virtue of style.'

' So it is, in seeking va-
riety of ornament, that one falls
into the absurdities of which I was
speaking above.' cupit: is anx-
ious, as the desires are expressed
above by strong words, laboro,
sectantem, professus. PRODIGIA-
LITER : a rare word, perhaps coined
by Horace (cf. Epist. 2, 2, 119) ;
to be taken with variare ; ' to in-
troduce such variety as to be LIKE
A MIRACLE,' 'to be wonderfully
varied.' unam: with emphasis,
at the end of the verse and in con-
trast to prodigialiter. The in-
stances in vs. 30 are merely vivid
expressions of the thought of vss.
1 6- 1 8 and especially vs. 20 f.

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

Petruchio. Were it better, I should rush in thus. 1450
But where is Kate? Where is my lovely bride?
How does my father? Gentles, methinks you frown;
And wherefore gaze this goodly company
As if they saw some wondrous monument,
Some comet or unusual prodigy?

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

Jonson, Discoveries

Censura de poetis. - Nothing in our AGE, I have observed, is more PREPOSTEROUS than the running judgments upon poetry and poets; when we shall hear those things commended and cried up for the best writings which a man would scarce vouchsafe to wrap any wholesome drug in; he would never light his tobacco with them. And those men almost named for MIRACLES, who yet are so VILE that if a man should go about to examine and correct them, he must make all they have done but one BLOT. Their good is so entangled with their bad as forcibly one must draw on the other’s death with it. A sponge dipped in ink will do all:-

“ - Comitetur Punica librum
Spongia. - ” {44a}

Et paulò post,

“Non possunt . . . multæ . . . lituræ
. . . una litura potest.”

Cestius - Cicero - Heath - Taylor - Spenser. - Yet their vices have not hurt them; nay, a great many they have profited, for they have been loved for nothing else. And this false opinion grows strong against the best men, if once it take root with the IGNORANT.

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

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.

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

Right/Straight

Right \Right\ (r[imac]t), a. [OE. right, riht, AS. riht; akin to
D. regt, OS. & OHG. reht, G. recht, Dan. ret, Sw. r["a]tt,
Icel. r["e]ttr, Goth. ra['i]hts, L. rectus, p. p. of regere
to guide, rule; cf. Skr. [.r]ju STRAIGHT, right. [root]115.
Cf. Adroit,Alert, Correct, Dress, Regular,
Rector, Recto, Rectum, Regent, Region, Realm,
Rich, Royal, Rule.]
1. STRAIGHT; direct; not crooked; as, a right line. ``Right
as any line.'' --Chaucer

2. Upright; erect from a base; having an upright axis; not
oblique; as, right ascension; a right pyramid or cone.

3. Conformed to the constitution of man and the will of God,
or to justice and equity; not deviating from the true and
just; according with truth and duty; just; true.

That which is conformable to the Supreme Rule is
absolutely right, and is called right simply without
relation to a special end. --Whately.

2. Fit; suitable; proper; correct; becoming; as, the right
man in the right place; the right way from London to
Oxford.

5. Characterized by reality or genuineness; real; actual; not
spurious. ``His right wife.'' --Chaucer.

In this battle, . . . the Britons never more plainly
manifested themselves to be right barbarians.
--Milton.

6. According with truth; passing a true judgment; conforming
to fact or intent; not mistaken or wrong; not erroneous;
correct; as, this is the right faith.

You are right, Justice, and you weigh this well.
--Shak.

If there be no prospect beyond the grave, the
inference is . . . right, ``Let us eat and drink,
for to-morrow we die.'' --Locke.

7. Most favorable or convenient; fortunate.

The lady has been disappointed on the right side.
--Spectator.

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


_Volpone_, Jonson:

