Urbino was immortalized by Castiglione.
The Elizabethan Courtier was made ridiculous by Jonson. Amorphus's 'philosophy of style' was viewed by Jonson as a corrupting influence on the court:
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. (snip)
Jonson
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Sociability, Cartesianism, and Nostalgia in Libertine Discourse
Elena Russo
...When the petit-maître Versac, in Crébillon's Les Egarements du coeur et de l'esprit, decides to take under his wing the young and inexperienced Meilcour, in order to initiate him to the social game of galanterie, he is careful to choose a secluded spot where their conversation will not be disturbed. Their dialogue demands not only tranquillity but also secrecy.
(snip)
Versac dazzles Meilcour from their first meeting with his perfect command of his social persona: he displays the sense of ease and naturalness that is recommended by all the classical theoreticians of sociability, from Castiglione, to Méré, to La Rochefoucauld, to name just a few: "Coolly likable and always pleasing, both by the content and by the new turn he gave to the things he said, he lent an unexpected charm to the stories he related after others, and nobody was able to relate after him the stories of his own invention. He had composed the charms of his body and those of his mind and was able to appropriate those unique attractions that can be neither imitated nor defined . . . It seemed that such easy impertinence was a gift that nature had bestowed upon him only. Nobody could resemble him. 6 Thanks to his command of body and language, Versac has mastered an art de plaire which lies in a renewed effect of surprise and a capacity to be creative with his own self: everything he says and does has a "tournure neuve" and a "charme nouveau." His "heureuse impertinence" corresponds to Castiglione's noble "sprezzatura," the art of doing everything as if it came naturally. In a language deeply indebted to classical aesthetics, Meilcour evokes Versac's "grâces" and "agréments," which cannot be imitated because the effect of surprise they create is endlessly renewed and always different. In his undefinable power of seduction, the libertine is the direct heir of the seventeenth-century honnête homme, whose capacity to please is both the natural gift of his aristocratic nature and the product of a hidden art, both concurring to create a charm, a je-ne-sais-quoi that cannot be analyzed because it knows no rules and no codification. The language of the libertine is indebted to the seventeenth-century reflection on sociability. His discourse makes constant reference to "honnêteté," "bienséance" and the authority of established "usage." And yet, the libertine spirit is in many respects the very antithesis of the ideal of honnêteté.
In the classical reflection on honnêteté, social virtues are seen as universal; they are both rooted in nature and in the norms and practices of the community of honnêtes gens, whose values are represented as universal. This community finds its unity in a shared language and norms that are at once perfectly "natural" and [End Page 385] perfectly coded. They are natural because they are supposed to conform to nature and create an effect of spontaneity, but they are also coded, since "nature" itself is nothing but an ideal model sanctioned by the rules of vraisemblance and bienséance, the content of which is defined, in its turn, by the community of honnêtes gens. 7 The honnête subject thus finds his or her expression in the miraculous correspondence between his or her own "naturel" and the ideal model he or she strives to conform to. Honnêteté strikes a balance between the "private" aristocratic self (already socialized through and through) and the public, idealized language of the community. For Méré honnêteté is universal because it is based on reason: "True honnêteté . . . is nothing if not just and reasonable in every part of the world, because it is universal and its manners belong to every court, from one end of the earth to the other . . . Changes in space, revolutions in time and differences in custom take nothing away from it." (snip)
Stoicism is not unique to the eighteenth-century libertine; Méré's honnête homme, his predecessor, displayed a similar stoic awareness of the theatrical nature of social roles. Here is what he says in his essay "Le commerce du monde": "I am convinced that on many occasions it is useful to consider what we do as a comedy, and to imagine that we are playing a character on the stage. That prevents us from taking things too much at heart and gives us a freedom of language and action that we do not have when we are preoccupied and troubled by fear." 16 However, Méré's metaphor of the theater does not have the same value it has in Versac's discourse. For Méré, role playing does not involve thwarting and repressing the self, but only aims at protecting it. The Latin motto adopted by the erudite libertines, Intus ut libet, foris ut [End Page 388] moris est (inside as if free, outside as if bound by custom) 17 applies to the honnête homme as well, since it prescribes a critical attitude towards social forms and an inner freedom for the self that should keep it from becoming too dependent on the community whose norms it professes to follow. However, the libertine honnête homme is not a mere hypocrite, because even though he tries to see himself as playing a role, the role he plays is his own: act thyself is the necessary complement of be thyself. "The heart is no less necessary than the mind to the activities of polite society because society is not an empty appearance like the theater, but always involves some real sentiment," writes Méré in the same passage. 