When exactly did Oxford begin writing the comedies and interludes that earned him such high praise?
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Shakespearean Fisedia:
From _The Italian Shakespearians_ Marvin Carlson:
...The leading tragedians of this period in Italy - Alfieri and subsequently Monti, Ugo Foscolo, and Giovannis Pindemonte - all expressed warm praise for the English dramatist [Shakespeare], but in theory and practice remained far closer to Voltaire. Alfieri lists Shakespeare along with Racine and Aeschylus in his Vita as one of the dramatists he most reveres, but like Voltaire he finds a danger in this very attraction: "Howsoever much I felt myself drawn toward this author (all of whose defects at the same time I could very well see), I was that muc more determined to keep away from him." Similarly Foscolo in a letter of 1809 rhetorically inquired who did not feel his mind broadened and elevated by reading the "sublime" Shakekspeare but went on to inquire who at the same time was unaware of the faults and extravagances of this author.
Only one dramatist of this period, the rather eccentric Count Allesandro Pepoli, openly broke with neoclassicism in the name of Shakespeare, issuing a sort of preromantic manifesto in the Mercurio d'Italia in 1796 entitled "On the usefulness, the invention, and the rules of a new type of theatrical composition, called a 'fisedia.' The Shakespearean fisedia rejected unity of time and place, allowed the use of both kings and peasants, mixed comic and tragic elements, and used both prose and verse. It's only rules, said Pepoli, were those 'followed by all worthwhile plays,' such as 'consistency of character, propriety of manners, and clarity of development." His _Ladislo_, created according to these precepts, enjoyed a modest success in Venice in 1796, but did not inspire any significant followers. The influence of the French tradition, reinforced by the growing influence of Alfierian neoclassicism, proved too strong for this alien form to overcome.(p.16)
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Compare the above to Sidney's attack on the barbarous state of the English stage. Ive suggested that the two left arms of the Droeshout engraving indicate that Shakespeare was incapable of 'right' or dexterous (correct) writing. Ambisinister means 'wrong in both hands', and in my opinion the Droeshout engraving figures the faults/irregularities of Shakespeare's style or manner. Puttenham defined style as the 'mark of the mind' - so the disproportionate Droeshout characterizes (is the stamp and impression of) Shakespeare's barbarous, anticlassical mind and manners. Jonson, the more severe critic, could not have approved of all of Sidney's own writings, but I'm sure he would have approved the following judgements.
Please note Sidney's reference to 'right' (correct) tragedy and comedy.
Sidney, Defense of Poetry
Our tragedies and comedies not without cause cried out against, observing rules neither of honest civility nor of skilful poetry, excepting Gorboduc, - again I say of those that I have seen. Which notwithstanding as it is full of stately speeches and well-sounding phrases, climbing to the height of Seneca`s style, and as full of notable morality, which it doth most delightfully teach, and so obtain the very end of poesy; yet in truth it is very defectious in the circumstances, which grieveth me, because it might not remain as an exact model of all tragedies. For it is faulty both in place and time, the two necessary companions of all corporal actions. For where the stage should always represent but one place, and the uttermost time presupposed in it should be, both by Aristotle`s precept and common reason, but one day; there is both many days and many places inartificially imagined. But if it be so in Gorboduc, how much more in all the rest? where you shall have Asia of the one side, and Afric of the other, and so many other under-kingdoms, that the player, when he cometh in, must ever begin with telling where he is, or else the tale will not be conceived. Now ye shall have three ladies walk to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. By and by we hear news of shipwreck in the same place, and then we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock. Upon the back of that comes out a hideous monster with fire and smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a cave. While in the mean time two armies fly in, represented with four swords and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field?
Now of time they are much more liberal. For ordinary it is that two young princes fall in love; after many traverses she is got with child, delivered of a fair boy, he is lost, groweth a man, falleth in love, and is ready to get another child, - and all this in two hours` space; which how absurd it is in sense even sense may imagine, and art hath taught, and all ancient examples justified, and at this day the ordinary players in Italy will not err in. Yet will some bring in an example of Eunuchus in Terence, that containeth matter of two days, yet far short of twenty years. True it is, and so was it to be played in two days, and so fitted to the time it set forth. And though Plautus have in one place done amiss, let us hit with him, and not miss with him. But they will say, How then shall we set forth a story which containeth both many places and many times? And do they not know that a tragedy is tied to the laws of poesy, and not of history; not bound to follow the story, but having liberty either to feign a quite new matter, or to frame the history to the most tragical conveniency? Again, many things may be told which cannot be showed, - if they know the difference betwixt reporting and representing. As for example I may speak, though I am here, of Peru, and in speech digress from that to the description of Calicut; but in action I cannot represent it without Pacolet`s horse. And so was the manner the ancients took, by some Nuntius^46 to recount things done in former time or other place.