To the most N O B L E and most E Q U A L S I S T E R S,

The two Famous Universities,


B E N. J O H N S O N,

...As for those that will (by Faults which Charity hath rak'd up, or common Honesty conceal'd) make themselves a Name with the Multitude, or (to draw their rude and beastly Claps) care not whose living Faces they intrench with their petulant Styles, may they do it without a Rival, for me: I chuse rather to live grav'd in Obscurity, than share with them in so PREPOSTEROUS a FAME.
(snip)
if my Muses be true to me, I shall raise the despis'd Head of Poetry again, and stripping her out of those rotten and base Rags wherewith the Times have adulterated her Form, restore her to her primitive Habit, Feature, and Majesty, and render her worthy to be embraced and kist of all the Great and Master- Spirits of our World. As for the Vile and Slothful, who never affected an Act worthy of Celebration, or are so inward with their own vicious Natures, as they worthily fear her, and think it a high Point of Policy to keep her in contempt with their declamatory and windy Invectives; she shall out of just rage incite her Servants (who are Genus iritabile) to spout Ink in their Faces, that shall eat farther than their Marrow, into their FAMES; and not Cinnamus the Barber, with his Art, shall be able to take out the Brands; but they shall live, and be read, till the Wretches die, as Things worst deserving of Themselves in chief, and then of all Mankind.

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

Bartholomew Fair: Jonson

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

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

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

To the Great Example of H O N O U R and V E R T U E, the most Noble

W I L L I A M

E A R L of P E M B R O K E , L O R D C H A M B E R L A I N, &c.

M Y L O R D,

IN so thick and dark an IGNORANCE, as now almost covers the AGE, I crave leave to stand near your Light, and by that to be read. Posterity may pay your Benefit the Honour and Thanks, when it shall know, that you dare, in these JIG-given times, to countenance a Legitimate Poem. I must call it so, against all noise of Opinion: from whose crude and airy Reports, I appeal to that great and singular Faculty of Judgment in your Lordship, able to vindicate Truth from Error. It is the First (of this Race) that ever I dedicated to any Person; and had I not thought it the best, it should have been taught a less Ambition. Now it approacheth your Censure chearfully, and with the same assurance that Innocency would appear before a Magistrate.

Your Lordships most faithful Honourer,

BEN. JOHNSON.

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

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


****************************
John Beaumont , Jonsonus Virbius

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

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

Upon Ben: Johnson, the most excellent of Comick Poets.
Mirror of Poets! Mirror of our Age!
Which her wholE Face beholding on thy stage,
Pleas'd and displeas'd with her owne faults endures,
A remedy, like Those whom Musicke cures,
Thou not alone those various inclinations,
Which Nature gives to Ages, Sexes, Nations,
Hast traced with thy All-resembling Pen,
But all that custome hath impos'd on Men,
Or ill-got Habits, which distort them so,
That scarce the Brother can the Brother know,
Is represented to the wondring Eyes,
Of all that see or read thy Comedies.
Whoever in those Glasses lookes may finde,
The spots return'd, or graces of his minde;
And by the helpe of so divine an Art,
At leisure view, and dresse his nobler part.
*NARCISSUS conzen'd by that flattering Well,
Which nothing could but of his beauty tell,
Had here discovering the DEFORM'D ESTATE
Of his fond minde, preserv'd himselfe with hate*,
But Vertue too, as well as Vice is clad,
In flesh and blood so well, that Plato had
Beheld what his high Fancie once embrac'd,
Vertue with colour, speech and motion grac'd.
The sundry Postures of Thy copious Muse,
Who would expresse a thousand tongues must use,
Whose Fates no lesse peculiar then thy Art,
For as thou couldst all characters impart,
So none can render thine, who still escapes,
Like Proteus in variety of shapes,
Who was nor this nor that, but all we finde,
And all we can imagine in mankind.
E. Waller

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

Cartwright, William, Jonsonus Virbius

...Blest life of Authors, unto whom we owe
Those that we have, and those that we want too:
Th'art all so good, that reading makes thee worse,
And to have writ so well's thine onely curse.
Secure then of thy merit, thou didst hate
That servile base dependance upon fate:
Successe thou ne'r thoughtst vertue, nor that fit,
Which chance, and th'ages fashion did make hit;
*Excluding those from life in after-time*,
Who into Po'try first brought luck and rime:
Who thought the peoples breath good ayre: sty'ld name
What was but noise; and getting Briefes for fame
Gathered the many's suffrages, and thence
Made commendation a benevolence:
THY thoughts were their owne Lawrell, and did win
That best applause of being crown'd within..