18 The metaphor of the theater has therefore a double function in the discourse of honnêteté. On the one hand, it reveals a desire to preserve critical distance and inner freedom, on the other, it indicates a belief in the necessity to mold and fashion the private self for the sake of its public appearance. The latter point needs some explanation. Acting one's own "real" character allows the honnête homme to channel his true nature along the path prescribed by the rules of bienséance, to present an aesthetically more appealing version of himself. In the words of Méré I just quoted, acting gives "freedom" from troubling feelings such as "crainte et inquiétude," which make a person awkward and unfit to appear in public. In the discourse of honnêteté, ethics merges with aesthetics, and the true criterion of moral behavior is a capacity to please; one's own natural disposition has therefore to be worked on, it has to be molded into an acceptable form. It is important to understand that seventeenth-century writers of sociability all try to strike a fragile balance between unhewn nature and a preestablished ideal model of behavior embodied in the rules of bienséance; all their efforts go at reconciling the two. In his essay "De l'air et des manières," La Rochefoucauld judges the socialized self in the same way as he would a work of art: there has to be a "harmony" between one's attitude, gestures, tone, and one's thoughts and feelings. The metaphor he uses is borrowed from music: "The reason why we often displease is that nobody knows how to make one's manners and air conform to one's countenance, one's tone with one's thoughts and sentiments. We disturb their harmony by something false and unfamiliar . . . nobody has an ear attuned enough to hear perfectly that sort of cadence." 19 Taste replaces moral judgment about the self: the accomplished honnête homme manages to balance and harmonize the different parts of his self, and creates, by the same token, a pleasing social persona.
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Jennifer Richards _Rhetoric and Courtliness in Early Modern Literature_
"Sixteenth century humanists inherited an overlapping but distinct Socratic dialogue style which informed that rival genre to the courtesy book, the husbandry manual. The figures of the courtier and the husbandman offer different styles of social and commercial exchange and also different styles of 'honesty' which are not easily translated into a modern political idiom. to understand these traditions we will nee to be more open in our thinking about where we locate 'subversive' or 'conservative' agendas. *The representation of the courtier as dissembling in much modern criticism, for example, indicates the victory of the plain husbandman as a social and cultural authority*. Yet, there are good reasons why such plain-speakers are not to be trusted, not least because there is no way of knowing whether the claim to be telling the truth, or the promise of transparency, however plainly put, is not also a rhetorical ploy which aims to occlude the interests of others. (p.5)
(SNIP)
One idea which is examined closely (note-in Guazzo's Civile Conversation) is the virtue of 'honesty', a virtue which serves as a glue to all social relationships. In the course of his conversation with Anniball, William will learn to appreciate the greater honesty of the dissimulative courtier rather than the anti-social simplicity of the 'scholler'. For the scholar only maintains his simple lifestyle by removing himself from the rough and tumble of daily social interaction, whereas the courtier attempts to balance honestly - or decorously - personal aspirations with social duty...I want to explore how the character of Anniball makes William honest and sociable in Civile Conversation, and also how, in the attempt, the concept of 'honesty' is defined in such a way as to make plain the potential of others. I will also explore, however, how seemingly honest converstaion can equally disguise the power dynamic of intimate relationships...'Honesty' remains the crucial term here: how we define it will affect profoundly the way in which we imagine people should relate to one another." (p.23)
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Oxfordian/Shakespearean honnêteté, and Jonsonian 'honesty':
Mocking honnêteté:
Cynthia's Revels
Act II, Sc. iii
Asotus. Crites, I have a sute to you; but you must not
deny me: pray you make this Gentleman and I friends.
Crites. Friends! Why? is there any difference between
you?
Aso. No, I mean acquaintance, to know one ano-
ther.
Cri. O, now I apprehend you; your phrase was
without me before.