Lastly, if they will represent a history, they must not, as Horace saith, begin ab ovo,^47 but thee must come to the principal point of that one action which they will represent. By example this will be best expressed. I have a story of young Polydorus, delivered for safety`s sake, with great riches, by his father Priamus to Polymnestor, King of Thrace, in the Trojan war time. He, after some years, hearing the overthrow of Priamus, for to make the treasure his own murdereth the child; the body of the child is taken up by Hecuba; she, the same day, findeth a sleight to be revenged most cruelly of the tyrant. Where now would one of our tragedy writers begin, but with the delivery of the child? Then should he sail over into Thrace, and so spend I know not how many years, and travel numbers of places. But where doth Euripides? Even with the finding of the body, leaving the rest to be told by the spirit of Polydorus. This needs no further to it.
But, *besides these gross absurdities, how all their plays be neither right tragedies nor right comedies, mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in the clown by head and shoulders to play a part in majestical matters, with neither decency nor discretion; so as neither the admiration and commiseration, nor the right sportfulness, is by their mongrel tragi-comedy obtained*. I know Apuleius did somewhat so, but that is a thing recounted with space of time, not represented in one moment; and I know the ancients have one or two examples of tragi-comedies, as Plautus hath Amphytrio. But, if we mark them well, we shall find that they never, or very daintily, match hornpipes and funerals. So falleth it out that, having indeed no right comedy in that comical part of our tragedy, we have nothing but scurrility, unworthy of any chaste ears, or some extreme show of doltihsness, indeed fit to lift up a loud laughter, and nothing else; where the whole tract of a comedy should be full of delight, as the tragedy should be still maintained in a well-raised admiration.
But our comedians think there is no delight without laughter, which is very wrong; for though laughter may come with delight, yet cometh it not of delight, as though delight should be the cause of laughter; but well may one thing breed both together. Nay, rather in themselves they have, as it were, a kind of contrariety. For delight we scarcely do, but in things that have a conveniency to ourselves, or to the general nature; laughter almost ever cometh of things most disproportioned to ourselves and nature. Delight hath a joy in it either permanent or present; laughter hath only a scornful tickling. For example, we are ravished with delight to see a fair woman, and yet are far from being moved to laughter. We laugh at deformed creatures, We delight to hear the happiness of our friends and country, at which he were worthy to be laughed at that would laugh. We shall, contrarily, laugh sometimes to find a matter quite mistaken and go down the hill against the bias, in the mouth of some such men, as for the respect of them one shall be heartily sorry he cannot choose but laugh, and so is rather pained than delighted with laughter. Yet deny I not but that they may go well together. For as in Alexander`s picture well set out we delight without laughter, and in twenty mad antics we laugh without delight; so in Hercules, painted with his great beard and furious countenance, in woman`s attire, spinning at Omphale`s commandment, it breedeth both delight and laughter; for the representing of so strange a power in love, procureth delight, and the scornfulness of the action stirreth laughter.
But I speak to this purpose, that all the end of the comical part be not upon such scornful matters as stir laughter only, but mixed with it that delightful teaching which is the end of poesy. And the great fault, even in that point of laughter, and forbidden plainly by Aristotle, is that they stir laughter in sinful things, which are rather execrable than ridiculous; or in miserable, which are rather to be pitied than scorned. For what is it to make folks gape at a wretched beggar or a beggarly clown, or, against law of hospitality, to jest at strangers because they speak not English so well as we do? what do we learn? since it is certain:
Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se,
Quam quod ridiculos homines facit.^48
[Footnote 48: "Unhappy poverty has nothing in it harder than this, that it makes men ridiculous." - Juvenal, "Satires," III. 152-3.]
But rather a busy loving courtier; a heartless threatening Thraso; a self- wise-seeming schoolmaster; a wry transformed traveller: these if we saw walk in stage-names, which we play naturally, therein were delightful laughter and teaching delightfulness, - as in the other, the tragedies of Buchanan do justly bring forth a divine admiration.
But I have lavished out too many words of this playmatter. I do it, because as they are excelling parts of poesy, so is there none so much used in England, and none can be more pitifully abused; which, like an unmannerly daughter, showing a bad education, causeth her mother Poesy`s honesty to be called in question.
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I'm including the following because it contains another one of Voltaire's rants against Shakespearean vulgarity, and I think if Jonson could have spoken freely against the Earl (scandalum magnatum) he would have sounded a lot like Voltaire. Sometimes when I find myself shaking my head in disbelief at what I think Jonson is saying about Shakespeare - at his strong condemnations of Shakespeare's faults - I remember that Voltaire has probably said far worse in plain language!