***************************************
Making commendation a benevolence:
 I know not truly which is worse; hee that malignes all, or that praises all. There is as great a vice in praising, and as frequent, as in detracting" (Disc. 1632-35).
****************************************

-- CARTWRIGHT, WILLIAM, 1647,
Upon the Dramatick Poems of Mr. John Fletcher.
...Shakespeare to thee was DULL, whose best jest lyes
I'th Ladies questions, and the Fooles replyes; [70]
Old fashion'd wit, which walkt from town to town
In turn'd Hose, which our fathers call'd the Clown;
Whose wit our nice times would obsceannesse call,
And which made Bawdry passe for Comicall:
Nature was all his Art, thy veine was free
As his, but without his scurility


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


From To the Deceased Author of these Poems (William Cartwright)
Jasper Mayne

…And as thy Wit was like a Spring, so all
The soft streams of it we may Chrystall call:
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,
Stands in thy Writings, which are all pure Day,
A cleer, bright Sunchine, and the mist away.
That which Thou wrot’st was sense, and that sense good,
Things not first written, and then understood:
Or if sometimes thy Fancy soar’d so high
As to seem lost to the unlearned Eye,
‘Twas but like generous Falcons, when high flown,
Which mount to make the Quarrey more their own.
For thou to Nature had’st joyn’d Art, and skill.
In Thee Ben Johnson still HELD Shakespeare’s Quill:
A Quill, rul’d by sharp Judgement, and such Laws,
As a well studied Mind, and Reason draws.
Thy Lamp was cherish’d with suppolied of Oyle,
Fetch’d from the Romane and the Graecian soyle. (snip)
**************************************

hold
4. To impose restraint upon; to limit in motion or action; to
bind legally or morally; to confine; to restrain.
We can not hold mortality's strong hand. --Shak.
Death! what do'st? O,hold thy blow. --Grashaw.
He hat not sufficient judgment and self-command to
hold his tongue. --Macaulay.

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

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Harlequin-Horace and Aegri Somnia





Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur

"The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived."

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


Harlequin-Horace
or, The Art of Modern Poetry
James Miller

...you can by the single wave of a HARLEQUIN'S WAND, conjure the whole Town every night into your Circle; where like a true Cunning Man, you amuse 'em with a few Puppy's Tricks while you juggle 'em out of their Pelf, and then cry out with a Note of Triumph,

Si Mundus vult Decipi,, Decipiatur.

And now, Sir, having given you a full and true account of your self, we come to say something of our selves, with a Word upon our Performance.
As to the following Piece, it is a System of the Laws of Modern Poetry establish'd amongst us by the Authority of the most successful Writers of the present Age, by which it appears that the Rules now follow'd, are in all Respects exactly the Reverse of those which were observ'd by the Authors of Antiquity, and which were set forth of old by Horace in his Epistle de Arte Poetica. In a word, Sir, it is *Horace turn'd Harlequin, with his Head where his Heels should be*; in which Posture we ween not but he will be well receiv'd by your worship, and in Consequence of that, by the whole Town.

--Nec Phoebo gratior ulla est
Quam sibi quoe Vari prescripsit pagina Nomen.
(To Phoebus is no page more welcome than that which is inscribed on its front with the name of Varus.) Virgil, Eclogue 6.11-12
**************************************

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 never 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.