Aso. In good faith, he's a most excellent rare Man,
I warrant him!
Cri. 'Slight, they are mutually enamour'd by this
time!
Aso. Will you, sweet Crites?
Cri. Yes, yes.
Aso. Nay, but when? you'll defer it now, and for-
get it.
Cri. Why, is't a thing of such present necessity, that
it requires so violent a dispatch?
Aso. No, but (would I might never stir) he's a most
ravishing man! good Crites, you shall endear me to you,
in good faith-law.
Cri. Well, your longing shall be satisfied, Sir.
Aso. And withal, you may tell him what my Father
was, and how well he left me, and that I am his Heir.
Cri. Leave it to me, I'll forget none of your dear
graces, I warrant you.
Aso. Nay, I know you can better marshal these Af-
fairs than I can — O Gods! I'd give all the world (if
I had it) for abundance of such acquaintance.
Cri. What ridiculous Circumstance might I devise
now, to bestow this reciprocal brace of Butter-flies one
upon another?
Amo. Since I trode on this side the Alpes, I was not
so frozen in my Invention. Let me see: to accost him
with some choice remnant of Spanish, or Italian? that
would indifferently express my languages now: mar-
ry then, if he should fall out to be ignorant, it were
both hard and harsh. How else? step into some ra-
gioni del stato, and so make my induction? that were
above him too; and out of his Element, I fear. Feign
to have seen him in Venice or Padua? or some face neer
his in similitude? 'tis too pointed, and open. No, it
must be a more quaint, and collateral device. As —
stay: to frame some encomiastick Speech upon this our
Metropolis, or the wise Magistrates thereof, in which
politick number, 'tis odds, but his Father fill'd up a
Room? descend into a particular admiration of their
Justice, for the due measuring of Coals, burning of
Cans, and such like? as also Religion, in pulling
down a superstitious Cross, and advancing a Venus, or
Priapus, in place of it? ha? 'twill do well. Or to talk
of some Hospital, whose Walls record his Father a
Benefactor? or of so many Buckets bestow'd on his
Parish-church, in his life time, with his name at length
(for want of Arms) trickt upon them? Any of these?
Or to praise the cleanness of the Street, wherein he
dwelt? or the provident painting of his Posts against he
should have been Prætor? Or (leaving his Parent) come
to some special Ornament about himself, as his Rapier,
or some other of his Accoutrements? I have it: Thanks,
gracious Minerva.
Aso. Would I had but once spoke to him, and
then — He comes to me.
Amo. 'Tis a most curious, and neatly-wrought Band,
this same, as I have seen Sir.
Aso. O God, Sir.
Amo, You forgive the humour of mine Eye, in ob-
serving it.
Cri. His Eye waters after it, it seems.
Aso. O Lord, Sir, there needs no such Apology, I as-
sure you.
Cri. I am anticipated: they'll make a solemn deed of
gift of themselves, you shall see.
Amo. Your Ribband too do's most gracefully, in troth.
Aso. 'Tis the most gentile, and receiv'd wear now,
Sir.
Amo. Believe me, Sir, (I speak it not to humour you)
I have not seen a young Gentleman (generally) put on
his Cloaths with more judgment.
Aso. O, 'tis your pleasure to say so, Sir.
Amo. No, as I am vertuous (being altogether un-
travel'd) it strikes me into wonder.
**********************************
William Empson points out that 'honest' and 'honesty' are used 52 times in Othello, writing that 'in Othello, divergent uses of th(is) key word are found for all the main characters; even the attenuated clown plays upon it; the unchaste Bianca, for instance, snatches a moment to claim that she is more honest than Emilia the thief of the handkerchief; and with all the variety of use the ironies on the word mount up steadily to the end. Such is the general power of the writing that this is not obtrusive, but if all but the phrases involving honest were in the style of Ibsen the effect would be a symbolical charade. Everyone calls Iago honest once or twice, but with Othello it becomes an obsession; at the crucial moment just before Emilia exposes Iago he keeps howling the word out. (William Empson, _Honest in Othello_)
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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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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. (Discoveries 1751)
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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.