_The Italian Shakespearians_ Marvin Carlson:
...The Shakespeare that the Italians became acquainted with through Voltaire was an undisciplined, erratic, even gross genius, the product of a barbaric age. There were, moveover, assured by Voltaire that the neoclassic dramas of their own culture were distinctly superior to the works of Shakespeare, despite his occasional flashes of brilliance. The preface to Voltaire's Merope (1743) spoke slightingly of English drama while likening Scipione Maffei to Sophocles, and the preface to Semiramis (1748), addressed to the Italian Voltarian Cardinal Querini, called the works of Metastasio the nearest modern art had come to Greek tragedy, both in regard for the rules and in poetic achievement. This same preface contains Voltaire's famous denunciation of _Hamlet_ as a 'gross and barbarous piece which would not be supported by the most vile public in France and Italy' and of Shakespeare as an artist in whom nature had combined 'whatever one can imagine that is most powerful and good' with 'the lowest and most detestable elements of an uninspired grossness'.
Observations such as these made Italian men of letters aware of Shakespeare but gave them little encouragement to read him. The English stage, as Voltaire had pointed out , showed the danger of contamination from too close an acquaintance with this undisciplined barbarian. Goldoni provides and excellent illustration of this attitude in his 1754 comedy _I Malcontenti_, created during his bitter literary dispute with the rival playwright Pietro Chiari. Chiari, parodied so openly and sarcastically in the character Grisologo that the play was banned in Venice, boasts of his study of 'the celebrated Sachespir.' He thus describes what he has learned from the English dramatist:
My style, which shall make me world famous, consists in the power to speak in a vibrant, ample, sonorous manner, full of metaphors, of similes, of sententiae, which now elevate me among the stars, now bring me to skim into contact with the base earth. I am no slave to the burdensome laws of the unities. I blend tragedy with comedy, and when I write in verse I abandon myself entirely to the poetic fancy, with no regard for nature, which others obey with excessive scruple.
Perhaps this caricature did not in fact represent Goldoni's true feelings about Shakespeare, or perhaps further exposure and further thought altered his opinion. In any case a very different view is expressed in a preface to this play written two years later and addressed to John Murry, the English Resident in Venice. Here Goldoni holds up the English dramatist as a "model to anyone" desiring to learn playwriting. He has shown how to escape the "cramping fetters" of Aristotle and Horace by creating dramas which are "rational imitations of human actions." As for the character Grisologo in his _Malcontenti_, he is to be condemned not for attempting to follow Shakespeare but for doing so "without having first thoroughly studied him, and without those principles of nature which are necessary to drama." Therefore Grisologo has achieved "only a ridiculous caricature." (pp. 12-14)
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Aegri Somnia - Sick Men's Dreams
Harlequin-Horace:
Or, the
Art of Modern Poetry
James Miller - 1735
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)
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Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur
"The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived."
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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
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From _Volpone_, dedication. Ben Jonson
...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 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?
(snip)
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.
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Bartholomew Fair: Jonson
T H E
I N D u C T I O N
O N T H E
S T A G E.
...It is further covenanted, concluded and agreed, That how great soever the expectation be, no Person here is to expect more than he knows, or better Ware than a Fair will afford: neither to look back to the Sword and Buckler-age of Smithfield, but content himself with the present. Instead of a little Davy, to take Toll o' the Bawds, the Author doth promise a strutting Horse-courser, with a leer-Drunkard, two or three to attend him, in as good Equipage as you would wish. And then for Kind- heart, the Tooth-drawer, a fine Oily Pig-woman with her Tapster, to bid you welcome, and a Consort of Roarers for Musick. A wise Justice of Peace meditant, instead of a Jugler, with an Ape. A civil Cutpurse searchant. A sweet Singer of new Ballads allurant: and as fresh an Hypocrite, as ever was broach'd, rampant. If there be 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.
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Aegri Somnia - Sick Men's Dreams
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.
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To Jonson:
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..
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Florio translation:
Author: Boccaccio, Giovanni, 1313-1375.
Title: The decameron containing an hundred pleasant nouels. Wittily discoursed, betweene seauen honourable ladies, and three noble gentlemen.
Date: 1620
Dedicated to Philip Herbert:
(snip)
...In due consideration of the precedent allegations, and vppon the command, as also most Noble encouragement of your Honour from time to time; this volume of singular and exquisite Histories, varied into so many and exact natures, appeareth in the worlds view, vnder your Noble patronage and defence, to be safely sheelded from foule mouthed slander and detraction, which is too easily throwne vpon the very best deseruing labours.
I know (most worthy Lord) that many of them haue (long since) bene published before, as stolne from the first originall Author, and yet not beautified with his sweete stile and elocution of phrases, neither sauouring of his singular morall applications. For, as it was his full scope and ayme, by discouering all vices in their vgly deformities, to make their mortall enemies (the sacred Vertues) to shine the clearer, being set downe by them, and compared with them: so euery true and vpright iudgement, in obseruing the course of these well-carried Nouels, shall plainly perceiue, that there is no spare made of reproofe in any degree whatsoeuer, where sin is embraced, and grace neglected; but the iust deseruing shame and punishment thereon inflticted, that others may be warned by their example. In imitation of witty Aesope; who reciteth not a Fable, but graceth it with a iudicious morall application; as many other worthy Writers haue done the like.