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

Aegri Somnia - Sick Men's Dreams


Harlequin-Horace:
Or, the
Art of Modern Poetry


If some great Artist in whose Works conspire
The Grace of Raphael, and a Titian's Fire,
Should toil to draw the Portrait of a Fair
With Shaftsb'ry's Mien, and Harvey's pleasing Air;
A Shape that might with lovely Queenb'rough's vie,
The Smile of Vanbrugh, and a Hertford's Eye,
Thy Symmetry sweet Richmond! if 'ere Art
Could such sweet Symmetry as thine impart,
Like ORANGE cloath'd with every awful Grace,
And her bright Soul resplendent in the Face,
Till the whole Piece should a fair Venus shine
One finish'd Form, in ev'ry Part divine.
Tho' thus with all that's Justly pleasing fraught,
Our modern Connoisseurs would scorn the Draught.
Such Treatment Pope you must expect to find,
Whilst Art, and Nature in your WoRks are join'd.
'Tis not to Think with Strength, and Write with ease,
No -- 'tis the AEGRI SOMNIA now must please;
Things without Head, or Tail, or Form, or Grace,
A wild, forc'd, glaring, unconnected Mass.
Well! Bards (you say) like Painters, Licence claim,
To dare do any thing for Bread, or --Fame.
'Tis granted - therefore use your utmost Might,
To gratify the Town in all you write;
A Thousand jarring Things together yoke,
The Dog, the Dome, the Temple, and the Joke,
Consult no Order, but for ever steer
From grave to gay, from florid to severe.
To grand Beginnings full of Pomp and Show,
Big Things profest, and Brags of what you'll do,
Still some gay, glitt'ring, foreign Gewgaws join,
Which, like gilt Points on *Peter's Coat, may shine
Descriptions which may make your Readers stare,
And marvel how such pretty Things came There
(snip)
Suppose you're skill'd in the Parnassian Art,
To purge the Passions, and correct the Heart,
To paint Mankind in ev'ry Light, and Stage,
Their various Humours, Characters, and Age,
To fix each Portion in its proper Place
And give the Whole one Method, Form and Grace;
What's that to us? who pay our Pence to see
The great Productions of Profundity,
Shipwrecks, and Monsters, Conjurers, and Gods,
Where every Part is with the whole at odds.
With Truth and Likelihood we all are griev'd,
And take most Pleasure, when we're most deceiv'd,
Now wrote obscure, and let your Words move slow,
Then with full Light, and rapid Ardor glow;
In one Scene make your Hero cant, and whine,
Then roar out Liberty in every Line;
Vary one Thing a thousand pleasant Ways,
Shew Whales in Woods, and Dragons in the Seas.
To shun a Fault's the ready Way to fall,
Correctness is the greatest Fault of all.
What tho' in Pope's harmonious Lays combine,
All that is lovely, noble, and divine;
Tho' every part with Wit, and Nature glows,
And from each Line a sweet Instruction flows;
Tho' thro' the whole the Loves, and Graces smile,
Polish the Manners, and adorn the Stile?
Whil'st, Vertue's Friend, He turns the tuneful Art
From Sounds to Things, from Fancy to the Heart,
Yet slavishly to Truth and Sense tied down,
He impotently toils to please the Town.
Heav'n grant I never write like him I mention,
Since to the Bays I could not make pretension,
Nor Thresher-like, hope to obtain a Pension.
N'ere wait for Subjects equal to your Might,
For then, 'tis ten to one you never write;
When Hunger prompts you, take the first you meet,
For who'd stand chusing when he wants to eat?
Besides, Necessity's the keenest Whet;
He writes most natural, who's the most in Debt.
Take then no pains a Method to Maintain,
Or link your Work in a continu'd Chain,
But cold, dull Order gloriously disdain.
Now here, now there, launch boldly from your Theme,
And make surprising Novelties your Aim;
Bombast and Farce, the Sock and Buskin blend,
Begin with Bluster, and with Lewdness end.
(snip)
*************************************


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


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


Preposterous Chatterton
K. K. Ruthven
University of Melbourne
I.
This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof.
-William Shakespeare, Hamlet
The Oxford English Dictionary records two principal usages of the word "PREPOSTEROUS" that circulated contemporaneously in the sixteenth century. By the late nineteenth century only one was still current, and that was the pejorative sense defined as "contrary to the order of nature, or to reason or common sense; monstrous; irrational, perverse, foolish, nonsensical; in later use, utterly absurd." The other usage- listed first but rendered secondary and eventually obsolete by modernity-foregrounds the etymology of the word to articulate a politics of reversal: "having or placing last that which should be first; inverted in position or order." (snip) he ubiquity of preposterous readings calls for a supplementary literary history, the nuclear model for which is a rhetorical figure known to the ancient Greeks as hysteron proteron ("the later first"). "We name it the Preposterous," George Puttenham explained in The Arte of English Poesie (1589) when classifying hysteron proteron as a "manner of disordered speech," exemplified in the "English prouerbe, the cart before the horse." It is therefore treated with suspicion in symbolic systems that conceive of time as an arrow moving always and only from past to present. In logic, for instance, hysteron proteron names a type of fallacy in which the conclusion is said to antecede
the premises because one of them already assumes the proof for it.
As a subversive figure of disorder, hysteron proteron makes alternative literary histories possible by drawing attention to the preposterousness of various literary conventions at odds with common sense notions of sequence.

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


Jonson, Discoveries
De corruptela morum. - There cannot be one colour of the mind, another of the wit. If the mind be staid, grave, and composed, the wit is so; that vitiated, the other is blown and deflowered. Do we not see, if the mind languish, the members are dull? Look upon an effeminate person, his very gait confesseth him. If a man be fiery, his motion is so; if angry, it is troubled and violent. So that we may conclude wheresoever MANNERS and FASHIONS are corrupted, language is. It imitates the public riot. The excess of feasts and apparel are the notes of a sick state, and the wantonness of language of a SICK MIND.