*************************************
Interlaced with beautiful songs and lyrics, Lodge's elegant "Rosalynd" is among the finest works of Elizabethan prose, of intrinsic interest in its own right and, as the source for "As You Like It," essential reading for students of Shakespeare
'Howsoever, you are a great philosopher in Venus' principles, else could you not discover her secret aphorisms. But, sir, our country amours are not like your courtly fancies, nor is our wooing like your suing, for poor shepherds never plain them till love pain them, where the courtier's eyes is full of passions when his heart is most free from affection. they court to discover their eloquence, we woo to ease our sorrows. Every fair face with them must have a new fancy sealed with a FOREFINGER KISS and a far-fetched sigh, we here love one, and live to that one so long as life can maintain love, using few ceremonies because we know few subtleties, and little eloquence for that we ightly account of flattery; only faith and troth, that's shepherds' wooing; and, sir, how like you of this?' 'So,' quoth Saladyn, 'as I could tie myself to such a love.'
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Purging 'honest' Ben:
Iago's Clyster:
Purgation, Anality, and the Civilizing Process
Ben Saunders
This essay considers Othello in relation to early modern discourses of anality and purgation, reading certain scatological tropes as the metaphorical indices of more pervasive and pernicious cultural fantasies. (Snip)
I will begin with an aside spoken by Iago, when he reveals his plan to turn Cassio's courteous behavior toward Desdemona into evidence of adultery:
He takes her by the palm; ay, well said, whisper. With as little
web as this I will ensnare as great a fly as Cassio. Ay, smile upon
her, do: I will gyve thee in thine own courtesies. You say true, 'tis
so indeed. If such tricks as these strip you out of your lieutenantry,
it had been better you had not KISSED your THREE FINGERS so oft, which
now again you are most apt to play the sir in. Very good, well kissed,
and excellent courtesy: 'tis so indeed! Yet again, your fingers to
your lips? would they were clyster-pipes for your sake!
(2.1.167-77)3
Iago has seen that, in a culture already inclined to foster anxious masculinist fantasies about the promiscuous female, public conventions of courtesy and lechery are barely a semiotic step apart. His swiftly improvised plot to "gyve" the objects of his hatred by closing this narrow gap wins the appalled admiration of critics who read this moment as just one among many in which Iago displays a distinctly artistic viciousness--here, taking what we might describe as *wicked poetic license with an innocent social grammar*. But Cassio, by his smiling, whispering, and repeated kissing of his own hand, does more than provide Iago with the material to construct an artful trap; he also sets Iago thinking in terms of lower-body functions and, specifically, in terms of the medicinal "clyster," or enema.
What does it mean for Iago to wish Cassio's fingers into clyster pipes? Although most editors gloss the phrase as "enema tubes," none, to my knowledge, has attempted to explicate Iago's precise intention in invoking them--reasonably enough, perhaps, since the image's affective force cannot be expressed by simple paraphrase. To make the attempt, nonetheless: Iago seems to be suggesting that Cassio would be slower to indulge in courteous finger-kissing gestures if his fingers had recently been inserted into someone's anus. The implication is therefore something like you'd cut that out if you knew what was good for you! or you wouldn't put them in your mouth if you knew where they had been!
(snip)
In this essay I will elaborate a hermeneutic strategy that builds on the hints provided by Iago's attraction to verbal figures of purgation, evacuation, and oral/anal substitution and displacement, as witnessed in this passage. By attending to the neglected (waste) matter of bodily purgation and regulation in this play, I hope not only to say something about early modern anality but also to broaden our sense of its relation to a historically emergent racist vocabulary. In the process I will expand on the (by-now) commonplace notion that Othello generates a good deal of its aesthetic effect, and emotional affect, through "a black/white opposition" that is "built into the play at every level." Assuming the centrality of a related opposition between civilization and barbarism, which I find reinscribed and deconstructed throughout the text, I will suggest that the process of ideological invention whereby "civilized" man is distinguished from his "barbaric" other emerges in Othello quite literally from the sewer. In this account, Iago represents not only a portrait of the villain as anal-retentive artist but also as the Shakespearean figure who expresses the (disavowed) centrality of lower- body functions to the production of "civilized" Christian masculinity-- and who therefore also best reveals the violent, disciplinary force that is the (again, disavowed) foundation of that "civilizing" process.