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


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.

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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 -- Discoveries


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


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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A Monstrous Figure:

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


"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."
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.006...
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.


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Bodies keep well in Stratford soil, Richard Wilson tells us, so that if Shakespeare's remains were ever to be exhumed we could test the likenesses offered in portraits of the Bard. Shakespeare is of course protected by the epitaph on his gravestone, but Ben Jonson, interred in a shaft grave in Westminster Abbey, has not been so fortunate: James Shapiro reminds us that nineteenth-century digging disturbed his corpse and revealed the ignoble fact that it was buried upside down.
(Anthony Parr)
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Author: Bacon, Francis, 1561-1626.
Title: Apophthegmes new and old. Collected by the Right Honourable,
Francis Lo. Verulam, Viscount St. Alban
Date: 1625


1. WHEN Queene Elizabeth had aduanced Ralegh, she was one day playing on the virginalls, and my Lo. of Oxford, & another Noble-man, stood by. It fell out so, that the Ledge, before the Iacks, was taken away, so as the Iacks were seene: My Lo. of Oxford, and the other Noble-man
smiled, and a little whispered: The Queene marked it, and would needes know, What the matter was? My Lo. of Oxford answered; That they smiled, to see, that when Iacks went vp, Heads went downe.
(snip)

24. Diogenes hauing seene that the Kingdome of Macedon, which before was contemptible & low, began to come aloft, when hee died, was asked; How he would be buried? He answered; With my face downeward; for within a while, the world will bee turned vpside downe, and then I shall lie right.

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Preposterous Fame:


_Volpone_, Jonson:
To the most N O B L E and most E Q U A L S I S T E R S,
The two Famous Universities,

For their Love and Acceptance shewn to his P O E M in the P R E S E N
T A T I O N,
B E N. J O H N S O N,

The Grateful Acknowledger, Dedicates both It and Himself.

Never (most Equal Sisters) had any Man a Wit so presently Excellent, as that it could raise it self; but there must come both Matter, Occasion, Commenders, and Favourers to it. If this be true, and that the Fortune of all Writers doth daily prove it, it behoves the Careful to provide well toward these Accidents; and, having acquir'd them, to preserve that part of Reputation most tenderly, wherein the Benefit of a Friend is also defended. Hence is it, that I now render my self grateful, and am studious to justifie the Bounty of your Act; to which, though your meer Authority were satisfying, yet it being an AGE wherein Poetry and the Professors of it hear so ill on all Sides, there will a Reason be look't for in the Subject. It is certain, nor can it with any Forehead be oppos'd, that the too much Licence of Poetasters in this Time, hath much deform'd their Mistris; that, every day, their manifold and manifest Ignorance doth stick unnatural Reproaches upon her: But for their Petulancy, it were an Act of the greatest Injustice, either to let the Learned suffer, or so Divine a Skill (which indeed should not be attempted with unclean Hands) to fall under the least Contempt. For, if Men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the Offices and Function of a Poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the Impossibility of any Man's being the good Poet, without first being a good Man. He that is said to be able to inform young Men to all good Disciplines, inflame grown Men to all great Vertues, keep old Men in their best and supream State, or as they decline to Childhood, recover them to their first Strength; that comes forth the Interpreter and Arbiter of Nature, a Teacher of Things Divine no less than Humane, a Master in Manners; and can alone (or with a few) effect the Business of Mankind: This, I take him, is no Subject for PRIDE AND IGNORANCE to exercise their failing Rhetorick upon. But it will here be hastily answer'd, That the Writers of these Days are other Things; that not only their MANNERS, but their NATURES are INVERTED, and nothing remaining with them of the Dignity of Poet, but the abused Name, which every Scribe usurps; that now, especially in Drammatick, or (as they term it) Stage-Poetry, nothing but Ribaldry, Prophanation, Blasphemy, all Licence of Offence to God and Man is practis'd. I dare not deny a great part of this, (and I am sorry I dare not) because in some Mens abortive Features (and would they had never boasted the Light) it is over-true: But that all are imbark'd in this bold Adventure for Hell, is a most uncharitable Thought, and, utter'd, a more malicious Slander. For my particular, I can (and from a most clear Conscience) affirm, That I have ever trembled to think toward the least Profaneness; have loathed the use of such foul and unwash'd Bawd'ry, as is now made the Food of the Scene: And, howsoever I cannot escape from some the Imputation of Sharpness, but that they will say, I have taken a pride, or lust, to be bitter, and not my youngest Instant but hath come into the World with all his Teeth; I would ask of these supercilious Politicks, What Nation, Society, or general Order or State I have provoked? What Publick Person? Whether I have not (in all these) preserv'd their Dignity, as mine own Person, safe? My Works are read, allow'd, (I speak of those are intirely mine) look into them: What broad Repoofs have I us'd? Where have I been particular? Where Personal? Except to a Mimick, Cheater, Bawd, or Buffon, Creatures (for their Insolencies) worthy to be tax'd? Yet to which of these so pointingly, as he might not either ingenuously have confest, or wisely dissembled his Disease? But it is not Rumour can make Men guilty, much less entitle me to other Mens Crimes. I know, that nothing can be so innocently writ or carried, but may be made obnoxious to Construction; marry, whilst I bear mine Innocence about me, I fear it not. Application is now grown a Trade with many; and there are that profess to have a Key for the decyphering of every thing: But let Wise and Noble Persons take heed how they be too credulous, or give leave to these invading Interpreters to be over-familiar with their Fames, who cunningly, and often, utter their own virulent Malice, under other Mens simplest Meanings. As for those that will (by Faults which Charity hath rak'd up, or common Honesty conceal'd) make themselves a Name with the Multitude, or (to draw their rude and beastly Claps) care not whose living Faces they intrench with their petulant Styles, may they do it without a Rival, for me: I chuse rather to live grav'd in Obscurity, than share with them in so PREPOSTEROUS a FAME. Nor can I blame the Wishes of those severe and wise Patriots, who providing the Hurts these licentious Spirits may do in a State, desire rather to see Fools and Devils, and those antick Relicks of Barbarism retriv'd, with all other ridiculous and exploded Follies, than behold the Wounds of Private Men, of Princes and Nations. For, as Horace makes Trebatius speak, among these,
------ Sibi quisque timet, quanquam est intactus, & odit.
And Men may justly impute such Rages, if continu'd, to the Writer, as his Spots. The Increase of which Lust in Liberty, together with the present Trade of the Stage, in all their Masc'line Enterludes, what Learned or Liberal Soul doth not already abhor? Where nothing but the Filth of Time is utter'd, and that with such impropriety of Phrase, such plenty of SolOEcisms, such dearth of Sense, so bold Prolepses, so rack'd Metaphors, with Brothelry able to violate the Ear of a Pagan, and Blasphemy, to turn the Blood of a Christian to Water. I cannot but be serious in a Cause of this nature, wherein my Fame, and the Reputations of divers Honest and Learned are the Question; when a Name so full of Authority, Antiquity, and all great Mark, is (through their Insolence) become the lowest Scorn of the Age; and those Men subject to the Petulancy of every vernaculous Orator, that were wont to be the Care of Kings and happiest Monarchs. This it is that hath not only rap't me to present Indignation, but made me studious heretofore, and by all my Actions to stand off from them; which may most appear in this my latest Work (which you, most learned Arbitresses, have seen, judg'd, and to my Crown, approv'd) wherein I have labour'd, for their instruction and amendment, to reduce not only the ancient Forms, but Manners of the Scene, the Easiness, the Propriety, the Innocence, and last the Doctrine, which is the principal End of Poesie, to inform Men in the best Reason of living. And though my Catastrophe may, in the strict rigour of Comick Law, meet with Censure, as turning back to my Promise; I desire the Learned and Charitable Critick, to have so much faith in me, to think it was done of Industry: For, with what ease I could have varied it nearer his Scale (but that I fear to boast my own Faculty) I could here insert. But my special aim being to put the Snaffle in their Mouths, that cry out, we never punish Vice in our Enterludes, &c. I took the more liberty; though not without some Lines of Example, drawn even in the Ancients themselves, the Goings-out of whose ComOEdies are not always joyful, but oft-times the Bawds, the Servants, the Rivals, yea, and the Masters, are mulcted; and fitly, it being the Office of a Comick Poet to imitate Justice, and instruct to Life, as well as Purity of Language, or stir up gentle Affections: To which I shall take the occasion elsewhere to speak. For the present (most Reverenced Sisters) as I have car'd to be thankful for your Affections past, and here made the Understanding acquainted with some Ground of your Favours; let me not despair their Continuance, to the maturing of some worthier Fruits: Wherein, if my Muses be true to me, I shall raise the despis'd Head of Poetry again, and stripping her out of those rotten and base Rags wherewith the Times have adulterated her Form, restore her to her primitive Habit, Feature, and Majesty, and render her worthy to be embraced and kist of all the Great and Master- Spirits of our World. As for the Vile and Slothful, who never affected an Act worthy of Celebration, or are so inward with their own vicious Natures, as they worthily fear her, and think it a high Point of Policy to keep her in contempt with their declamatory and windy Invectives; she shall out of just rage incite her Servants (who are Genus iritabile) *to spout Ink in their Faces, that shall eat farther than their Marrow, into their Fames; and not Cinnamus the Barber, with his Art, shall be able to take out the Brands; but they shall live, and be read, till the Wretches die, as Things worst deserving of Themselves in chief, and then of all Mankind*.