(snip
"I cannot imagine any spectator leaving Othello feeling cleansed." --Edward Pechter
An excretory précis of the plot of Othello therefore runs as follows: Iago talks shit, pumping pestilence into Othello's ear, literally filling Othello's head with shit, until he believes that his love object smells like shit, and comes to feel that he has actually been smeared with shit--shit that can be washed away only with Desdemona's blood. Then, upon killing her, Othello discovers that he has not removed the stain but has rather become the very substance that soils: along with everything else he touches, Iago has turned Othello into shit.
(snip)
To conclude by returning briefly to the "clyster-pipes" that initially inspired my inquiry: these pipes may now look more unpleasant than ever, though in the context of the foregoing arguments, their invocation is perhaps less startling. For the entire text of Othello can be read as in some sense the result of Iago's investment in violent evacuation and purgation. Iago--who restores the "natural" order in terms of normative homo-social and racially pure power relations--might even see his actions as analogous to those of the early modern physician, restoring health to what he would consider a diseased body politic, clogged as it is with unhealthful foreign excrements that have risen from the lower extremities, where they belong, to positions of power and authority: "Work on, / My medicine, work!" he cries, as the fit seizes Othello and drives him to his knees (4.1.44-45). He hatches a plot to expunge Venetian society of everything he associates with lower-body functions: women, people of color, sexual desire. Iago's "monstrous birth" is no baby, then, but rather a tremendous evacuation--the inevitable and horrific consequence of a "diet of revenge." And the complete success of Iago's enema is attested to when this masterful shitmonger has nothing left to say: "Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. / From this time forth I never will speak word" (5.2.300-301). The clyster has done its work. Othello, Desdemona, Emilia, and Roderigo lie dead, and Iago is . . . empty. Silent. Purged. But Iago's sadistic drives have already exposed the civilized impulses toward order, control, and cleanliness, impulses that provide one linguistic matrix for modern racism, as rooted in a series of paradoxical disavowals and denials: the obsessive need for order that itself produces chaos; the tremendous appetite to deny appetite; the consuming passion to be free of passion; the excessive desire to eliminate all excess; the overpowering lust to banish lust. Shakespeare has personified the civilizing process in Iago, an anal-retentive proto-racist poet devoted to the terrible logic of the purge.
Barbarous, passionate Othello/Shakespeare
Civilized, self-restrained Iago
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Jonson:
I envy not this BUFFONE, for indeed
Neither his fortunes nor his parts deserve it:
But I do hate him, as I hate the devil,
Or that BRASS-VISAGED monster Barbarism.
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Shakespeare and Voltaire.
Thomas R. Lounsbury
Review author[s]: Walter T. Peirce
Modern Language Notes, Vol. 18, No. 6. (Jun., 1903), pp. 178-179.
(...)The book is timely. We know that Voltaire once wrote a letter to the Academy on the subject of Shakespeare, and that he referred to him as a drunken savage. But no one before Professor Lounsbury, I think, has collected the various remarks of Voltaire on the subject, or traced the growth of his hatred through fifty years.
(snip)
(Voltaire) himself had patronized Shakespeare, but with a distinct sense of that author's shortcomings. Bur when it came to the point of his being read and approved of in France, this was another matter. To quote Professor Lounsbury:
"From the outset Shakespeare had been in his eyes an inspired barbarian. As time moved on, he came to forget the adjective and remembered only the noun."
From this time until his death in 1778 Voltaire never desisted from the struggle in behalf of the honor, not to say of the preservation, of the classic French drama. He was never silent on the subject for long at a time, and toward the end of his life his remonstrance rises to a senile shriek. In his letters, in his prefaces, in his Commentary on Corneille, in his Philosophic Dictionary, he piles abuse on him whom he now calls GILLES - the clown. His tragedies are heaps of incredible stories, monstrous farces. His breaches of good taste would be tolerated nowhere save in the dark ages of an uncivilized country. And the author himself is a drunken savage.