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Jonson's dedication to his Epigrammes.
TO THE GREAT EXAMPLE
OF HONOR AND VERTUE,
tHE MOST NOBLE
WILLIAM, EARLE OF PEMBROKE,
L. CHAMBERLAYNE, &C.

MY LORD.

While you cannot change your merit, I dare not change your title: It was that made it, and not I. Under which name, I here offer to your LO: the ripest of my studies, my Epigrammes; which though they carry danger in the sound, doe not therefore seeke your shelter: For, when I made them, I had nothing in my conscience, to expressing of which I did need a cypher. But, if I be falne into those times, wherein, for the likenesse of vice and facts, every one thinks anothers ill deeds objected to him, and that in their IGNORANT and guilty mouthes, the common voyce is (for their securitie) Beware the Poet, confessing, therein, so much love to their DISEASES, as they would rather make a partie for them, then be either rid, or told of them: I must expect, at you Lo: hand, the protection of truth, and libertie, while you are constant to your owne goodnesse. In thankes whereof, I returne you the honor of leading forth so many good and great names (as my verses mention on the better part) to their remembrance with posteritie. Amongst whom, if I have praysed, unfortunately , any one, that doth not deserve; or, if all answere not, in all numbers, the pictures I have made of them: I hope it will be forgiven me, that they are no ill pieces, though they be not like the persons. But I foresee a neerer fate to my book, then this: that the vices therein will be own'd before the vertues (though, there, I have avoyded all particulars, as I have done names) and that some will be readie to discredit me, as they will have the impudence to belye themselves. For, if I meant them not, it is so. Nor, can I hope otherwise. For, why should they remit any thing of their riot, their pride, their self-love, and other inherent graces, to consider truth or vertue; but , with the trade of the world, lend their long eares against men they love not: and hold their deare MOUNTEBANK, or JESTER, in farre better condition, then all the studie, or studiers of humanitie? For such, I would rather know them by their VISARDS, still, then they should publish their FACES, at their perill, in my Theater, where CATO, if he liv'd, might enter without scandall. Your Lo: most faithfull honorer,
Ben. Jonson

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To the Great Example of H O N O U R and V E R T U E, the most Noble
W I L L I A M
E A R L of P E M B R O K E , L O R D C H A M B E R L A I N, &c.
M Y L O R D,
I
N so thick and dark an IGNORANCE, as now almost covers the AGE, I crave leave to stand near your Light, and by that to be read. Posterity may pay your Benefit the Honour and Thanks, when it shall know, that you dare, in these JIG-GIVEN TIMES, to countenance a Legitimate Poem. I must call it so, against all noise of Opinion: from whose crude and airy Reports, I appeal to that great and singular Faculty of Judgment in your Lordship, able to vindicate Truth from Error. It is the First (of this Race) that ever I dedicated to any Person; and had I not thought it the best, it should have been taught a less Ambition. Now it approacheth your Censure chearfully, and with the same assurance that Innocency would appear before a Magistrate.

Your Lordships most faithful Honourer,
BEN. JOHNSON.

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Soul of an Ignorant Age:

Jonson, Discoveries
Ignorantia animae. - I know no disease of the soul but IGNORANCE; not of the arts and sciences, but of itself: yet relating to those it is a pernicious evil, the darkener of man's life, the disturber of his reason, and common confounder of truth: with which a man goes groping in the dark, no otherwise than if he were blind. Great understandings are most racked and troubled with it: nay, sometimes they will rather die than not to know the things they study for. Think then what an EVIL it is, and what good the contrary.
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De Shakspeare NOSTRAT. - Augustus in Hat. - I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakspeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, “Would he had blotted a thousand,” which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their IGNORANCE who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted;



Friday, April 9, 2010

A Truly Prodigious Wit





Immortalizing a Monstrous Wit


The epigraph to _Sejanus:_

Non hic Centauros, non Gorgonas, Harpyiasque
Invenies: Hominem pagina nostra sapit. Mart.

The English translation of the poem Mart 10.4

You, who read of Oedipus and Thyestes neath a darkened sun, of Colchian witches and Scyllas - of what do you read but monsters? What will the rape of Hylas avail you, what Parthenopaeus and Attis, what the sleeper Endymion? or the boy stripped of his gliding wings? or Hermaphroditus who hates the amorous waters? Why does the vain twaddle of a wretched sheet attract you? read this of which Life can say" :Tis my own". Not here will you find centaurs, nor gorgons and harpies: tis of man my page smacks. But you do not wish, Mamurra, to recognize your own manners, or to know yourself. Read the Origins of Callimachus (trans. Walter C.A. Ker, the Loeb Classical Library).

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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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Notes to Horace, Art of Poetry:

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

prodigialiter
unnaturally, extravagantly

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extravagari - wandering beyond bounds

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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 chose to place 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"

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Greville, An Inquisition vpon Fame and Honour.

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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Jig-given times/Jonson

He is loth to make Na-
ture afraid in his Plays, like those that beget Tales, Tem-
pests, and such like Drolleries, to mix his HEAD with
mens HEELS ; let the CONCUPISCENCE of
Jigs and Dances,
reign as strong as it will amongst you:

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

To the Great Example of H O N O U R and V E R T U E, the most Noble

W I L L I A M

E A R L of P E M B R O K E , L O R D C H A M B E R L A I N, &c.

M Y L O R D,

I
N so thick and dark an IGNORANCE, as now almost covers the AGE, I
crave leave to stand near your Light, and by that to be read.
Posterity may pay your Benefit the Honour and Thanks, when it shall
know, that you dare, in these JIG-GIVEN times, to countenance a
Legitimate Poem. I must call it so, against all noise of Opinion: from
whose crude and airy Reports, I appeal to that great and singular
Faculty of Judgment in your Lordship, able to vindicate Truth from
Error. It is the First (of this Race) that ever I dedicated to any
Person; and had I not thought it the best, it should have been taught
a less Ambition. Now it approacheth your Censure chearfully, and with
the same assurance that Innocency would appear before a Magistrate.

Your Lordships most faithful Honourer,

BEN. JOHNSON.

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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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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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True and False Wit:

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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DISCOVERIES MADE UPON MEN AND MATTER -- Jonson
De corruptela morum. - There cannot be one colour of the mind, another of the wit. If the mind be staid, grave, and composed, the wit is so; that vitiated, the other is blown and deflowered. Do we not see, if the mind languish, the members are dull? Look upon an effeminate person, his very gait confesseth him. If a man be fiery, his motion is so; if angry, it is troubled and violent. So that we may conclude wheresoever MANNERS and FASHIONS are corrupted, language is. It imitates the public riot. The excess of feasts and apparel are the notes of a sick state, and the wantonness of language of a sick mind.

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TO THE MEMORY OF MY BELOVED
*MASTER* WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
AND WHAT HE HATH LEFT US
by Ben Jonson

Yet must I not give Nature all ; thy art,
My gentle Shakspeare, must enjoy a part.
For though the poet's matter nature be,
His art doth give the fashion : and, that he
Who casts to write a living line, must sweat,
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat
Upon the Muses' anvil ; turn the same,
And himself with it, that he thinks to frame ;
Or for the laurel he may gain a SCORN ;
For a good poet's made, as well as born.
And such wert thou ! Look how the father's FACE
Lives in his issue, even so the race
Of Shakspeare's MIND and MANNERS brightly shines
In his well torned and true filed lines;
In each of which he seems to shake a lance,
As brandisht at the eyes of ignorance.

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

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