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Shakespeare's Race and Ben's Tribe:
"In the classical reflection on honnêteté, social virtues are seen as universal; they are both rooted in nature and in the norms and practices of the community of *honnêtes gens*, whose values are represented as universal. " --
(The Latin word for Race is Gens, Gens is defined as: clan, race, nation, people, TRIBE. )
The Race of Shakespeare's Mind and Manners
Look how the father's face
Lives in his issue, even so the RACE
Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines
In his well-turned, and true-filed lines;
In each of which he SEEMS to shake a lance,
As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance.
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Jonson
Cynthia's Revels
CRI. [COMING FORWARD.]
Do, good Detraction, do, and I the while
Shall shake thy spight off with a careless smile.
Poor piteous gallants! what lean idle slights
Their thoughts suggest to flatter their starv'd hopes!
As if I knew not how to entertain
These straw-devices; but, of force must yield
To the weak stroke of their calumnious tongues.
What should I care what every dor doth buz
In credulous ears? It is a crown to me
That the best judgments can report me wrong'd;
Them liars; and their slanders impudent.
Perhaps, upon the rumour of their speeches,
Some grieved friend will whisper to me; Crites,
Men speak ill of thee. So they be ill men,
If they spake worse, 'twere better: for of such
To be dispraised, is the most perfect praise.
What can his censure hurt me, whom the world
Hath censured vile before me! If good Chrestus,
Euthus, or Phronimus, had spoke the words,
They would have moved me, and I should have call'd
My thoughts and actions to a strict account
Upon the hearing: but when I remember,
'Tis Hedon and Anaides, alas, then
I think but what they are, and am not stirr'd.
The one a light voluptuous reveller,
The other, a strange arrogating puff,
Both impudent, and ignorant enough;
That talk as they are wont, not as I merit;
Traduce by custom, as most dogs do bark,
Do nothing out of judgment, but disease,
Speak ill, because they never could speak well.
And who'd be angry with this RACE OF CREATURES?
What wise physician have we ever seen
Moved with a frantic man? the same affects
That he doth bear to his sick patient,
Should a right mind carry to such as these;
And I do count it a most rare revenge,
That I can thus, with such a sweet neglect,
Pluck from them all the pleasure of their malice;
For that's the mark of all their enginous drifts,
To wound my patience, howso'er they seem
To aim at other objects; which if miss'd,
Their envy's like an arrow shot upright,
That, in the fall, endangers their own heads.
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_Cynthia's Revels_ Act V, Sc. 1
SCENE I. THE SAME.
[ENTER MERCURY AND CRITES.]
MER. It is resolved on, Crites, you must do it.
CRI. The grace divinest Mercury hath done me,
In this vouchsafed discovery of himself,
Binds my observance in the utmost term
Of satisfaction to his godly will:
Though I profess, without the affectation
Of an enforced and form'd austerity,
I could be willing to enjoy no place
With so unequal natures.
MER. We believe it.
But for our sake, and to inflict just pains
On their prodigious follies, aid us now:
No man is presently made bad with ill.
And good men, like the sea, should still maintain
Their noble taste, in midst of all fresh humours
That flow about them, to corrupt their streams,
Bearing no season, much less salt of goodness.
It is our purpose, Crites, to correct,
And punish, with our laughter, this night's sport,
Which our court-dors so heartily intend:
And by that worthy scorn, to make them know
How far beneath the dignity of man
Their serious and most practised actions are.
CRI. Ay, but though Mercury can warrant out
His undertakings, and make all things good,
Out of the powers of his divinity,
Th' offence will be return'd with weight on me,
That am a creature so despised and poor;
When the whole court shall take itself abused
By our ironical confederacy.
MER. You are deceived. The BETTER RACE in court,
That have the true nobility call'd virtue,
Will apprehend it, as a grateful right
Done to their separate merit; and approve
The fit rebuke of so ridiculous heads,
Who, with their apish customs and forced garbs,
Would bring the name of courtier in contempt,
Did it not live unblemish'd in some few,
Whom equal Jove hath loved, and Phoebus form'd
Of better metal, and in better mould.
CRI. Well, since my leader-on is Mercury,
I shall not fear to follow. If I fall,
My proper virtue shall be my relief,
That follow'd such a cause, and such a chief.
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In each of which he SEEMS to shake a lance, /As brandish'd at the eyes of ignorance. TOTEM AND TABOO IN THE TRIBE OF BEN: THE DUPLICITY OF GENDER AND JONSON'S SATIRES BY VICTORIA SILVER
Thus the epigram "On Something, that Walks Somewhere" (Epigrams XI) equates "brave" or ostentatious dress with the activity of "SEEMING" good, substantial and duly paternal -- namely, "a statesman" (1-2). This configuration of effects or signs typifies the presumptive courtier and fashionable man-about-town in such satires as "On the New Motion," "On Don Surly," "To Mime," or supremely "On the Town's Honest Man," one of Jonson's attacks on Inigo Jones, the author of "shows, shows, mighty shows" ("An Expostulation with Inigo Jones" [39]). And because they commit this fraud to acquire illegitimate status and power (an argument usually taken up in the verse epistles like "To a Friend, to Persuade Him to the Wars" [Underwoods XV]), the effeminate invariably break the grand taboo of insurgency against the status quo, in the process becoming prodigious and deformed. Accordingly, to the moral imposture of statesmanship manufactured from clothes, title and grave looks, Jonson's little epigram adds the concomitance of sexual disfigurement and monstrosity, simultaneously neutering and denaturing the courtier with his choice of pronoun and the command to "walk dead still" (8). If one may return again to Epicoene, the synergy of moral imposture and artificial display is the argument made by Clerimont's song ("Still to be neat, still to be dressed"): the presumption that especially where "art's hid causes are not found, / All is not sweet, all is not sound" (4-6). Every vice in Jonson's satires involves a similar practice of deceit, especially of the EYE, and is exposed to the shrewd observer by the sort of excessive display put on by the lady here: "Still to be neat, still to be dressed, / As you were going to a feast; / Still to be powdered, still perfumed" (1-3). The iteration of "still" conveys a further quality of the semblances of vice, which is that they involve an immense activity merely to "appear" like virtue. The vicious are thus singularly mobile in Jonson, an image of their seditious and epidemic pictorial energy. And the shrubs, the courtlings, the Captains Hungry and Surly, the Guts and Groins, my Lords Ignorant, the plagiarists and censors, the spies, the Fine Lady Would-be's, Court Pucell's, all in one way or another follow this same pattern. They each undertake to create an illusion that Jonson detects in the very excess or ostentation, the virulent energy of its display, whether this illusion is created by speech, by dress, by title, by profession, or in the case of Sir Voluptuous Beast, by panoramic sex.
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T H E F O R E S T .
XIII. — EPISTLE TO KATHARINE LADY AUBIGNY.
(snip)
..............What if alone,
Without companions ? 'tis safe to have none.
In single paths dangers with ease are watch'd ;
Contagion in the press is soonest catch'd.
This makes, that wisely you decline your life 50
Far from the maze of custom, error, strife,
And keep an even, and unalter'd gait ;
Not looking by, or back, like those that wait
Times and occasions, to START FORTH, and SEEM.
Which though the turning world may disesteem,
Because that studies spectacles and shows,
And after varied, as fresh objects, goes,
Giddy with change, and therefore cannot see
Right, the right way ; yet must your comfort be
Your conscience, and not wonder if none asks 60
For truth's complexion, where they all wear masks.
Let who will follow fashions and attires,
Maintain their liegers forth for foreign wires,
Melt down their husbands land, to pour away
On the close groom and page, on new-year's day,
And almost all days after, while they live ;
They find it both so witty, and safe to give.
Let them on powders, oils, and paintings spend,
Till that no usurer, nor his bawds dare lend
Them or their officers ; and no man know, 70
Whether it be a face they wear or no.
Let them waste body and state ; and after all,
When their own parasites laugh at their fall,
May they have nothing left, whereof they can
Boast, but how oft they have gone wrong to man,
And call it their brave sin : for such there be
That do sin only for the infamy ;
And never think, how vice doth every hour
Eat on her clients, and some one devour.
You, madam, young have learn'd to shun these shelves, 80
Whereon the most of mankind wreck themselves,
And keeping a just course, have early put
Into your harbor, and all passage shut
'Gainst storms or pirates, that might charge your peace ;
